A DAY IN THE LIFE...

For anyone who's been to Bangkok and think it's a polluted city - then think again!! Cairo city has a population of 20 million and 2 million cars, most running on diesel, add this to the airborne smoke, soot, dust and liquid droplets from fuel combustion which constantly exceeds WHO standards, it makes up for a very crowded, polluted, dirty city. 20,000 Cariennes die each year from pollution-related disease and 1/2 million suffer from pollution-related respiratory disease each year!

While there have been some changes to Cairo since my visit in '91, the chaos, noise, pollution and squalor have not. It's a city that can be quite disorientating on arrival and can take at least a couple of days to get into the groove. Once you've found your bearings however you're still likely to get lost!!

Crossing the street is at your own risk and arriving the other side alive is alwayz a pleasant surprise :) The Cariennes stop for nothing, not a red light or a cop. Cairo has traffic lights but everyone ignores them and the police do their best to direct traffic and keep the flow going while singing to ipods and texting on mobile phones.

The streets in downtown Cairo are insanely out of control. No car stays within their lane, they drive as fast as they can, flash lights at the poor pedestrians attempting to cross the road. Their horn is used constantly, it has a special language which can mean anything from:

• I'm indicating and coming over into your lane;
• Watch out you're moving into my lane;
• Hurry up and get out of the way;
• Get off the damn road before I run you down!

The streets are hard to manouevre. Between the extremely congested city of millions of people all vying for the same space, there are pot holes, broken glass, rubbish, mangy cats and dogs scavenging for whatever meal they can find, dust piles of crap on almost every corner (imagine when the wind gets up) construction sites with no warning signs, crazy metal things sticking up out of the ground. It's a dangerous maze of potential injury which makes walking the streets tough work, hard to see and breathe through the continual haze of smoke and dust, and an extremely noisy exercise!!!

Oh, and I still haven't worked out whether the streets are lined with parked cars or abandoned cars - that gives you an idea of the condition of most of the vehicles in this city!

More to follow...