Life Lessons from Egypt

1. Pursue something you are passionate about

I realized on this trip that kids talk about their teachers a lot. They like to hash and rehash stories about the funny teachers who made them laugh, the kindest teachers who encouraged them, the most brilliant teachers who imparted knowledge. But the memories they most enjoy reliving involve the meanest teachers who wronged them. I think they like to talk about their teachers because apart from their family, they spend a lot of time with them, and because they have different ones from year to year, there are a lot to compare.

During our month in Egypt, we retained the services of a number of guides. In Egypt, it seems to be the prevalent tourist culture to travel around with a guide whereas self-touring is less common. The benefit of using a guide is that a guide can conveniently and efficiently unlock knowledge and information about an archaeological site or museum.

In our classroom without walls, Leo and I are like the homeroom teachers and the guides are like temporary instructors. In total, we used six guides in Egypt for durations varying from a site-specific visit in Abu Simbel (the shortest) to a five-day guide during the Nile Cruise (the longest). Much like the kids talk about their old teachers, we have spent a lot of time as a family, discussing and debating which guides we have liked and which we haven’t, which are funny and which are boring, which are experts and which are just making things up as they go along. This line of conversation eventually evolved into the bigger question – What makes a good guide?  

At the heart of our verbal circumambulations was the answer that could be expressed in a single word – passion. In the world of guiding, and probably the world at large, there is a palpable difference, discernable even to kids, between someone who is passionate about their work and someone who is just passing time.

Iman in Cairo and Dina in Alexandria were two guides whose passion and energy inspired our curiosity and deepened our understanding. We were with Iman for one day and visited the NMEC (National Museum of Egyptian Civilization), Al-Azhar Mosque and Street of the Tentmakers with him. His love for Egyptian history, Egyptology, Islam and his enthusiasm to share his knowledge made eager students of us. Dina was our guide during our two days in Alexandria. Her tireless pursuit of learning and engagement in her field to build not just a career but a chosen life, motivated us to reach beyond our own limitations of focus and concentration and pay attention to every gem of knowledge and experience that she was willing to share.

Passion is inspiring and it is contagious. For guides or teachers or any other job or pursuit, passion is the fairy dust that feeds hard-work, perseverance, dedication, patience and ultimately purpose. We all need to find something that we are passionate about and dedicate ourselves to that endeavor because without passion, we are just killing time.

2. The future is global

By chance, we met a young guy and his group of friends who were traveling together. These young people left a deep impression on me. In their sense of optimism, freedom, openness, innocence, and curiosity, I could see the future of my own children.

When we arrived in our Airbnb in Hurghada, Leo, I and my mom decided to make a quick run to the grocery store while the kids played with Jiu Jiu and enjoyed the entertainment areas of the house. When we got back, there was a group of three or four young guys hanging out in our front yard. They were the previous guests who were waiting for a taxi to the airport. One of the guys was Chinese. Ze introduced himself and began chatting with us. They were a group of friends and colleagues from London. They had just spent a week at the Airbnb, using it as a base to visit several other cities in Egypt. The special thing about this group was that they were multi-ethnic and multi-national. This group of young guys looked like the United Nations as they were from all over the world. There was Ze, the Chinese guy that we were talking to who was originally from Beijing but moved to London about 9 years ago. There was an Egyptian-British guy who, together with the Chinese guy, helped to organize the trip. The other guys all lived and worked in London but came from Uganda, Jamaica, Nigeria and Canada. And together, this multi-ethnic, multi-cultural group of friends was exploring the world together.

I’ll admit that my memory is a little foggy as to the exact countries where the guys were from, so those that I listed might not be entirely accurate. But I do remember the feeling of curiosity and hope that I felt when Ze described his group of friends. They couldn’t have been more than 25 years old and they already embraced diversity, globalism, open-mindedness and adventure. They not just embraced it, they lived it. This is the future that I wish for my kids.

3. Rules shouldn’t be too rigid

Our visit to the modern-day incarnation of the great Library of Alexandria, Bibliotheca Alexandrina, was marred by a disappointing experience when we tried to visit the children’s and youth library.

The kids had waited patiently through the entire guided tour of the library, but they were counting the minutes before it ended so they could check out the children’s library upstairs. We followed the rainbow stairs to the upper level and quickly discovered the children’s library. They were thrilled to go inside and began eagerly browsing through several shelves of children’s books. Besides us, there were only a few other people in the library. A staff came by and asked RY his age. He was told he couldn’t stay in the children’s area because he was too old so he was directed to the youth library. Ok.

