each of us in the program spent one week living with a family in cairo. my friend thomas and i were placed with a guy named anwar. he is in his late twenties and is a crazy cool guy. he is a copt and is basically the opposite of most egyptians, in that he loves george bush and continually reminds us how awesome he thinks particular american televangelists are. he states that he doesn’t like even talking to muslims. in fact, on the night when we all got picked up by our families for our homestays everyone was mingling and he requested that we sit in an empty classroom because he doesn’t like being in the same room as muslims. this is a bit more extreme than most copts here, but it is not uncommon for them to segregate themselves from broader society. sad, but perhaps somewhat understandable considering their constant persecution for two thousand years.
anwar lives in garbage city, one of the poorest areas of cairo. we walk up through these narrow, garbage filled alleys to get to his house. i love it. lots of taxis refuse to even taker us to that part of town. it reeks of garbage but you get used to it after five minutes of being there. we got some pizzas for dinner and they looked good enough, but the meat in them literally tasted like garbage. consuming it in its entirety without vomiting may have been the hardest thing i have ever done, but one has to be a good guest on a homestay. there are a bunch of extended family always hanging out in the apartment – sometimes they sleep there and sometimes they don’t. there is a baby in the home named nancy who is really cute. and a grandmother.
we did feel like an imposition, but at least our being there is interesting for all involved, and they signed up to host us. anwar was the only one in the family who spoke any english, but we played card games and backgammon with everyone else. it was interesting to hear my fellow mesper’s stories about the places they are living – some were great and some have horror stories. i enjoyed living the way these people live and having fun with them.
the second half of the homestay week went really well. the sister in our family, saheb, started to like us toward the middle of the week and started cooking us nice big meals (at the beginning of the week they basically just fed us twinkies and gross pizza). on the weekend we just slept in (that’s basically what they do everyday). anwar, our english speaking contact left midweek to become a tour guide, so the weekend was a little more challenging because we couldn’t communicate with anyone in the house. but it went well, and we had some really fun times despite no verbal comprehension for anyone involved.
