Wednesday, December 19, 2007

El Toktok

I went to visit my uncle and aunt today, one of my cousins was there too so I get to check a significant percentage of family visits that I have to do off the list (can you tell how small my family is?).
My aunt asks me if there is anything that I saw in my visit that was new to me (I'd been away for about 2 years) and the first thing that comes to mind is "El Toktok!".
If you're wondering what el toktok is, wonder no more, this is what we're talking about, in all its three wheeled flippable glory.

Apparently, Cairo currently has way more cars than it was designed for. Actually that's a misstatement, Cairo was not designed. The best way I can think of as to how its streets came to be is that people built their homes wherever they pleased and the remaining space (or lack thereof) was deemed streets.
Anyway, back on topic, for lack of space (and money), el toktok sprung as an alternative way of transportation (sometimes to the "afterlife").
But this being Egypt, there had to be an interesting twist.

Reportedly, the guy importing toktoks is well connected (he had to be) and made a lot of money on importing and selling them, which is fine. A lot of the "offline" (read not connected) poor folks saw it as a worthwhile investment and started saving up and taking loans to buy and operate toktoks and make a living.
Looks like a win-win so far.
But there is no such thing around here, not that I've seen.
Now the powers that be are disccussing banning el toktok, rumour has it. If/when the toktok is banned, hundreds and maybe thousands of people will have tin boxes for their life investments that they can neither use to make a living nor even sell to recoup their losses.

But life will go on fe om el donya...

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hehe..very funny..Welcome back to blogging and Egypt..The issue is that when I was in Egypt I used to see the TokTok everyday without problems. but it seems that you are shocked with a big number of "downgrades" happened to Cairo in the last 2 years..but it was very smooth to whom living there..they didn't even notice the difference..

Have a nice visit..

Anonymous said...

Holy crap man, I didn't know they have that thing in Egypt, the traffic is bad enough there. Imagine video shots of Cairo on the news now must look like New Delhi or something.

Sara said...

Can you tell me how they import those tok toks and from which country? what about the importation prices too??? Thanks !