Everything runs relatively smoothly at our villa and I love the early mornings with the bustle of gardeners, bowabs, and drivers milling about. They visit with one another and drink tea and I love the community of it all. Egyptians are very very social and always stop to greet one another and ask how they are doing.
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| R to L: gardener Mustafa, main gardener Mohammad, and Ahmed. Our gardener does not have a vehicle and gets around town on the style of bikes you see on the left. So interesting to see gardeners on bicycles holding brooms, rakes, and even lawn mowers. Very inventive. |
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| Ahmed and his son Mohammad outside bowab hut. |
I will quickly describe everyone but Ahmed as he's our most interesting employee. I will save him for last.
Bowab is the word used here for essentially the doorman and watchman--some prefer to be called Security--who stays either just inside your villa walls or just outside and watches over everything. They work 12 hour shifts, six days a week. Our bowabs open/close the gate, help bring packages from the car to the back door, wash down outdoor furniture, wash the car if asked, change outdoor lightbulbs, and let us know when we have visitors. They are the guardians of our gate and help keep us safe. Some bowabs are more helpful than others and ours are really great.
Our gardener Mohammad has a crew of about three men, one of him his son, and they come to the villa every morning, six days a week, to water, weed, trim, and whatever else we ask of them. Our night bowab Mohammad is awesome and we appreciate him so much for being outside all night. My driver Mohammad is, I believe, the 5th driver I've had and I'm just so happy he's my driver. Safe, respectuful, and drives slow for me.
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| Ahmed our day bowab holding his tea tray. He's got his pants rolled up ready to wash some outdoor chairs for me. |
Our day bowab Ahmed is 45 years old and has a family with four children. We attended his daughter's wedding a year ago and that was a fun cultural experience. Of all our employees he is the least content to mind his own business and not create problems. He loves drama and is quite good in the role of passive-aggressive instigator. Generally I find it to be funny and I almost never see it coming although now I'm half-wise to his antics. He is very jealous of the other employees and watches how Dave and I treat each and every one. Which is why he is different than all our other employees. Everyone else does their jobs and don't get involved in drama or gossip. Unfortunately, from time to time, our other employees and even madam (!) become entangled in Ahmed's drama and then everything is a kerfuffle. Then it passes and everyone waits for the next scene in the drama of Ahmed because we all know it's just a matter of time.
Quite possibly the most irritating thing that Ahmed does is he goes through my garbage. I thought this was a normal behavior for bowabs in Egypt because they don't make a lot of money. But this is not true. It's just Ahmed. He has been told repeatedly by me and my favorite Apache driver Nasser to stay out of madams garbage. But he's stubborn as a mule. I see bits of my garbage in his little bowab hut outside the gate and in the area where he makes tea and coffee. I've given up trying to change that behavior. But it creeps me out.
Last spring everyone at the villa had just HAD IT with Ahmed and I set out to replace him. We couldn't find anyone and I decided that I had to look on the bright side. I do like the shock effect of his antics. It is expanding my horizons by creating new pathways in my brain because it's always something new and different. I've learned how to better manage his drama and feel myself becoming less of a push-over. I still get ripped off but am getting better about it. lol
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| This view is from my second floor window and I enjoy watching all the activity below. Here Ahmed is holding his tea tray and yapping to the military recruits. |
What I appreciate about Ahmed is that he will do almost anything for us. We are "family" as he loves to say. He gestures wildly and has an actor's persona about him. He loves center stage and as bowab at our villa he is the master of ceremonies and conductor for all. Our street gets a lot of vehicle and pedestrian traffic because of our proximity to the police station. And Ahmed is in the middle of it all, giving directions, directing traffic, and negotiating unbelievable traffic jams. He loves it. And the icing on his cake was the police setting up a barricade on the street just outside our villa to better manage the flow of people and vehicles around the police station. Every day, all day there are several policemen and military recruits outside the villa watching guard along the street. Ahmed is a grand host and loves helping them in any way he can. He makes tea and coffee for them and entertains with his love of talk and gestures. I love to watch everyone out my second floor window--there is always something going on. And Ahmed is always always talking their heads off. As a capitive audience they sit and stare at him with a glazed look in their eyes. I don't know what they think of him because he's a conniver for sure. But an entertaining one that serves tea and coffee.
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| I asked Ahmed if I could take their picture and he happily obliged, grabbing one of the rifles hanging around. The man in the white uniform is a policeman and the one in the black uniform is a young military recruit. Most of the recruits come from villages outside of Cairo and don't seem to have a lot of experience with foreigners because they stare at me and David like we are aliens. By the way, the small gray cylinder in front of the men is an old air filter that I threw into the garbage a week ago. They use it as a tea table. And another funny thing is that Ahmed has a pecking order. The policemen reign supreme, not so with the recruits. I bought a small table for everyone to use at Iftar and now it seems only the policemen are allowed to use it. Ahmed makes the recruits eat their meals sitting on the curb. It is hilarious. |
Ahmed loves his job so much. I would feel terrible if I took that from him. He provides a service to the community around the villa and makes it interesting and bearable to the policemen and recruits who sit there all day long under the hot Egyptian sun.
