Update - posted 6 June

30 May
Buying Land – The Saga Continues – Reda met briefly with the person contracted by the owner of the land to sell it on his behalf, and he wasn't even interested in our initial offer of 350,000 EGP. Reda, thanks to Ahmed Ismael, made a top offer of 400,000 EGP – so we shall just have to wait and see if that is accepted or not. I have seen the land and it certainly is in a prime location, I'm just not sure if I want us to spend a whole stack of money on it, as to really obtain its potential we need to have some money to use to build on it, then at least if we have – for example – two shops and flats there we will have rental income from it. We could of course just rent it out for parking or storage, but the income that would generate would be peanuts. The main purpose of buying the land of course is investment for the future, to maybe sell it in 15 or 20 years – in the same way as the person selling it now – he bought it 15 years ago for only 5,500 EGP – but we believe that there is still some potential there for more growth.
31 May
Potatoes / Kingfishers – We went this morning to the area where the potatoes are being pre-stored and partly 'dried' prior to being sorted, the bad potatoes and small potatoes removed and sold separately, and the good potatoes bagged up and moved to the 'fridge' for storage over the next 3 months. I know it sounds boring, but really it was quite interesting to watch and it was lovely to be out in the Egyptian countryside, under the shadow of the trees with a cool(ish) breeze blowing. We were right by the river too, and again I heard the noise of a bird which we hear a lot during the nighttime here, and I finally got to see them – they are kingfishers. They really are very beautiful birds, with gorgeous blue plumage and it was lovely to watch them 'in their natural habitat'. Also saw some white herons and there were a few small lizards about, all of which made the morning that bit more interesting.
On a more boring note, today we also painted the side of our flat – as now that the hotter weather is coming we do find that the side wall which catches the sun heats up during the day and then releases its heat during the evening/nighttime – right into our bedroom and the 2nd bedroom. Obviously this is the last thing we want! So earlier this year we asked my father-in-law to get the side wall plastered, which has helped some, but today we finished the job and had it painted white. In fact they are just finishing off the job now while I type this up. The following day I felt the inside walls and they were beautifully cool – a job well done!
2 June
Cairo Trip – Residency – We went to Cairo today, but not as tourists to enjoy ourselves (sadly). We went to the Government offices to input my request for Egyptian residency. We set off early morning, taking a 'micro-bus' to Tanta, and then another micro-bus from Tanta to Cairo. When we reached the outskirts of Cairo, the traffic was unbelievably busy, almost at standstill – the driver estimated it would probably take a further hour to reach the bus station, and from there we would need to take the underground or a taxi to get to central Cairo where the Government office is; to we alighted at that point by a metro station (the first on that line) which takes you right into central Cairo to the place we needed to be. That was an experience (a good one). We made good time and arrived outside the offices at around 10:30 am. Clearly it was going to be another hot day, as already the temperature was around 320 C, so in a way it was good to go into the offices which were cooler as there were like hundreds of fans all over the place…….. All went fine at first, the form was filled in and the chap behind the desk told us which documents he wanted us to make photocopies of etc etc. Then when he started to go through everything he made an issue of our family name of El Khenizy, which he said was not Egyptian as he had never come across it before! Frankly I could not see the issue anyway as he had both my husband's birth certificate and his Father's birth certificate, so even if the family name were not Egyptian what was the issue as clearly both my husband and his Father have been born in Egypt???!! As far as him never coming across the name before, well OK the name is probably most prominent here in the Delta and not in Cairo, and as far as we know no-one before my husband has married a non-Egyptian, so therefore no-one from the family would have been to that particular office to apply for residency for his wife. Not that that logic worked with this 'jobs worth'. Anyway, he told Reda to go to a Police station where they could print a birth certificate from the computer. Off poor Reda traipsed, leaving me in the cool office rather than having to traipse about with him in the heat. Well of course when he returned he had no birth certificate because – of course – his Grandfather was not on the computer system. I was not surprised as after all, why would they put someone born so long ago, who died quite some time ago, on the computer system? Anyway, after some argy bargy with this man in the office they agreed to process the application as much as possible, but 'hold' it for 7 days, for Reda to obtain his Grandfather's birth certificate and return with it to them within the 7 days. They also advised that if there was any difficulty in obtaining the birth certificate, they would accept the