Driving to a beach in Sinai last weekend, I ran the usual gamut of road-blocks and nosy police officials. I also saw something (to me, at least) new. At a gas station and road stop near the Suez Canal, I went in to use the restrooms. But I was shooed away from the WC inside–where Egyptians were going–and directed next door, where a large, gleaming building was labelled, in large gold letters, “Tourist toilets” (“Hamamaat El-Siaaha”). These toilets cost 1 pound (the Egyptian toilets cost 50 piastres) and were spotless, furbished with large gilded mirros, faux-jewelled hangers and plentiful toilet paper. Next to the signs for “women” and “men” there were also two technicolor portraits of Western movie stars, mounted in oval frames. I didn’t recognize the male actor, but the patroness of the women’s tourist bathrooms was none other than Charlize Theron.
Anyway, I’m all for clean new bathrooms but there is something deeply disturbing about the level of enforced segregation between Egyptians and foreigners that seems to be spreading across the tourism industry. An argument can be made for making foreigners pay a higher fee at the Egyptian museum or at the pyramids. But what argument can be made for having a two-tiered system in which foreigners and Egyptians are actually banned from using each other’s facilities?
The tourist loo sounds ridiculous (I wish I could have seen the faux jewelled hangers). I imagine the argument made by the tourism promoters would be that Egypt needs some shiny new facilities to keep the rich tourists coming, and so it’s worth installing some premium facilities for those willing to pay, but premium facilities should be open to anyone willing to pay the princely LE 1.
There are de facto versions of this segregation also in the rental market, with some landlords refusing to rent to anyone but a khawaga even if the Egyptian is willing to pay the higher rent. And of course the separate pay rates for local vs foreign instructors at AUC, and local vs foreign hires at some news organisations. Even if these differentials could be justified in terms of different qualifications or quota needs or demand and supply, the fact remains that the lines tend to be drawn in terms of nationality, not skills.
It’s a commom policy of Arab regimes. They do not want the Arab people to feel like they deserve a civilized treatmnet like the western folks. It also leaves the door open to corruption and nepotism. Sure, you can use tourst facilities if you know someone like, say Jamal Mubarak or Driss Jettou or maybe Jacques Chirac…It smacks of dictatorship combined with mediocrity
I think it also enforces the idea that the west is different from us. They are Kouffar and enjoy material things. We on the other side can live in poverty…See it’s a way to stop people from getting forward and thinking rationnally.
This should not be allowed. It’s discrimination. The people should say NO. Enough is Enough!
That’s disgusting. Either decent facilities (etc) for all or whatever passes as marginally acceptable. When I was working in Morocco, I sometimes got the same treatment in regards to promptness of service and I made it a point to object, when I could to such preferential treatment – I find that kind of thing highly disturbing an if more tourists and journalists would refuse to go along with this internalized neo-colonial game, maybe, just maybe, there would be a change. To refer back to the title- those lunch counters didn’t integrate themselves.
I highly recommend Bob Vitalis’ “America’s Kingdom” for a great read that draws a straight line from the Jim Crow system to these kind of nationality-based divisions in Saudi Arabia.
http://www.amazon.com/Americas-Kingdom-Mythmaking-Frontier-Stanford/dp/0804754462/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/002-2533287-1927212?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1182568904&sr=8-1
Well-researched (he got to rifle through all of Abdullah Tariki’s papers) and convincingly argued.
Zazou and anyone else, what would you do in this situation, out of curiosity? Would it help to speak up, or are most tourists simply not going to notice the separate facilities as they are shepherded in and out of them by tour group guides – or even if they did notice, would they care?
Similarly with pay differentials for foreigners and Egyptian nationals, most of the foreigners aren’t going to work here for less than x pay, because they can get the same or more elsewhere, and once they are in an institution which can’t afford to pay everybody the khawaga-rate, or will pay egyptians less because the lower rate is still one at which plenty of qualified Egyptians are willing to work, they have little incentive to protest against the two-tier system, and sometimes it’s really just not in their hands (e.g. the quota system at AUC). Should they boycott such institutions?
Good questions, SP. In this case, I would do one of two things- speak up and point out what I consider to be the problems with the situation (and if I am with others, encourage hem to do the same)- and/or if the Egyptian facilities aren’t too god-awful and I can get past the guardians, use them instead. Unless they are the traditional faciilities, they can’t be much worse then what I have encountered driving around the US over the years.
The pay differentials is another issue. I don’t know what I would do once I learned this was the case. Boycotting might not work because there would always be someone else to take the job, but would trying to change the system from within be even possible?
On a slightly related note, I had a very interesting conversation once with a woman on a train in Morocco about the pottery of Sale. We were talking about bargaining practices in the souk and I explained as an American a) I wasn’t used to bargaining, and b) some prices were already so low that I found it hard in good conscience to bargain period. While she understood the reticence, she encouraged me to think in terms of the local economy and used the pottery as an example. According to her, the price of the superior pottery of Sale had risen enormously,putting it out of reach of the average and slightly above average Moroccan. In addition, because tourists loved the pottery but were indiscriminant about what they purchased, the quality was suffering. Sellers would put out seconds and even more inferior pieces, knowing they would sell. And when a Moroccan would object to the price or the quality, the reply would be, who cares, a tourist will always be around to buy and to buy at the asking price.
The women was very concerned about Moroccans not being able to afford their own cultural products and also about teh debasement of the product.
Her point was, that as long as I was living there, I should respect the local eonomy and try to function within its perameters. I got better at the small stuff- the big stuff I left to my husband, but I have never forgotten what she had to say.
A little off-topic: the prices at the potters’ village near Sale have gone up a lot, but I think the quality has improved (and it’s better than the overpriced stuff at the Oudayas).
Also from my last summer in Morocco (will be back there in mid-July, at last!) I noticed that for a while it was tough to find ordinary local olive oil. The reason: Spain had a bad crop so the Spanish oil companies were offering Moroccan growers super high prices compared to local companies. The result may have been good for growers (i.e. mostly, I would assume, large landowners) but it was bad for the quality of life of your average Moroccan used to superlative quality local produce. There’s an element to these economic dynamics between “locals” and “foreigners” that transcends the personal, especially in a world of globalized trade practices.
Glas to hear the pottery has gotten better! The slip work was getting really sloppy. How about the metal work? The last time I was really there (which was a while ago), the enamel work was not clean and the coiled metal patterns were losing their definition. I hear teh embroidery has really come back because of the training programs.
Zazou wrote:
“those lunch counters didn’t integrate themselves.”
Amen.
The most eloquent way to express one’s opinion of these toilets is to, um, use them.
I’m curious now – were they actually barring khawagas from the regular loo, or just shepherding them to the more expensive option? I wonder if they would actually stop a brown person from using the tourist loo.
In response to the last question: they were definitely barring tourists from using the regular toilets (I don’t know what kind of scene you would have had to create to get into them). And no one but tourists was using the tourist ones.
to you it’s jim crow tourism, to us it’s the same old paternalism
either way, it’s wrong and needs to go the way of the Whites Only signs.