My Labyrinth

I'm a 23 year-old Developed World Prince.

What is the developed world, and what is the developping world?

What did I take for granted? I took for granted that there is a garbage system that functions properly. I take my trash out to the dumpster, and it's usually empty. Garbage is not thrown onto the street. Littering is punishable by a heavy fine.
I walk outside during the day and children are with their parents or in school.
There are traffic lights on every corner, cars abide by traffic laws and lanes. Horns are used right before an accident or if the driver is angry.
I can smell the dirt and grass, not pollution that makes my lungs burn.
I can drink my tap water because it is free of deadly bacteria and heavy metals that cause cancer and balding.
Coffee and food to-go is readily available.
Classrooms have desks and are air-conditioned. Building codes forbid 100 people in a tiny classroom.
People wait in line and do not cut, push, shove, and yell.
The police don't ask for tips when they help you; I can trust them.
Prices are fixed, and there is no different prices based on sex, religion, race, or nationality.
Women have the same rights as men. The majority male and dominate race is subject to the same rules as the minorities.
Minorities can hold top government positions.
I can wear whatever I want comfortably.
People make more than $4 a day.
Children don't pull carts and are forbidden from labor.
Building aren't started and left for 20 years unfinished.
There is an overkill on safety regulations that people actually follow. Safety standards are enforced,  electrical wires are closed on the street and sidewalks.

There are some places in which pockets of younger Egyptians try hard to live a better life. I don't think they are "mimicking" the West. I genuinely they are their own product and are trying to separate themselves from the poverty and lack of organization and infrastructure they see around them.There are a couple Starbucks in Alexandria, and a couple cafes that have piano music, food, drinks, and air conditioning with waiters who are really helpful and, well, look happy. People talking in several languages, eating foreign food like spaghetti, and working on their laptops. These places, like Clay Cafe, are located on the dirty, noisy streets that face places like the "tram" (trolly), with broken sidewalks, cats screaming and fighting, boys running, men yelling at each other, and garbage piled high next to the double parked cars that are boxed in from a fresh row next to them. Incessant honking. The people who are what we consider "educated" (finished high school or have some college) are lower than America, and the education system is based on the method of repetition and memorization. Living in Egypt and visiting these little bastions of what I consider "normal life" remind me of that scene in the Labyrinth with David Bowie, when Sarah eats the peach and wakes up in her own room.  For a time, she forgets where she truly is until she notices little differences. I look at my plate of french fries, and then the packet of ketchup and bottle of water next to it. I don't have to drink out of a water bottle in America, and there's always a bottle of ketchup, not small watered-down packets. I'm snapped back into reality from the jazz music and the polished wooden table on which my laptop with high speed internet is resting. I remember what lays outside, and I don't feel so at home anymore. Unlike Sarah, however, I don't freak out and start destroying the book shelf next to me and I don't throw my spaghetti in hopes that the place will fall apart and I will walk free from to Jareth's castle to my liberation.  I've wised up a bit since my first few months here. Unlike Sarah, I'm playing the game because I want to learn to empathize with another people. The books in Arabic on the shelf and the seemingly-lack of customer service don't cause me the same internal strife as a lost Toby.

Back tracking to education, thinking skills are not really valued or taught, and it unfortunately shows in  everyday life, the way that systems of bureaucracy are set up (like my internet service, with offices scattered around town for the same company; also, people's seeming inability to solve problems that they encounter in the street), as well as in the failed attempts at fixing problems on the street, and the excessive amounts of tape, wires, and cover up done up quickly to fix it.  I've painfully learned that, despite the enormous amount of information on the television and internet that I've accessed about my culture, how little people still know about Americans, or "foreigners". I can tell in the way they stare at me in wonder, or snickering because I'm an "aganab" (foreigner), or when they shout at me from the other side of the tram platform, taunting the alien because they assume I don't speak their language. The educated, especially those who have "social graces" and "manners" (not burping in public, not screaming across the road, not talking about people in front of their faces, not staring, not saying "please" and "thank you", not waiting in line, and not talking to strangers like they are stupid animals) are a rarity. I'm still trying to come to terms with it.

It helps me to know, however unsettling it is, that the last thing on people's mind are these things that our society has grown to expect as a People in interaction with each other. Though there is an amazing sense of community in Egyptian neighborhoods, they are extremely selfish when dealing with each other, especially with the trash situation. It doesn't seem to occur to them that they are dirtying their own environemt and then living in it. I think of it as throwing your trash on the ground in your house when you're done with it, and living in it, then letting 100 cats inside to live. It's nauseating.

Anyway, people have a lot to deal with, such as economic problems caused by an ineffective government, inflation, rising food prices, corrupt police forces, inefficient bureaucracy, and everything I've afore mentioned. These things supersede "politeness" and "mutual social respect".  Now that I think about it, it might be me, ONLY me, who thinks that these things are rude and troubling. It makes me realize how different societies and cultures have a different order in which they put things that are important to them.  Feeding their families supersedes cutting in line, or something like that. If I find something rude, it's just me. There's no one here to validate how I feel because no one understands why I find it so. The majority sets the standard, so I cannot be angry. I will be annoyed because deep down, I keep telling myself "I'm right", but I'm only right at Home. It helps take the sting away, and I'm trying not to feel that my culture or habits are better than "Theirs".  It doesn't help to say there's a line if people don't recognize it as being the way things are to be organized. No one will validate my annoyance. No one thinks of it as I do: You are stealing my time from me by cutting me. You are negating my existence by standing in front of me. You are disrespecting my system of what I consider polite.

I clearly do not know yet how I truly will feel about these things that are lacking in the country or are just different. I will always be annoyed at their inexistence.

One of my French Professors told me that "la politesse c'est une luxe" (Politeness is a luxury), only available to those who can afford to be concerned with it. I'm still not sure how I feel about it. I always thought, well I turned out pretty polite and have high standards for others' manners, and I certainly didn't come from a "luxurious" background. But I realize now, she didn't mean people like me. She meant here. But I don't know if you can plant what I consider polite onto Egyptians. They have their own system of politeness. Answering your phone whenever someone needs to talk to you, giving up their seat to an old man, etc. The things I miss are the things that I will never experience here. I guess I'll have to wait for my own expectations in people's "politesse" to be fulfilled when I get home. For now, I'm trying to appreciate their system for what it is. I will not accept it as right, ever, nor will I accept it's irritating inconvenience on my Princely life, but I at least want to understand why it is this way. I'm getting there, verrrrryyyyy slowly. Judgments aside, I still don't understand and it's irritating me to no end.

I just can't get over the fact that people's lives would be more simple and stress-free here if they would just take steps to help themselves: put all the offices in the same building for that internet company, take your trash home or wait until you find a trash bin (they're around!), turn on the internet and learn about my country, and what you've designated as the "West". The term still makes me cringe. I'm not rich, I don't wear gold and silver, I don't live in a palace, I don't own a Mercedes, the Jews do not control my government, only 40% of Americans voted for  Bush, not all Americans are white with blond hair, we don't all engage smoking, drug infested sex orgies, and America, contrary to popular belief, is one of the most religious "Western" democracies in the developed world. The ignorance here, though I understand it's reasons, is easily curable through the access to information. Egypt's government doesn't block these sites of cultural exchange, like Wikipedia. I just don't understand why I'm the only one who's using it over here!

Until I get it all "sorted out" and this society "justified" in my head, I'm going to always quietly and subtly slip in and out of my own tortuous Labyrinth, between what I remember and what I know now, in hopes to reconcile the two on my way to Jareth's castle, and ultimately, the liberation of my Mind.