we visited an area of cairo called garbage city. it is where all of cairo’s garbage goes, and the people there basically recycle it. those who live in garbage city are almost exclusively coptic christians; they found a recycling niche in the economy and made it a lifestyle. there is garbage everywhere but surprisingly the people actually have more money than many on other areas of cairo because it turns out recycling is a thriving business (relatively speaking, of course). we visited an orphanage right in the middle of garbage city which is run by some catholic nuns. there we fed some infants and spent some time with other elderly people and severely handicapped children who live there. it is a very tough life there.
we also went to a coptic church which is built into the mountain above garbage city. there are carvings all over the cliffs of icons of Christ and different bible stories. the copts take great pride in the fact that the holy family fled to egypt following Christ’s birth, and they have many stories that most western christians consider apocrophal (but they don’t) about what Christ did while he was in egypt. we also visited a paper project in garbage city where women who want a job can recycle garbage paper and make new paper out of it. it was really an impressive operation with a great cause. that evening we had a commitment service for the semester that was really nice. we all committed to living in community and helping each other through it even when we don’t feel like it. and then we sat around and talked for a while.
tuesday was our first service project day. every tuesday we will go to an assigned service project. my friend joel and i are assigned to the episcopal training center where we will be teaching english. so we take a taxi to downtown and then get on the metro to go there. we met the guy who will be our boss but the classes aren’t starting for a while so we didn’t have to teach this first week. on wednesday our formal academic classes started. after we have devotions in the morning we move into arabic class for 90 minutes. a very nice egyptian lady teaches us. she likes to think of herself as something close to our mother! it is going to be tough to keep up though, as i am terrible at learning languages. our program director dr. holt gave us his worldview. he basically said that we can’t make any assumptions or generalizations about islam or the culture or anything here because we are all very ignorant and uninformed. and he showed us stacks of books we haven’t read to prove it to us, and the point was proved.
for class one day we watched a bunch of youtube segments about the history of the politics of egypt from al-jazeera which was quite fascinating and then we had a big discussion about it. during ramadan all the restaurants are closed during the day so it is tough to get food! we found out we have to order it and get it delivered, although for a couple hours around dinner time no one is available because they are all breaking the fast. it has been great hanging out with all the other people on the program because they all bring such diverse perspectives on everything. we have already had some pretty heated discussions that can be enlightening as well as just being fun. sometimes i feel that people at gordon (the college i attend in massachussetts) all come at issues in sort of the same way, maybe because the school frames the issues that they want people to be talking about. that is not necessarily a bad thing, but it is interesting to discuss issues with people from totally different backgrounds who you don’t know that well yet – you have to validate yourself with how well you can prove your points,
friday and saturday are the weekend here, so on friday a bunch of us went to the egyptian museum (after losing each other for an hour or two trying to get there). it was a great museum. there weren’t many descriptions in english, but it was fascinating nonetheless. there were a number of artifacts from king tut’s tomb which were all in perfect condition, and there were some pretty legitimate mummies as well.
on saturday we went to a upscale area of cairo called maadi where many western expatriates and diplomats live, for church in the evening. it was a very traditional episcopalian church but it was nice to experience something western and christian after a few weeks of relative culture shock. other than the copts, there are exceedingly few christians in egypt.
the copts are heavily persecuted by the government. that said, the extremist muslims are heavily persecuted as well. the president of egypt hosni mubarak basically crushes any opposition if they start gaining steam. people can technically say whatever they want but it appears that if anyone starts listening to them then they are silenced.
