Cairo Crisis....my experience 3 ....

Saturday 29th Jan

After a nights sleep that was interrupted with intervals of

gun fire and tanks driving past the house,

I woke up anxious to get to my apartment in the

Downtown area to pick up some belongings.

The phones were back on, on a semi-limited basis...

in that occasionally you could make calls

I spoke to a few friends to check that they were okay.

I decided against going into my apartment to pick up some things,

instead my friend Danny who was coming in from Downtown to stay the night at the Davies also (mainly he declares because he was bored by himself, not through any sort of fear)

offered to stop by at my apartment to see if he could pick somethings up for me, although it turned out that none of my room mates were home also having left to stay in friends apartments outside of the centre.

The day continued very much similar to the previous one,

huddled around the tv.

The scariest part was when the looting began.

This was going on in the area in which i was staying,

mainly i presume as it was one of the wealthier areas.

It was the point when i felt most fearful, until then i had been safe in my little cocoon, but here were people going into ordinary homes and taking what they wanted.

At one point we heard shouts on the street outside our door,

we turned off our lights and stayed very still....

later on we realised the action outside our door was the Bowabs

(every house in Egypt has a doorman called a Bowab)

getting together to organise themselves to protect the street.

And i know that this is going to sound very dull,

but at the moment was the most unsafe that i felt during the whole 'ordeal'

and to be honest i wasnt unsafe at all!

The highlight of the day was when a friend of ours called us form the States.

She had been an exchange student here in Cairo and had just left.

It was our first phonecall from outside the country.

We asked her to get on touch with our families

to let them know that we were okay.

It was so lovely to relax and catch up with her,

and also to know that she was thinking of us.

The nights sleep was again serenaded

by the sound of gun shots and tanks.