Egyptian Reverse Culture Shock

I remember years back once when it was like 5:00 a.m. in the morning after a long night of partying and drinking whilst listening to the newest tunes under a talented mixoligists at the Atlas Hotel, our group headed out to check out the new nearby Mcdonalds for an early breaky.

Even though they still lack the basic breakfast menu here in Egypt like Egg Mcmuffins and Pancakes and what not that you can find in the West, Egypt has still come a long way indeed since the early 80's.

Back then there was only one channel on tv, things were just a little backwards to say the least.

I explicitly remeber coming to live in Egypt for the first time -- for some strange reason -- way back 1982 from Washington D.C.

Being accustomed to good ol American Junk food and what not, it was so depressing moving to Egypt, I remeber full well. You couldn't even buy a pizza here except at a place called La Cassetta, and it was really expensive. My folks kept on telling me that it was the equivelant of two weeks pay of a government employee with 5 kids. Just so that I would appreciate them taking me thereto eat every blue moon or so.

You also couldn't grow your hair past your ears back then if you were a guy, even though Michael jacksons' thriller topped the charts back then. The population was 30 million and people thought that was an astronomical figure lol, compared to todays 70+ million. That means the population has more than doubled in the past two decades, wow.

There was lots of traffic back then too but not as bad as today, now way and I remeber that Ahmad Adawiya song "zahma ya Donia zahma," he was the equivelant of todays Shaaban Abdel Rahim I guess you could say.

Mcdonalds didn't come to Egypt till the mid 90's, I guess it hasd something to do whith when saddam invaded kuwait and all the Gulf Arabs were like 'What - there is no God damn Mcdonalds here!' Though I must admit there was KFC & Wimpy back then long before I even arrived in Egypt.

So in essance you see Egypt has come a long way but in all reality I think it has a long way to go yet.

Having reverse culture shock is quite common every time I leave egypt for a couple of years and return. So I have learned to accept the fact that Egypt will never really be anything like the West and I should stop comparing.

For what it's worth, good job egypt yet you still have a long way to go.