The staff then informed us that for both the children’s and youth libraries, parents are not allowed to join their children inside, so we were asked to wait outside. Fine.

I was annoyed at all of these rules but the children were content and getting settled with their book choices. As we were leaving the children’s area, a staff came to ask me EY’s age. Apparently, she was too young to be in the library because the age range is six to 11, so I was told to let her wait outside. Seriously?

I tried to politely discuss allowing EY to remain inside the library with her siblings, or to sit quietly at the table, but the staff wouldn’t budge. “The rules are the rules.” They already kicked RY out of the library, plus all of the adults and now they were going to kick EY out. This was really the last straw. It seemed they were weeding us out one by one. As a matter of principle, I told all the kids that we couldn’t stay. We went to fetch RY from the youth library but we weren’t allowed to go inside because we were not within the welcome age range of 12 to 17. Incredulously, I asked the staff at the entrance how I was supposed to retrieve my son inside. They couldn’t give me any reasonable answer other than, “Just wait.” You have got to be kidding me.

This was beyond comprehension and the staff saw that I was about to lose it, so they made an exception and allowed Leo to go inside to get our son.

Annoyed (me) and disappointed (the kids), we descended the stairs back to the main entrance where Dina was waiting for us. I told her what had happened and she was similarly disappointed by the rigidity and poor training of the largely student volunteer staff that undermined the aim of the library to be a place of learning. She encouraged me to submit feedback to the management. To my pleasant surprise, the women at the service desk were courteous and sympathetic. They even gave me a professional-looking feedback form that I diligently filled out. When I finished, the lady at the desk handed me a tear-away strip from the form with a reference number and told me that somebody from the library would contact me within the next few days to follow up. I was very impressed by the customer feedback system and though I wanted to believe that I would actually receive a call or email from management, I wasn’t holding my breath. I never did receive any follow-up from the library.

I believe that my family’s experience is not representative of the vision of Bibliotheca Alexandrina, which according to their website, is:
To be a center of excellence for the production and dissemination of knowledge and to be a place of dialogue and understanding between cultures and peoples.

In reflecting on this experience, my initial thoughts centered on the importance of setting appropriate policies and rules in an organization to achieve the desired results. As a starting point, knowledge and learning should be inclusive and accessible to everyone. There will and should be rules to manage the operations of the library, but they should be in place to facilitate access to the knowledge, not to create barriers around it. Perhaps the age restrictions for the children’s and youth library were too rigid. The strict age prescriptions don’t account for families with multiple children, neurodivergent children who may need to be accompanied by an adult or children who read at a different reading level than is typical for their age.

Then my thoughts drifted to the front-line staff who interact with visitors every day. An organization can’t rely entirely on policies and rules. One of the most challenging parts of any organization is in the management and training of the staff so that each and every person shares and upholds the vision of the organization. The staff, even if they are volunteers, need to be trained properly and then empowered to take into consideration the specifics of each situation. In this case, the student volunteers were too inflexible in their adherence to rules.

Our experience in the children’s and youth library was disappointing and unfortunate but it didn’t detract from our overall enjoyment of our visit to the library.

4. Everybody needs something to believe in and those beliefs can change over time.

Belief in something beyond just ourselves and our mortality is at the heart of humanity. Every culture and society has (had) a belief system that explains how the universe was created, why things are the way they are and what will happen after we die. Over the past few millennia, Egypt has seen a dynamic transformation of its belief system from its Ancient polytheistic religion to Christianity and finally to Islam.

For 3000 years, the Ancient Egyptians believed in a polytheistic religion with a pantheon of gods that required worshiping and sacrifices to win their favor. Life was good when the gods were happy. The Ancient Egyptians spent much of their living days obsessing about what would happen after they died. They built elaborate tombs and followed complex rituals that included mummification, to ensure that they would make it to the final destination, the afterlife where their soul would live on into eternity.

The Romans conquered Egypt and Christianity took hold with the arrival of St. Mark in Alexandria in the first century AD. The basis of the Christian religion was the One God, the Holy Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, entry into heaven after death and the virgin birth of Jesus. Christianity was widely accepted by the Egyptians because the early Roman emperors did not adopt the Ancient Egyptian religion as the Ptolemies had. On a practical level, there was nowhere to worship in the old way because the ancient temples were falling into disrepair due to lack of funding for upkeep and maintenance. Temples were even being damaged and desecrated by early Christians, as we saw in Aswan at the Temple of Edfu and Temple of Philae. By the 3rd century AD, Rome began to embrace Christianity and by the 4th century AD, the Roman emperor had outlawed all forms of pagan religion. This was the beginning of the end for Amun, Isis, Horus, Osiris and the rest of the Ancient Egyptian gods. By the 7th century AD, the religion of Ancient Egypt, alongside the language of Ancient Egypt, hieroglyphics, had been forgotten.

