Another learning experience

Working at EACID I’ve been able to learn a lot about working directly with those receiving the benefits of international development assistance. Last week I was able to see another side of the development system when two representatives from CIDA (Canadian International Development Agency) came to visit the project. Richard and Reem were up from Cairo and we spent most of the morning on Saturday with Dr. Mamdouh, EACID’s director, and the CIDA reps. After that they heard from the kids who had put together a puppet show about the project and got a demonstration of the computer game that has been developed to teach kids business ethics before we all got into a taxi to visit some of the business that are receiving loans from EACID and who have children working there who participate in PPIC Work programming.

The evening had a more relaxed feel to it, we took a felucca ride at sunset which, even thought it was my third time, never disappoints. The difference this time was that the water level has dropped considerably and we had a small problem getting upstream at different points. One time we had to back the boat up and taking a running start but we made it with a little extra work from the motor.

The next morning’s meeting was more forward looking at the plans once the current project ends in June. I was also able to share the work I’ve started here with the photo documentation with a presentation from some of the kids and then an explanation of some of the steps were trying to take now. The visit ended on a very positive note and was quite successful. After all of the preparation I think it was a relief for some to hear the positive response. The principles of the project were really well received and continue to push into areas that many organizations don’t believe are possible to do with any level of success.

It is looking like I'll be around to see some of our activities through a little longer than expected.  Project activities will be wrapping up in June and the details are coming together for me to stay on a little longer than the original plan of finishing up my work at the end of January.

A weekend in Cairo

Two weekends ago I took a little trip to Cairo for a change of scenery and to see friends. It still blows my mind that I went to Cairo for the weekend, and talk about it like it is nothing out of the ordinary. While I went for the weekend, it is by no means close by. It took a little over 13 hours on the train, which probably sounds long and uncomfortable, but the sleeper trains that travel over night are quite comfortable and you can get a half decent sleep while saving a lot by not flying. Dinner and breakfast are included in the ticket and the beds were comfy. All in all, a good experience.

I arrived in Cairo, known as a chaotic, dirty, polluted and crowded, and found almost none of these things. The haze I remembered was still hanging over the city, and is a little worse at this time of year when the fields nearby are being burned, but the city had a feeling of relative calm and quiet. This is the beauty of a Friday morning in Egypt before noon time prayers after which the city really comes back to life. As well, the trip on the metro after leaving the train station and the short walk to Rachel's flat was familiar, lessening the feeling of chaos I often felt in my first few weeks here. After making a tentative plan for the day Rachel and I met Reem (another colleague who lives in Cairo) for breakfast. Reem took us to a little diner where we had an 'american' breakfast...bacon and eggs with hashbrowns and toast, and free refills on the coffee. Our next stop was al-Ahzar park for a potluck picnic for Carolyn, Akino, and Rike, friends who by tomorrow morning will all have left Egypt for the foreseeable future. Round two of the goodbye gatherings happened on the rooftop terrace of a downtown hotel, after which I fell right to sleep (the sleep on the train was good, but not that good).

Saturday we mixed a little work into the weekend and went to Doweika, where a week or so of training for new staff was wrapping up, but by Sunday I was back to exploring more of the city. Carolyn, Rachel and I visited the home of two of the n

ew staff in Doweika who later took us through their neighborhood to an amazing amphitheatre church carv

ed in to the mountain. The community in the area is about 80% Coptic Christian and it is also home to a group called the

 zabaleen, the community of people known to be some of the world's best recyclers, making it their daily work to collect the garbage of the city of 20 million, bringing it back to their home where it is sorted and recycled. While they do provide an important service to the city, they are often sorting decomposing materials in or just outside of their homes and they also have to live with the smell on a daily basis. Once we finished there I left Rachel and Carolyn and took the metro to Coptic Cairo to visit 3rd and 4th century churches in old cairo. It was the most hassle free tourism I had experienced so far I Egypt where you take a set of stairs down below street level and wander narrow passage ways finding small churches around corners and in small doors in the wall.

The last stop of the day before getting to the train station for my ride back was the grocery store, supplemented by Rachel’s fridge, for things that I haven’t been able to find in Aswan. Those of you who I traveled with in South Africa will understand why peanut butter has been a highlight of the week.

A better picture

So my last few posts have been less than visually stimulating, mostly because my the internet connections I've been using haven't been strong enough to upload pictures...even at McDonalds (it's the only remotely western establishment here, it opened last spring...and offers free wireless and delivery). Hopefully this gives everyone a better picture, literally, of life in Aswan.

A shop in the market selling a variety of things 

including spices, dates, pumice, etc...

                                                             

One of the many horse and buggy combos around 

town, used for tourists and weddings

A man smoking sheesha from a water pipe...extremely 

bad for your health but a permanent part of cafe life

The produce stand where I buy 

my fruits and vegetables

Natasha, Reem, and I on a sunset felucca ride...normally

 I'd be smiling with my teeth but I've got a mouth full of cookie

Playing the Menno Game

For the most part, as I go about my day here in Aswan I don't expect to have many conversations in English, never mind meet people who know my grandparents or who went to high school with my parents and their siblings.  But, as I'm learning to anticipate here in Egypt, you have to expect the unexpected and the unexpected happened last Friday when the MEDA tour group came to town.  The fact that it was a MEDA tour group kind of takes away from what would otherwise have been a chance encounter but it was somewhat ironic anyway. And, as always happens when you discover you're in the company of another Mennonite from the same city, you have to find out whether you know any of the same people or if you might even be related.  I found no relatives but the rest played out as it usually does.  One of the couples knew my grandparents, and the tour leader went to school with my Uncle Herb and knew both my parents.  It's a small world after all!

The MEDA tour is an opportunity for MEDA supporters and friends to experience another country while visiting MEDA supported projects around the world.  The group that arrived last Friday morning to visit the EACID office and meet some of the children involved in programing were a combination of first time and repeat visitors to Egypt.  The children presented some of what they have been learning and the key components of the program, followed by a Q&A time for tour members to have their questions answered by both the kids and staff.  At that point all but two of the group headed off to get some sleep.  The couple who had been on the tour last year stayed for another hour or so to share some photography skills with the kids who have really taken to using the cameras that were donated with funds brought along with them during the previous tour.  The kids had a blast, including Mohamed who had the chance to use Delmar's professional quality camera.  Hopefully they will be just as excited when we start trying to help them document their stories through pictures in the coming weeks.

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!