It is pouring rain and about five degrees outside, but Squamish’s Marcus Monopoli is wearing brown Crocs with no socks while he sips his coffee at the Squamish Adventure Centre.
Since returning to Squamish this summer after years in the Middle East, Monopoli said he just can’t wear socks anymore because they bug his feet. This and other reverse culture shock observations peppered a recent conversation with Monopoli that spanned the almost 10 years since the former radio personality departed for Cairo, Egypt.
A wife, two kids, a few jobs and countries later, Monopoli is back and the owner of HappiMess, a children’s play centre that opened in November.
What follows is an edited version of The Squamish Chief’s recent chat with Monopoli.
Q: First, tell me about HappiMess, the business you just opened in downtown Squamish.
A: It is sensory play. Basically, your kids can show up and make a mess and then you go home. It was big in the Middle East and it was big in Europe and my daughter benefitted a lot from it. You have bins where you can stick your hands and it has different materials, different textures and you play games and you can throw it all over the place.
My daughter used to have this weird touching thing: If there was a tag sticking out on her shirt, she wouldn’t wear it. Then she started sensory play and now she is more outside her box, she explores more. It is also good for kids on the [autism] spectrum. We discovered, though, that there’s not a lot of sensory play here so we opened one.
Q: You were a radio personality with Mountain FM here and then left for a radio gig in Cairo, Egypt in 2008. You were there during the Arab Spring in 2011. What was that like?
A: That was a crazy time. I was on the streets and everything. The Americans were being evacuated, the British were being evacuated, but I had an apartment full of Canadian teachers with nowhere to go. I was updating my social media and doing call-in reports to CKWX (Vancouver’s News 1130).
Q: Were you scared?
They started singling out expats; I mean, Anderson Cooper got beat up. I decided to stay at home. There was a prison where a bunch of prisoners were set free. At night people were out protecting their homes. I was in the street with my neighbours and I am holding a stick and I am looking at this guy getting blown away by a machine gun. You see some crazy things. The one thing I can say, though, is I was on the streets when Hosni Mubarak stepped down [as president of Egypt] and the euphoria, the elation was something to behold. You can’t fathom the excitement. Now, it is a different story.
Q: You met your wife in Cairo, correct? Tell me about that.
A: There are two versions. There’s my wife’s version and my version. I would say she was stalking me, but she gets mad when I say that (Monopoli laughs). She was a fan of the radio show I took over. She used to message the show. Her messages would make me laugh. Then we talked on Facebook, then we went on a date and there you have it. We got married in Cairo five years ago. Our kids were born there as well: We have a four and two-year-old.
Q: Why did you leave Egypt?
A: My contract expired in March of 2011 and the revolution ended in February of 2011. The guy who ran the radio station – the only guy allowed to have a private radio station in Cairo because he was a lawyer to the Mubaraks – when the revolution happened and they were going after all these heads of state, he fled. So when my contract came up, there was no one to renew it. I had gone to an interview in Oman, basically for the free trip. In March I got offered the job on air and doing production. I said OK. Later, the government took me to run their English station – it is Oman’s version of the CBC.
Q: What do we get wrong here about the Middle East?
A: They are normal people and just want to live their lives. There has been a lot of interference from our side because of political and economical gains and some people resent it. If America came up here and said we are going to take over this part, and we are going to take your trees and we are going to make you hate another guy and meddle with your internal politics, would you be so happy to welcome white folks? Not so much. It is a quagmire, but first we need to understand – and I will use a horrible Star Wars analogy – they are the Rebels and we are the Empire – so you just have to recognize that.
Q: How has your time away changed how you see Squamish?
A: I am the only one in my family who is having a bit of reverse culture shock. Near the end of my time in the Middle East, I had mostly Muslim friends. I am not a drinker but I like the shisha (water-pipe smoking) and we had big discussions about what is going on in the world. Since I have come back home there has been somewhat of a disconnect.
No one knows what is happening in Yemen, which is one of the biggest humanitarian disasters on the planet, next to Syria. Yemen is number two and we gave weapons to the people who are causing that [war]. That to me is weird. How do people not know this here? Why are they not concerned?
It is a cultural thing of everyone being so busy. Over there they work six-hour days.
They have a completely different focus; it is family first, people first. People pick at their system because it is slow and cumbersome and nothing gets done. It is true, but it depends on what you value. If you put family and being together before business then it doesn’t matter to you if things are slow to get done.
Here we are all about efficiency and getting the best for the dollar and the people at the short end of the stick have to work two or three jobs and they don’t have time to read a newspaper to care about anybody else, just their own situation.
