A Birthday Surprise in Egypt

In my family birthdays were always a Big Deal.  My mother tried hard to make each of our birthdays special and we always looked forward to our special day with excitement.  As this has been ingrained in me, I try to make my husband's birthday as special as I can too.  Being in Egypt has made this a challenge!

There is a brand of ice cream my husband loves that is sold almost exclusively in Texas— Blue Bell ice cream.  Last year I tried to find Blue Bell to have for my husband as a birthday surprise.  I gave up after I found out that I could, indeed, get Blue Bell in Maryland if I paid more that $100 to have it shipped from Texas, or if I bought three gallons of it at once from Outback Steakhouse.

On our first visit to the commissary here in Cairo our sponsor told us about the special ordering program.  If any U.S. commissary sells a product anywhere in the world, the commissary in Cairo can get it too.  It took a while for me to connect the dots, but I realized about a month ago that I could maybe get Blue Bell ice cream here.  I waited until my husband was away to ask about special ordering the ice cream.  It turns out that I could, indeed, get it.

What I didn't remember was that this is Egypt and nothing goes according to plan.  The day arrived for the scheduled special order to come in— happily this was the Wednesday of both my husband's birthday and a commissary shuttle.  I walked into the commissary office to pick up my order and found out that yes, my special order was supposed to be there, but unfortunately that day's plane had been canceled.  I could come tomorrow to get it, and they were very sorry for the delay.  Unfortunately, there is no shuttle on the following day so I had to wait until the Friday shuttle to get the surprise ice cream.

And then Mummy Tummy struck.  Although I was the only one suffering with it, I didn't feel well enough to be left alone for my husband to go to the commissary. This meant waiting until the following Wednesday to get the birthday ice cream.  On Sunday (the first workday of the week) I sent an email to sign up for Wednesday's commissary shuttle.  Wouldn't you know- for some unexplainable reason there was no commissary shuttle scheduled this Wednesday.  Asking why the shuttle was not running this Wednesday when it runs every other Wednesday got me nowhere.

The following Friday I went on the regularly scheduled shuttle to finally pick up the ice cream.  After a lot of sorting through papers and asking around on the part of the office staff, I was finally told that the order had been delayed and would be in the following Wednesday evening.  It would arrive too late for the Wednesday shuttle so we had one more week to wait.

Finally, two and a half weeks after the expected date, the ice cream arrived.  Having received a confirmation phone call the night before, I arrived at the commissary this Friday afternoon to pick it up.  The man went into the back of the store to get it and came back with four half gallon containers of Blue Bell ice cream.  After waiting so long and going through so many obstacles to get it I didn't want to cause any fuss about the quantity that was sent.  So we are now the proud owners of a whole lot of ice cream!  My husband was very happy to have it, but we are thinking we need to have every person we've met so far here to come over for ice cream in order to make even a dent in it.