Islam entered Egypt when the Arabs conquered Egypt in the 7th century AD. For the next 800 plus years, Egypt was governed under various Arab Caliphates followed by the invasion of the Ottomans in the 15th century. During this time, Islam was firmly established in Egypt and became its dominant religion. Islam’s main belief is that there is only one God (Allah) and Mohammed is the messenger of God. The brief invasion of Egypt by the French followed by 60 plus years of rule by the British did nothing to change the religious identity of the country. Islam was already firmly entrenched and today, 90% of the country is Muslim while 10% is Christian.

It is a hallmark trait of humankind to believe in something, whether that is a religion, a philosophy or a way of life. None of our belief systems are devoid of change. To stay relevant, all belief systems must evolve with the changing times.

5. Sometimes there are no answers

We left Alexandria very early in the morning to make the drive to Cairo International Airport to catch our departure flights. My parents were flying back to Taipei, my brother was flying back to California and we were flying to Athens. It was still dark when we left our Airbnb on the Corniche and there were just a few cars on the road. It was a beautiful and peaceful sight watching the sun rise over the empty highway that would take us back to the starting point of our journey in Egypt.

About an hour into the drive, the van came to a sudden stop. Most of us were half-asleep or sleeping, but the motion of the van reducing its speed from a steady highway pace to a crawl jolted us awake. We saw cars turning back to go in the opposite direction. Strewn across the width of the four or five-lane highway was the debris of what appeared to be an explosion. There were what I assumed to be car parts and unidentifiable debris littered across the entire highway in a neat band. There was no fire and no bodies or injured people on the side of the road. There were no police cars, investigators, clean-up crews or any sign that officials had been here. The scene looked organized as if it had been arranged, not haphazard as you would expect an explosion to look. It was a bizarre site to behold.

A driver nearby hopped out of his car to view the scene up close and possibly see if he could drive through the debris. His assessment must have yielded a negative answer as he jumped back into his car, U-turned and drove in the opposite direction. Once we got close enough, our driver surveyed the scene and promptly U-turned to continue in the opposite direction. We doged oncoming traffic head-on in what felt like a first-person augmented reality video game. Luckily it was still early and there weren’t too many cars on the road yet.

It was a puzzling scene and our thoughts jumped from theory to theory. Was it a terrorist attack? Did it have something to do with the protests over Gaza and other causes that the Egyptian government had been quelling? Was there any life left in the Arab Spring? Or maybe it was just an accident.

We arrived at the airport slightly delayed due to the situation on the road. We had to make it through in good time in order to avoid any further delays. Just after entering the international terminal building of the Cairo airport, all travelers must pass through an initial security screening before reaching the check-in counters. Airports in the US and in China typically do not have this initial screening step, but other countries like Kenya and Egypt have had it.

At various times during our time in Egypt, women have been required to cue in a different line to undergo security screening by an officer of the same gender. Entering the airport, there was no indication or signs that there were separate lines for women. From what I could see, there were women and men mixed in the five or so lines that ran ten-deep.

Our family lined up together in one of the lines and made our way slowly to the front. We were in plain view of the male guards who were conducting the security check. When we finally reached the front of the line, the males (Leo, my dad, my brother, RY and DY) in our family were checked with the metal detector and waved through to have their luggage x-rayed. To the women and girls (me, my mom, AY and EY), the security guard gestured to us to join another line. We had just wasted 20 minutes in this line.

It wasn’t clear to me which line to cue in as all of the lines, along with the one we were just in, were mixed with women and men. We went to the next line over and I apologetically asked another traveler if we could cut to the front as we had just wasted 20 minutes to get to the front of the other line. We joined the front of the line and when it was our turn, the security guard at this line waved us away.

The five of us were getting shooed from one line to another, only to get shooed away again. I was confused and feeling anxious because this was wasting a lot of time. Leo and the others had already made their way through the male security check and we were still being bounced back and forth.

A male customer service officer was nearby and I called him over to ask him how we could get through. He told us to go to the original line again but when we approached the line, the security guard said something in Arabic to the effect of, “Not this line.” We were standing in no-man’s land in between the two lines, neither of which would accept us.

Time was ticking away so I went back to the second line and demanded to be checked. The customer service officer said something about “no female security guard”.