birth certificates of his Father's 2 eldest siblings. What a fiasco. But that's Egypt for you. It certainly does have its own unique way of handling red tape. Anyway, after that Reda then had to go to another part of the office to pay for the application, whereupon he was given 2 receipts, he then had to take these 2 receipts to another part of the office to obtain some official 'stamps' which he could then bring back to the man handling the application to stick onto the application! Finally, we were finished for the day, it was now around 1:30 pm, so we decided to go and get some lunch. There are quite a few 'fast food' outlets in Central Cairo, and as Reda absolutely adores KFC then that was where we went. Yes, KFC in Egypt. In fact, its all over in the major towns and cities of Egypt. Of course by Egyptian 'standards' it is rather costly – their meal deals are not the same as in the UK but they are similar – for example a £10.99 meal deal in the UK has an equivalent here which costs 98 Egyptian pounds – so pretty expensive! I had a wrap with fries, Reda had 2 pieces of chicken with fries, and we each had a coke and it cost us 45 Egyptian pounds. Of course if you look at it in English money, then it was reasonable, as that comes to about £4.30, but of course we are not on holiday now so we can't really go spending our money as if we were, but it was a nice treat and a bit of a 'one-off'. That said, food is more expensive here than it used to be but then the price of food has risen around the world substantially, and it was perhaps naïve of us to not realize that it would have gone up in Egypt too. Of course most things don’t cost as much as in the UK, but they are expensive given that many poorer people have to live on maybe just 400 EGP per month. That's one reason why most people in the villages raise their own chickens, as a bought chicken can cost around 30 pounds. A kilo of tomatoes costs around 2-3 pounds depending on the season and so on. So as I say in English money it's cheap (as the exchange rate is around 10 EGP to one English pound) but in comparison to the average wage, its quite pricey. That said, for us it's not too much of an issue. I certainly haven't budgeted for us to live on UK 'wages' as we would get through the money we brought with us far too quickly and of course I want it to last us, but at the same time we have more than simply/only 400 EGP to live on each month too, and hopefully if we manage to make some good investments we can continue to live life at a good level. God willing. And of course we don't have to worry about having a mortgage to pay here, or running a car, or car insurance and all the other related costs that we had in the UK which we don't have here – so certainly one can live on a lot less money here than in the UK and still enjoy life. Well I must stop blabbing on about the cost of living mustn't I????!!!! After we had our KFC, we took a leisurely walk to the metro and caught the underground to the main railway station, so that we could catch the train back to Tanta. We were very lucky with the timing of it, as we were able to catch a train after waiting only 10 minutes, and we got a 2nd class air-conditioned for only 10 pounds each, which I thought was quite a good deal. We were both very, very thirsty and the drinks on board were a tad pricey (e.g. a coke was five pounds, and bear in mind they make the coke sold in Egypt in Egypt, its not imported) but hey that's life. When we got to Tanta it’s a long way to the bus station, so we took a stroll around the shops first and then got a taxi, and we were again lucky as we got on a microbus and departed within 5 minutes of our arrival. It was nice to be out, but it was also nice to get home and relax.
3/4 June
Birth Certificates etc – I am pleased to say that after a bit of to-ing and fro-ing, Reda was able to get 2 birth certificates for his Father's eldest brothers, and the following day he went to Cairo and delivered them to the office. These will now be kept on file until the 2 years is up, whereupon Reda has to go back to Cairo to complete the residency application for me. He was told in the office in Tanta that he has to go to Tanta every 6 months to sign a document to confirm that we are still together, but in the office in Cairo they told him that he does not need to do that. Frankly I don't trust any of them, so I think we had better do some of our own research to find out what needs to be done, as if we don't sign anything every 6 months I don't want us to find in 2 years time that my application is turned down because of this. That would be typical. Or am I being a cynic?
5 June
Potatoes – One of my uncle's investors has pulled out, and he is short of cash to pay the potato farmers, so it would seem that we are to invest in buying a further 75 tonnes of potatoes after all. Lets hope the market goes up!! Inshallah. I have a hum dinger of a summer cold, but hey, at least its not raining! No news on the buying land front. We're not sure if he is playing hard to get or simply not interested in our offer. We are going to wait a bit longer and see, as we don't want him to think that we are especially keen, as he is bound to put the price up. Part of me thinks that maybe we should wait until the Autumn, as if there does end up being a world wide recession then if anything land prices should fall in the short-term, even here. We're going to play it by ear for now . . . . . . .