The Third Time is Harder…

If you think being pregnant is hard, tiring and a toll on your body than you are 100% right. If you think that’s hard then you can easily sympathize with someone who is pregnant with toddlers, ok scratch that. Someone who is pregnant with toddlers and no car. Wait! Double scratch that! Someone who is pregnant with toddlers, no car in a chaotic city of Cairo and no husband around.

O M G..Who is that? You might ask..

Well, it’s me!!

I really try my hardest to be passed as a “strong” person and maybe I am but damn am I exhausted. I don’t even swear, so that in it self tell you something.

I am tired of people asking me, “So, how do you feel?”

Well, how to do you think I feel?? Ergh, just thinking about this question is making mad!!!! Why don’t you ask instead, “Do you need help?” or “can I take your kids for a couple of hours so you can rest?

Why? I ask, why you don’t ask me those questions? Off course, I am going to say, I’m fine because coincidentally you only ask me how I am feeling, when I am feeling fine not when it’s 1 o’clock in the morning and your back is hurting and your VG is burning.

However, if you want to insist on how I am doing than continue on reading this post because right now I am in range and cannot keep my emotions in tact.

I am not fine..thank you very much…my feet has swollen and that never happened with my two pregnancies.

I am tired of bending over for picking up shit from the floor, cleaning a house constantly that has the ability to always look a mess, sleep deprived due to pregnancy insomnia, sharp back pains that keep me awake when I finally want to sleep and screaming at my children to stop the heck they doing, to the point where I feel like the baby might pop right there and then.

On top of things, everything in Egypt is a chore and complicated. If I step out of my house which I do everyday, I come home exhausted as if I ran a marathon. Then, I can’t sit because if I do, I have toddlers jumping all over me and don’t give a damn if I am carrying another human being who happens to be their sister in my belly.

If I sound pessimistic, negative and even crazy, well it’s because I have kept this feeling deeply inside and I can no longer bare it for my own sake.

On one hand, I can’t complain to my family because after all, I choose to get pregnant which is totally not true. I didn’t want to be pregnant but just never did anything to stop it which in their eyes it’s like a sin to have a lot of kids or something like that. But DAMN, CAN A WOMAN JUST COMPLAIN WHEN SHE IS TIRED WITHOUT BEING JUDGED ALL THE TIME!!!!!???????

On my husband side of the family, it’s completely normal to have a big family and in fact most people in Egypt have a big family, so complaining to them feels like I am being a brat and spoiled teenager. In their perspective this aint suffering, it’s normal.

So, this why I sound crazy cuz literally I have no one to talk about my true feelings and it’s really affecting my mood and making me very stressed all the time.

I want to end this post with a little fact about me…

When I was 9 years old, I came home from school and told my mom a joke I had learned that day. My mom was laughing her eyes out and I just thought, “man, I got my mom laughing at my jokes!!” One day at a family gathering, everyone was telling jokes and laughing when all the sudden my mom said, “hey, Andrea has a really good joke but you have to put aside her age and just listen to the joke as if an adult is telling it.” At this point everyone is engaged and eager to hear the joke. When I finished telling the joke that no one laughed at, I can never forget the prolonged  angry look that my dad mad at my mom and I. He screamed and was furious at us in front of everyone and that is something that my dad never did before so I was really scared at that point. His range was all due to the fact that the whole joke was full of cussing words, actually the joke was about these words.

That was a pivotal moment and after that I just never dared to say a swear in my childhood moments. With that said, if I ever swear either on writing or speaking, it’s because I am in complete range!!!!!!!!!

On another note, if you have read so far, well thank you a million for sticking around and rest assure I am not a crazy person. Just a prego woman with extra feelings boiling inside and just having wrote this is feeling much better, even my back pain has subsided.

Goodnight,

Andrea

Expat vs Immigrants

I once had someone ask my thoughts on the difference between expats and immigrants. When I was searching in the internet for blogs of people who had moved to Egypt so that I could get a glimpse of their experiences to prepare me my move, I came across the word “expat” a lot. Once in a blue moon no matter how many years you have lived in an English spoken country, you will learn common words that you have no idea how you have missed it before. Expat was one of those words that I have never heard or learned throughout the 16 years of living in the US.

Growing up in USA I was always revered to as an immigrant or a green card holder. Every time I would hear that word “immigrant” or “green card holder”, I would grouch my teeth, as it always made me feel inferior or marginalized. I faced a lot of discrimination and verbal bullying for simply being an immigrant. So when she asked me what my thoughts on expat vs immigrants were, I immediately went back to that bad feeling I had with the word “immigrant”.

She had told me something interesting which got me thinking. “Expats are always revered to white people and immigrant are for the people of color”. Although to some extend she is right, she had never lived in America and didn’t know that even white people that are not born there are revered to as immigrants. Off course, class status, country and your purpose to moving to the United States can have an affect on how people precede towards your migration. A Saudi Arabian, Angolan, Chinese, German student who is privileged enough to study in the United States is revered to as international student. This student is not here to stay and take away the jobs of hard working Americans, in fact, these students are very good for the American economy because they come here, their government or rich parents pay for the schools and they often spend a lot of money.

Now a white Romanian who has migrated to the United States in the hopes of catching the “American dream” will face a lot of obstacles and discrimination as  a Latino would, holding the same purpose for migration.

However, when moving to Egypt, I faced something very different. Expats are those who have a special passport from either “USA, Canada, UK, German, European Union and some others”. Are also the diplomats, international lawyers, petroleum employees and international companies that hold employees from overseas.

Every other immigrant are either refugees from Middle East, East Asia, Sub-Saharian Africans and what we like to consider as “others” for the very minority groups.

With this I felt very uncomfortable as well, when all the sudden I was given privileges and priorities for simply being an American passport holder. Throughout my life in United States, I had to fight harder, had to over come many obstacles because I didn’t have the same privileges as someone who simply was born in the US. You can imagine how strange it is to all the sudden have the roles switched on me.

I like to tell people that I am a Cape Verdean American Muslim revert, living in Egypt who’s lives very much like an Egyptian woman. In other words, I am a little bit of both, not quite American and not entirely Egyptian. You can expect this to be very difficult for me, as I don’t hold the same privileges that any other Americans or expats would, living in fancy places and putting their children in expensive international schools nor do I share some of the same values or perspective in life as many Egyptian woman do.

So, there you have it, these are some of my thoughts on “expats vs. immigrants”. What are your thoughts on this subject? Do you feel the same or different? What are your experiences and feelings with theses two words? I would love to hear your thoughts.