As I was looking around to confirm that there really wasn’t a female security guard, the security guard motioned for us to stand to the side so that all of the men behind us could proceed in front of us. Is it possible that in this international airport, there really wasn’t a female security guard on duty? How could an international airport that welcomes millions of tourists a year operate under such an incredibly inefficient and sexist system. I couldn’t believe it.

Moments passed and I was growing increasingly impatient. I demanded that the female security officer come over. The security guard rudely motioned for me to wait and waved me off to the side. In a louder voice, I demanded for a female guard. As if I was the one being unreasonable, the security guard responded in a rude tone, “No, YOU wait!” We engaged in a bit of back and forth, me demanding and him denying. My voice got louder and his tone got ruder. Maybe we were drawing attention to us. Another employee rushed over and asked what was the problem. I told him that we have been pushed from one line to another and we still have no way of going through the security check because there is no female officer to check us. At last, a female officer showed up.

She demanded to see our boarding passes. I told her I don’t have them because they are with my husband who was already waiting on the other side of the check. I was so exasperated by this situation that I think I was shouting by now. Leo saw me and came back into the security zone and presented the boarding passes. I turned to the original security guard and seethed, “You are not helpful.” He looked me in the eye and with disgust in his voice, told me to “Shut up.” Leo, who never backs down from defending his family, shouted, “Don’t you ever treat women that way!”

I was about to react but at that split second, from the corner of my eye, I saw the female security officer giggle to herself. Her reaction, her giggle, felt like a needle being pushed into my skin. Imploringly, I asked her, “What are you laughing about?” Yes, maybe I was acting like a crazy lady. Yes, maybe I could not successfully navigate this situation with aplomb. Yes, maybe my mom and my girls saw me lose my temper.

But, couldn’t she see that she was living and working in a sexist and unfair system? Shouldn’t I show my anger at injustice? Don’t the women in my family have the right to be shown the same respect and pass through the line in the same amount of time with the same dignity as the men in my family? Why should we have to wait for all of the men to go through before we can be acknowledged? Couldn’t she see that it’s just not right.

After having wasted over 30 minutes, we made it just in time to the check-in line. As a last effort, I asked the check-in desk how to file a complaint about airport security staff. As if it was the punchline to a bad customer service joke, the lady told me to go back to the security line and ask to speak to the officer’s boss. She didn’t seem to get it when I said that I wanted to file a complaint against that very security officer who treated me disrespectfully. What I didn’t tell her was that I wanted to file a complaint against the airport’s sexist and unfair practices. She seemed to think that finding the guy’s boss would solve the problem. I imagined the officer and his boss laughing about the incident and my feeble complaint with their other colleagues over their morning coffee.  

After an appetizer of anger, the main course was heartbreak, as we said goodbye to my parents and my brother. Everybody always cries or at the very least, tears up when we say goodbye. It was left open-ended when we will see each other next. I can’t remember the last time we spent a month adventuring together, exploring a new culture, environment and people. We had traversed the entire length of Egypt’s ancient history, from the early pyramids of the Old Kingdom in Saqqara to the tombs and temples of the great Kings and Queens of the New Kingdom in along the Nile River in Luxor and Aswan, and to the final chapter of Ancient Egypt in Alexandria. Now it was time to say goodbye.

Over the course of the next few days, Leo, I and the kids had many discussions to process what happened at the airport security line. We understood the problem to be two-fold.

Problem 1: There was only one female security guard for the entire security area, running from one line to another.
Problem 2: The male security guard who I argued with was poorly trained, rude or sexist.

We can only guess at the underlying reasons for Problem 1 and Problem 2. Does it have something to do with the religion or the culture? Or is Problem 1 just simply an organizational or staffing issue? Maybe Problem 2 is just a rude or sexist individual and those type of people pop up everywhere.

Assuming it isn’t an issue having anything to do with religion or culture, even my younger kids could figure out that one female security guard is not enough. There should be the same number of male and female officers. My older kids could figure out the airport could use historical traveler data to determine the historical ratio of male to female travelers and use the same ratio to calculate how many male and female officers need to be on duty. Maybe there are more men traveling through Cairo International Airport compared to women, but probably not 6 times more.

Even after unpacking and debriefing with my family, I still couldn’t get this incident out of my mind and I wanted the opinion of somebody local whom I could trust. So I asked Dina what she thought. She said she has never experienced anything like this in Cairo or any other airport in Egypt. She guessed that maybe there was a staff shortage or some kind of emergency that caused this chaotic staffing situation.

Fair enough. Who knows. I accept that there is no answer. It doesn’t even matter what the real answer is. What matters more is what we believe to be the answer.