Hello everyone and welcome back to my weekly post on my blog, where we talk about Art and Culture. My last blog was about my trip to Egypt and the impact of the British Museum. I want to continue with the Egypt topic. But today instead of talking about their history, I want to talk about their present. As a tourist in Egypt, I felt weird, when you are exploring the pyramids, the Luxor Temple or the wonderful Red Sea, you can’t do anything but be amazed. But when you go walking around on the cities, when you look through the window of your privilege uber, the view is completely different.
Walking through the streets of Cairo and through the Luxor Harbour is a cocktail of emotions. Kids playing without shoes on the road, sleeping on the street with their mothers, just man walking on the streets, not a single woman enjoying their time… I don’t really know if this is a biased opinion from my white privilege point of view, but the feeling was bittersweet, I was trying to enjoy the cities, and get on the feet of the locals, but I couldn’t understand why they didn’t bother. And also, the fact that guides, and people on the internet tell us (the tourists) to bargain, that also makes me fill some type of way, because why are we trying to bargain cents, that for us is nothing, and maybe for them make a difference? I don’t know, it’s a weird experience.
I think whenever we are visiting a different country, we should go with an open mind and with 0 prejudgements, ready to learn and to listen and respect the locals.