2nd impressions on Egypt

So I am back in Egypt and this time there is more to it. I had 2 offers from Microsoft, one from Egypt office and the other from the office in Dubai and I decided to go for Egypt, a decision I took on my second trip here ... finally!

Until summer 2010 I will be in Egypt working on CSR advancing and delivering public-private partnerships aka PPPs to serve the interests of Egypt, Microsoft and the other stakeholders. A very interesting assignment and will hopefully bring me closer to an area which I currently have a keen interest on, socio-economic development in the context of poorly developed or developing countries.

I will post more impressions about the job once I get into it.

Being in Egypt now is so much more different than it was 3 weeks ago due to Ramadan. In a nutshell being Muslim requires a person to do 5 things:
- recite "I testify that there is none worthy of worship except God and i Testify that Muhammad is the Messenger of God"
- pray 5 times a day
- giving based on accumulated wealth
- pilgrimage to Mecca and
- fasting during Ramadan

So now since we are in the month of Ramadan people are fasting from sunrise to sunset. Because of this daily life is totally changed. The working hours are less, many restaurants are of course closed, people are said to be better etc. Traffic is totally crazy at night especially in the few hours after iftar, the dinner to break the fast; it is hard to imagine how much traffic there is with millions of people moving at the same time from one place to another. So around 6-6.30 they have a first meal and then many stay awake until 3-4 am when they have another meal.
I went out last night with some Egyptians. We met at 2 am and went for a tea, after we looked around for a place to eat which was actually hard as there were hips of people everywhere wanting to eat. So at 3-30 we ate and at 4 we headed home and went to sleep. Today I am fasting as well being of course still full from the 3-4 am meal i had last night. That is the trick!!! :)
And a third things which really made an impression on me was people "dancing" in the mosque. After the call to prayer after iftar I saw in the huge mosque in El Hussein a bunch of some 200 men making dancing like moves and chanting, they were standing up and moving from left to right on a rithm, waving their hands and chanting ... wow!


One more thing to mention on Egypt, Friday and Saturday which is of course not my normal routine and last Sunday I was telling myself "This is Monday! This is Monday!" so I can get my act together for work.

on the 9th I am back in Romania, where i will handle documents for coming to Egypt, attend a wedding, a music festival and also meet relatives and friends.