Maadi Hash and a fiery On On – Friday 22 December 2006

Lots of people go away for Christmas, lots of the expats go back to their normal world or go meet their family in other exotic locations. For those left behind there is the Hash. Usually the Hash during Christmas week doesn’t have many people so they hold it in Maadi, just walking round the streets, then they do the circle at the Ace club. This year Mary Fran was kind enough to offer her house for the On On.

So the Hash started late because it was in Maadi – everyone met at the Ace Club at 3pm and we set off on the walk. There was no trail to follow – it was more follow the leader. They didn’t ‘set’ the trail because one year the front runners ended up in gaol! They had dropped the flour trail and set the checks (a circle with a cross in it) early on Friday morning when all the shops were shut. When the shops opened, they though the crazy foreigners were either making religious symbols or making signs to stop people going into their shops! They were picked up by the cops and held until someone else arrived that could explain what was going on. Ever since this little adventure, they haven’t dropped a trail in the streets of Maadi.

So we all set off – the first thing we have to do is cross a road. In Downtown this would have been impossible – about 50 crazy foreigners straggled along 200 meters. In Maadi it was a little easier… Dougal, this hilarious Scotsman, just stood in the middle of the road with his hand up stopping the traffic. Then this guy beeped at us and an American women said, well yelled I guess, ‘do you honestly think that’s going to help speed things along’. He probably didn’t understand the words but I think he got the point.

As we walked around another guy would blow a bugle from time to time to keep us on the right track. About half way through we stopped at a house of a hash couple and had some mulled wine and a chat. Then we continued on back to the Ace club. We didn’t walk very far or very fast but this little wander took about an hour and half. We got back to the Ace Club about 4:30pm for the circle. There were loads of raffle prizes again - I won a point setter plant – that’s two raffle prizes now :).

During the week I’d emailed Wesley (Hash GM guy) to ask for the words to the songs that they sing in the circle. I was sick of not knowing what we were suppose to be saying. Some how this turned into me making the songs of another international Hash group into a draft song book for the Cairo Hashers and leading them in a new song.

I went through the songs that were on the other website, pulled out the completely vulgar ones and threw the rest into a word doc as a song book template. This done I created a short list choosing 3 of the songs as potential options then let Wesley chose which one we’d start with.

The song we tried was to the tune of Yesterday, the Beatles song:

Yesterday,
All my muscles seemed to feel OK,
Now my body doesn't work today,
Oh I went hashing yesterday.
Muscles ache,
They'd be better if I'd stayed in bed,
Now it feels as if they're made of lead, Wish I had stayed at home instead.
Why, I, ran that hash,
Was so rash,
But what the heck?
Now, it's, clear, I'm a mere,
Physical wreck.
Bloodshot eyes…


It wasn’t a roaring success – mostly coz no one could actually sing in tune, in time or at remotely the same speed. Might have worked better had the person leading had any vocal ability whatsoever – given it was me leading then it was a little screwed from the start.

People were fairly responsive though… everyone joined in so that’s something. I think next time I’ll try and make a new song up from scratch. I think it has to be short, fast and simple then it can be ‘said’ rather than ‘sung’.

All this circle business done we stood around for about 20 minutes waiting for the time to tick then headed over to Mary Fran’s. She has a pretty swish house – way too nice to let loose this bunch of dodgy characters! It was a £30LE entrance fee to cover the cost of the food. There was LOADS of food – turkey, lamb, spring rolls, vegetable platter with dips etc. I decided that it wasn’t fair that Mary Fran had to ask people for money given it was her house and as usual with these sorts of things if you don’t ask then people ‘forget’ to pay, It shouldn’t be that Mary Fran end up out of pocket. Given this (plus my previous door bitch experience) I decided to volunteer for the job.

So we kept the front door closed and each time people rang the bell I’d open, say welcome to the Cairo Hash on-on £30LE please. Most people were really cool about it, but some people probably thought I was a bit rude. But I decided bugger it, if someone wasn’t at the door with their hand out Mary Fran would have ended up footing the bill.

Anyways, as party’s go it was pretty good. Lots of people came, we stood around chatting, laughing and drinking – the standard party atmosphere. I had arranged for Essam (Driver Man) to pick me up at 930pm… at 9pm I decided I wasn’t ready so sms’d to say 10:30-11pm… at almost 11pm I decided he’d waited long enough and asked for directions on how to get back to the Ace club (where he was picking me up). One of the guys said he’d walk me back so I didn’t get lost in the dark. I totally would have – the streets all look the bloody same in Maadi :)

So that was the on-on over. Then Saturday morning I find out that after everyone had left Mary Fran was about to go to bed and decided to do one last check over of the lounge and her cabinet was ON FIRE!!

Apparently she had a tea light candle burning and it got too close to some other stuff next thing woosh and the cabinet needs re-finishing and the picture frame above is all sooty. It was just bloody lucky that she decided to do one last round of tidy up before bed – especially as she was pretty hammered and could easily have just fallen into bed and thought she’d deal with it tomorrow. Very lucky.