Garbage, Al Gore and the Russians

I had an amazing last week, gifted with great and unique events! It is for sure the most interesting so far in Egypt and one of the most enriching I ever had.

To start with, going to the event “Towards a Culture of Sustainable Communities, Economies and Environment” brought me face to face with a totally alien group of people – waste pickers aka garbage collectors. More on this topic in the previous post.
Part of this event I also got to see Annie Leonard – the producer of the “Story of Stuff” video, she was a great speaker.

I also saw Al Gore talk on climate change. It was the best live speech I’ve ever seen. Amazing ice-breaking jokes, dramatic tone, change of mood, high energy …
I will remember the one with “I used to be the next president of the US”; cannot stop thinking how the US and the world would be if he actually won against George W. Bush.
He mentioned a very shocking fact: US had used in 10 years cans worth the Aluminum quantity enough to build 25 times the world’s aviation fleet.
In his opinion, Egypt’s chance to grow economically and to become green at the same time is to engage and be the main hub for the Desertec project initiated by the Germans.
He ended with “political will is a renewable resource” which is very relevant for Egypt’s reality.
The guy sitting next to me was the manager of a private equity company. Before the speech he told me that he invests in dairy and other consumer goods business. After the speech I told him “you should invest in green energy”, he answered “I will” … that sounds promising …

I ended the week in Hurghada, one the most popular tourist destinations in Egypt on the Red Sea coast. Not really my type of place but I enjoyed it anyways once I found a very good beach, swam a bit, saw some fish, had great sea food and pharaoh massage: D
I have to mention that this place is dominated by Russians, I bet there a few oligarchs around, there was a lot of writing in Russian on the streets and many waiters and staff were talking Russian. One of them told me he learned after taking a 2 months course in town and by practicing a lot with the tourists, he even changed his name, Max!

The Hurghada experience came just 24h hours after walking around in the slum so I felt like being on a different planet … after all, this is what Egypt is for me …