Starting to feel like home

Any time you move to a new place you have to expect to feel out of place, out of sorts, and that everything is unfamiliar. Put that together with moving to a foreign country and you add a whole other dimension to the feeling of being an outsider that doesn’t quite belong. One of these things is not like the other? So you wait and watch for the small moments when something feels normal or familiar that tell you that maybe you can feel at home in your new surroundings. Yesterday evening as I unlocked the door and entered my flat and wondered where the smile on my face had come from I realized that I had just experienced one of those moments.

The rest of the story requires a little background. On my second day here I stepped into one of the many spice stores in the market looking for the basics…it’s amazing how little you can make when you have no salt, pepper, sugar. The man working there spoke English and gave me his business card in case I needed anything, but having my guard up in a strange place I tossed the card into the bottom of my bag and hadn’t thought of it since. That was until I decided that I wanted to make chicken noodle soup from scratch and needed some dried parsley. After a number of unsuccessful attempts at the shops near my building I ventured a little farther to first store I had been in since half the problem was that I didn’t know the word for parsley in Arabic. While the man I had originally met wasn’t there, another man, who also spoke English, and French for that matter, was and said that while he didn’t have any he could get it for me if I could come back later in the evening. So, a few hours later I ventured out to the market once again. This time they were both there although not with the dried parsley I was looking for. Apparently dried parsley can’t be bought here, but he did have some fresh parsley, which is not at all hard to find, he said would dry out in about 3 days. That was besides the point though as the first man I had met started asking me questions about the correspondence course he was taking and was studying for there in the shop. The next 45 minutes involved him pulling up a stool for me to sit on, asking someone to bring me some tea, then asking me explaining the price elasticity of demand lesson he was working on and other related topics I learned 4 years ago in Intro Microeconomics. As I got up to leave having reached the end of the handout he was working on he asked if the next lesson could be tomorrow…to which I gave the typical Egyptian response, God willing.

The feeling that I was no longer stranger here was already setting in when, as I had almost reached my street I heard a familiar voice and looked up to see one of the loan officers from the office, only adding to feeling that I might actually belong here.

Getting down to business

My work at EACID in Aswan is now fully underway with the end of Ramadan and the Eid holidays. The past week was a flurry of activity as all of PICC Work’s staff were in Aswan for a variety of meetings and a training from Street Kids International. My week was mostly spent with a film maker/editor named Ahmed Hassouna, filming various aspects of the project along with stories from the kids and staff about the project. It was a good opportunity both to further ground myself in the different parts of the project and the work that has already been done, as well as to get to know the people and places that are now my home. The videos that will eventually be finished in a few months are to highlight the impact of the safety and hazard mitigation training, the use of a business simulation computer game, and the individual stories of a couple of the kids who have been part of the project from the beginning. I got to visit three different businesses, a home bakery, a carpentry shop, and a laundry facility. In two of the cases I had already met the kids and so got to get to know them a little better. The visits also allowed me to visit parts of the city that I would otherwise never frequent since aren’t in walking distance and my central location means I don’t have to walk far to get what I need. That is one disadvantage to my central location, that it feels a bit like a commercial bubble that isolates me from the experience of the majority of people living here. This may be a feeling I’ve created, but I feel this way regardless.

Sunday things will return to normal and it will be just me and the EACID Aswan staff. They are all really great and I’ll be putting my Arabic to good use, the little that I have so far that is. I’m really excited to get started on the photo documentation work I’m here for, as well as all the other things in between that come up with the kind of work I’m doing. It means that every day is different and there is little time to get comfortable in any routine, keeping me on my toes!

Some time under the sun

I've now been in Egypt for a full month and October will bring about a few changes to the normal routine...although the last month hasn't quite been what I'd call routine.  Ramadan has ended with yesterday and today being holidays for everyone, so the streets are full and everyone is out.  Things have been a little slow in starting up since Ramadan slowed everything down, but this allowed me to join Rachel, together with her mom and aunt who were visiting for a couple weeks, for a little sightseeing.  I met them on the Red Sea coast in Hurgada which involved a 3.5 hour train ride to Luxor and then a 6 hour bus ride to Hurgada.  We stayed at a small hotel on the water and spent the first day lounging on the beach and getting massages, and then the second day we spent the day on a boat visiting different reefs for some great snorkeling.

After three nights there we went on to Luxor which is located on the Nile between Cairo and Aswan and spent a day and a half exploring some temples in the city and then the west bank of the river where the valley of the kings was built.  We arrived at our hotel around 2pm and then went out to take some pictures of the Luxor temple.  You are able to get in to see it right up close but we didn't feel like paying and you can get pretty close from the outer fence anyway.  This was followed by an amazing meal at a place called the Oasis Cafe, which was very relaxing and had excellent food if not a slightly overly friendly waiter.  The next day

 we were up early to attempt to beat the heat...a lost cause if you ask me...to visit the West Bank.  Our guide for the day was Mohammed who has his masters in egyptology and he was excellent.  Our first stop was the valley of the kings where the pharaohs were buried.  They keep eleven tombs per year on a rotation and a ticket in lets you see three of them.  We also paid a little extra to see the tomb of Tutankamon because they actually had his mummy on display in his tomb.  So after seeing those four tombs we moved on to see 

Hatshepsut's Temple, significant because she was the only female to rule Egypt, although she did so dressed as a man.  The last stop was the tombs of the workers who built all the tombs in the valley.  When they started building tombs they moved ten families permanently to the west bank and they were never allowed back to the other side so that they couldn't give away the secrets they knew about the tombs.  On their one day off during the week (a week then was 10 days) they would work on their own tombs which are amazing since obviously you'd take much more care with your own tomb than that of another, even if it was for a pharaoh.

That evening we took the longest train ride you could imagine back to Aswan.  What was only supposed to take 3.5 hours took about 7...3 of which were for the last 10km of the trip.  That then brings us to yesterday when, after sleeping in since we only went to bed at 3am, we went out for lunch, rested in the afternoon for a bit and then took Rachel's mom and aunt to the Nubian museum while we had some juice at a hotel close by.  Then today we went to see the Philae Temple which is on an island between the two dams south of town.  The actually moved it while the dam was under construction to a higher island as the one it was originally on is now almost completely submerged.  So now, we've dropped Jan and Betty at the airport and are back at the flat and will be getting ready for a workshop that will start in a few days.  Rachel will be staying with me until the 7th and I'll be glad to have the company.  After a nice holiday hopefully I remember how to work!