good talk

Previously I've been all over Egypt, to Aswan, Alexandria, the Suez Canal but Cairo and Luxor are the best at least for a layman, I'm certainly no archeologist. I flew to Kuwait and had to wait an hour to get a visa at the airport, usually you get it instantly. They made a guy who worked at the American Embassy wait 2 hours. Kuwait's real good, I went up their tower in Kuwait City (which is most of Kuwait for practical purposes, the rest is just oil fields), there's a lot of neat stuff to see. I made a friend at the airport, the manager of one of those exchange booths, the one that has all that foreign currency layed out. I talked to this guy coming and leaving 3 days later. In the Gulf States there's a sevant underclass to do most of the work. They're not citizens, not paid too much, have few rights and can never share in the oil largess that the Arab citizens do. This guy's family had come from Iran 50 years before but can never be citizens of Kuwait, in fact his brother was jailed the year before for a few months, the Gulf State Citizens roust these people every so often to keep them in line. A lot of the servant class are Filipinos of either sex and guys from India and they make more in the Gulf States than they could in their own country. This manager, wouldn't know how to spell his name, was "27" and really a sharp guy, he manually counted a big stack of bills a lot faster than I've ever seen in Vegas. He gave me a bill from the Iraqui Occupation of Kuwait with Saddam's picture on it, which they normally sell, and an Iranian bill with the Ayatollah Khomeini's picture on it, it was very nice. Later when I was in Qatar a young fellow, "24," from Nepal told me that he made $320 a month working 60 hours a week as a plumber, a lot of that heavy labor, say lifting a toilet, and this was better than he could do in Nepal. My last day in Kuwait I was still sick as a dog and I decided that instead of going in a hospital that I should go to a pharmacy as I had read that in Cairo you could buy medication without a prescription and I hoped this was true of Kuwait. There was a lady pharmacist with her family in there and I told her that I'd been coughing incessantly and she reached behind her and pulled out a small box of antibiotics and then a box of anti-inflammatory, both Swiss pharmaceuticals and twice a day and a bottle of local cough syrup every 4 hours. She and her family were Coptics, the Coptics began when Saint Luke came to Egypt, a sect like Greek or Russian Orthodox, they don't give allegiance to Rome. The Coptic women stand out in a Moslem world by often or usually wearing a cross around their neck. This lady knew that my Easter was the next day and wished me "Happy Easter." All the Coptics that I've ever met are personable, smart, save you money and in this instance save your health, I think they're very good people. From the time that I entered the pharmacy until the time I left was 10 minutes, the medication costing 32 dollars total, I took it as the Coptic lady told me to and two and a half days later I was cured.