Dispatch From The Desert #2

"The love of money is the root of all evil."

~The Apostle Paul

The flower to the right is one of the rarer, and one of the most beloved, in all of Egypt. (For those of you who are curious, it was made with two 100 EGP--Egyptian pounds--bills, one 20 EGP bill, and one 5 EGP bill--about $40 US.) And, just as Paul warned (and there's very little Paul said which I find of value), the love of it leads to evil. Or at least to harm. Why do I say that? Because it's harming Egypt.

There are, essentially, four social classes in Egypt. First, there are the fellahin--the peasants. They don't get the credit they actually deserve. The fellahin work the fields, and they are the ones who produce the crops, including cotton, which are sold all over the Middle East, and, in the case of cotton, all over the world. (Ever been shopping for super expensive sheets? Chances are they will be made from Egyptian cotton--it's of much higher quality than any other cotton produced elsewhere in the world.) So, the peasants do the agricultural work which is so vital to the Egyptian economy.

The next class is, for lack of a better word, the service class. That includes everyone from the people who work in hotels and restaurants to the domestic staff who work in homes and the drivers who drive nearly all private vehicles in the country. This is probably the largest group of workers, and it is, also, the backbone of the Egyptian economy. The country would literally grind to a halt, and very quickly, if the service class disappeared, as they run the tourism industry.

Next comes the middle class. As in the United States, there are lower, middle, and upper divisions to this class. The lower middle class is made of people who have jobs which pay more than those in the service class, usually jobs in offices, or minor government jobs, but they don't make too much. The solidly middle class, and the upper middle class, are people who are mainly professionals. This includes anything from people who own their own businesses to lawyers, doctors, and higher government employees.

Finally, there's the super rich. No one ever sees them--they spend their time at their resort homes when they are in Egypt, and at their homes abroad. When you're rich here, you're super rich.

The problem with money is that those who don't have it live hand to mouth, and those in the middle class, which continues to grow, don't know what to do with it. They claim they don't want to be like Westerners, but everything about them screams otherwise--their clothing, the food they eat, and the places they go when they go out to shop or for dinner. The greatest problem is that it is making them forget their values, and making them stuck up. They treat everyone, including me, with disdain. They think because they make $10-12K a year, they have arrived. I find it both laughable and sad. I have been treated so poorly by people who believe they have money that I don't know whether to laugh at them or spit (a very insulting gesture here). One of their hallmarks is flaunting their wealth. Since I dress very casually while here, and don't wear makeup unless it is absolutely necessary, they look down on me. They don't realize that I have more than they will ever have, because I don't dress ostentatiously, or flaunt what I am privileged to have. They feel very good because they have a car, and a nice large flat (apartment) or a small villa (single family home), and because they can afford to buy apples imported from the US. If I told them my husband and I own a home bigger than their flat, and which is worth, even in this depressed market, about $300K, that we each have our own vehicle (a big truck for me, a slightly smaller one for him), and that my husband makes their yearly salary many times over, they might treat me differently. My concern isn't really me, however. What I despise is the way they treat the people who really are below them on the financial totem pole. I can handle ugly looks and upturned noses, mainly because I know what they do not--my personal wealth dwarfs their own, even if I don't feel compelled to show off. But I hate, really hate, the way they treat those they believe to be their financial and social inferiors. They speak unkindly, yell, throw orders at people they don't know and expect them to be followed. Find an ugly behavior, and I've probably seen it modeled by someone of the "moneyed" middle class here. It's tremendously sad. Especially since the people of Egypt are one of its greatest assets.

The other problem, as I see it, is that they are so happy to have money, they spend it all flaunting it. They don't save. They don't invest. They don't even buy flats or villas, preferring to rent. They seem to think that if there is money in the wallet today, there will be money tomorrow. Despite their ugly attitude, I hope they never find out differently.