Car mafia

For those who don't know, we live in a big building on a very fast-moving, busy street in Cairo that has very little parking. Certainly not enough for all the cars that belong to the people in the building. The solution: Car mafia!

The car mafia that lives in our building takes care of all our parking. We simply drive up to the building, double park the car, and go on up to our apartment. The car mafia -- a multiple man team whose main players are two guys called Ayman and Ramadan -- finds a place on the street for our car and parks it. Ramadan has a spare set of keys, and Ayman does services like cleaning the car for a fee. They are available basically 24 hours a day, and we pay them a monthly fee for the service that would seem insanely cheap in the U.S.

For tips, they will also carry up your groceries for you or do various other services.

You would think this is a great service, but it is actually incredibly annoying. There is no option, for example, to NOT use them. And recently it seems to have taken another turn, toward serious corruption.

First of all, we have noticed that whenever they seem to need extra money, they clean the car's inside without asking us first and then as for a fee for this service. Recently they have been "cleaning" our car multiple times a week and demanding we pay. And their monthly fees have gone up well over 100 percent since we moved in less than two years ago.

We have also noticed that we have gotten an extraordinary number of flat, punctured tires on our car that need to be replaced. The car mafia, actually Ayman in particular, is constantly coming up to our apartment to inform us of a flat tire, which he will then volunteer to replace for us for a fee. This has happened three times in the past three months. Somehow the flat tires always seem to happen when the car is parked downstairs, and always when Ayman is on duty to conveniently knock on our door and offer to fix it. The tire has never gone flat when we are out and about. And miraculously, Mike has never had a flat tire at work.

Additionally, the car simply wouldn't start one morning when Ayman was on duty and we had to be somewhere very early. We opened the hood but couldn't see any problem. Ayman called his friend the mechanic who managed to miraculously fix the car while we were out, and we could never get a clear answer as to what the problem was. And our car is a Toyota that is less than two years old.

Mike has been convinced for some time that Ayman was scamming us -- sabotaging our car and then offering to fix it for a fee plus hefty tips. But I was not entirely convinced. Now, I am convinced. Today, we had our third flat tire. Ayman came upstairs less than 30 minutes after we came home and rang the doorbell. We didn't answer it because Maya was sleeping. Later, when we went out for a walk, Ayman came and followed us and showed us that our tire was flat. Then he showed us a huge pin that was in the tire (that we had supposedly driven over), and pulled it out of the car. Mike was mad, but he just told Ayman we didn't want to deal with it then, and we left on our walk. We specifically did NOT ask Ayman to fix it, as we had previously decided that e ould not give him business for car problems any more.

When we came home, Ayman had already replaced our tire with the spare from the trunk, as well as pounded out a dent in the car, and was hitting us up for money for these "services", plus asking for additional money for "cleaning" the car. None of which are services that we had asked him to do. Grrrrr. What an annoying way to start a weekend!

Maya at the monasteries

While I was working the weekend shift today, Maya and Mike and Mike's parents went off on a tour of the Coptic monasteries of Wadi Natroun. They had a blast and Maya seems to have enjoyed having lots of open space to explore.

'Grilled' cheese sandwich

Question: What happens when you promise your 2-year-old that grandma will make her a 'grilled' cheese sandwich for lunch after a trip to the park, but then grandma heads to the kitchen instead of outside on the balcony to the grill?

Answer: Temper tantrum!

The other day at the park, it was time for lunch. Maya had some requests. Request number one was McDonald's (which conveniently has a branch visible from the far reaches of the park playground). Request number two was pizza. Both were vetoed and Maya was promised a grilled cheese sandwich made by her Grandma Laura, who is visiting. That was enough to lure her from the park.

When we got home, Maya made a beeline for the sliding glass door to the balcony while Grandma Laura headed for the kitchen (you know, where the oven is). Maya demanded that the sliding glass door be opened so she could go out to the grill (you know, where naturally a 'grilled' cheese sandwich should be made).

When she realized her grilled cheese sandwich was not going to be made over open flames on the grill, she was NOT a happy camper. I guess I can understand her. It WOULD be pretty exciting to see a cheese sandwich made on a fiery grill, the flames lapping at the edges and all. We had to take Maya into the kitchen and gently explain to her that while it was called a 'grilled' cheese sandwich, it is actually made in the oven. Poor baby!

Allergy Rerun...

I am a little worried that we were overly optimistic in saying that Maya has grown all her allergies from babyhood. As a baby and young toddler, Maya had allergies to wheat, all berries and guava. But by about 18 months, and definitely by age 2, she had outgrown every single one of those allergies.

We delayed introducing some other common allergens, like peanuts, shellfish and tree nuts. But then one day Maya got ahold of a peanut butter granola bar and started sucking on it. No reaction. So we figured we were in the clear for nuts, and we started letting her have foods that have trace amounts of peanuts in them. Again, no problem. We are still avoiding shellfish until age 3...

Anyway, today Maya tried a piece of walnut. I figured it would be OK as she has had other similar stuff, like sesame seeds and pine nuts, with no reaction. She chewed the walnut a little, but didn't like it and spit it out. Then she went down for her nap. When I went in to her room to get her after she woke up, I was greeted with a 2-year-old with two black eyes. I felt her belly and felt the telltale bumpy skin. These were the exact same reactions she had to berries and wheat early on. But the strange thing is that the reaction to walnuts faded quickly. It was almost completely gone within several hours. Her previous reactions had stayed for up to a week. So I am not sure how to interpret it, whether it is a real allergic reaction or not. I guess we will ask Maya's doctor when we go home to the U.S. for home leave, but that is not until sometime this summer. Until then, well, let's just say we'll be avoiding walnuts...

Baking cookies

Here are more pictures, this time of cooking cookies (and one more from fagnoon because I couldn't resist).

Fagnoon again

We took Maya and her grandparents to Fagnoon out by the pyramids again to do some painting. This time, we didn't get lost, and we discovered that Fagnoon is really only about 20 minutes from our house (not three hours!). Maya had a blast!

Maya at Daddy's office

Here's a cute picture of Maya taken by one of Mike's colleagues.