The Internet Cannot Replace People-to-People Interactions

The following is a guest post from AUA Mosaic Scholarship recipient Shayna Orens. She recently returned from volunteering with Hands Along the Nile Development Services, Inc. in Egypt. To find an amazing opportunity like this one, search the AUA Directory of Recommended Organizations© today!

These days, it seems like the internet hasmade the world so small. With a click of a button, I can video chat with friends on the other side of the world. I can see their pictures, know what they’re doing, and easily wish them a happy birthday.

This scenario fits in perfectly to the fast-paced life of a New York City college student. So often, we see friends in passing. We stop to say hello or simply wave. Indeed it’s rare to talk in person, to sit down and enjoy lunch without impatiently waiting for food, to not have anywhere to go.

Last night for instance, I found myself facebook chatting with a friend who lives one floor above me. We were sitting in the same building, too busy to stop what we were doing to talk to each other in person.

My time in Egypt made me hyperaware of the detriments of living in such a fast-paced world. It was the first time in a while that I didn’t have constant access to my email or the internet–and it was so liberating.

The college students we met in Egypt hadn’t seemed to have been so corrupted by this idea that if we aren’t doing something, we are unproductive. I admit that usually, idle time makes me anxious. It always feels like there is something I should be doing. But my peers in Egypt helped me learn a more important lesson: how to just be.

Every meeting with the students would evolve into an evening filled with wonderful Egyptian food, incredible company, and ultimately strong friendships. I learned so much from them about the revolution, about Egypt, about life in the Middle East. But most of all, I learned that its just as important to slow down, go with the flow, and forget about the plans. As cliche as it is to talk about getting “off the beaten path,” it was these moments that were truly special.

As I reflect on everything I learned on my trip, the people I met, and the unbelievable sense of hope that I took away from Cairo, I hold one thing especially close to my heart: that even in a city of millions of people, where everything seems to be moving fast, be it Cairo, New York, or, anywhere, sometimes the best thing we can do is slow down, go against the grain, and just be where we are.

It’s great that things like facebook and skype can keep us in touch with people we care about and want to remain in touch with. But it is the moments spent in person that help us gain an understanding of who someone really is. We need to make these moments more frequent in order to create spaces of understanding, and ultimately, of peace.

Development Starts Here

The following is a guest post from AUA Mosaic Scholarship recipient Aiya Aboubakr. She recently returned from volunteering with Hands Along the Nile Development Services, Inc. in Egypt. To find an amazing opportunity like this one, search the AUA Directory of Recommended Organizations© today!

Going to Egypt this spring break, my fellow colleagues and myself took the roles of America’s Unofficial Ambassadors. Our mission: “To galvanize the power of people to reach across cultural differences, form partnerships of mutual interest, and build peace.” Although we did not meet with political officials or mend the country’s laws, we did in fact build peace, mend misunderstandings of cultural differences, and form not just partnerships, but friendships, of mutual interest that will surely be long lasting.

As we traveled through the country, many of the Egyptians we encountered were quick to question our interest in traveling to the country, especially since the media portrays the “danger” that turns foreigners away. Members of the Garbage City community in Muqattam, Cairo, for example were weirdly staring at our large bus for a few minutes at first, then quickly spotting our Egyptian tour guide realized who we were. Upon hearing our mission, however, they were at ease. Not only did they greatly appreciate our efforts, but were provided with a new sense of hope.

Before leaving for the trip, as a group we created several goals. Of course some of us had lower scale goals such as making friends with an Egyptian child at an orphanage or learning a few words of Arabic in order to meet and greet natives. But we also had larger goals, each of which was met by an accomplishment of our smaller goals. Our daily volunteer time at the Sisters of Charity Orphanage, for example, was more than just feeding the children and playing with them for hours a day. It allowed us to gain a first hand experience of some of the social deficits in not just Egypt, but throughout the Muslim World. The major issue of poverty and health was felt within our first day there. Even as we met with Ahmed Ezzat, the lawyer at the Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression (AFTE) and heard him speak about the mission of his NGO and their recent cases, we were granted a look into the human rights situation in the country. Traveling through the country, we readily gained knowledge of the economic development. Together with the knowledge of these human development deficits in the region and our passion for change, we came back to the United States ready to provide further support and future hope for change. Given this window to the situation, we know exactly what to address and the most efficient means to do so.

Perhaps the strongest tool we came back with was the development of positive people-to-people connections between us, moreover the greater Middle East and United States. Although we only made a few connections on a small scale, that is how development starts. Such connections have the capacity to grow, clarifying one stereotype at a time. Each of the individuals we met may be able to take back what we gave, be it time, attention, or hope, and return to their greater community bearing the valued message, that we do care and we can help.

Compassion Reawakened in Egypt

The following is a guest post from AUA Mosaic Scholarship recipient Rubii Pham. She recently returned from volunteering with Hands Along the Nile Development Services, Inc. in Egypt. To find an amazing opportunity like this one, search the AUA Directory of Recommended Organizations© today!

“I think Mariam is laughing at me,” I said to my friend Laura. Indeed, to Mariam, one of the girls that work at the Sisters of Charity orphanage in the Muqattam neighborhood of Cairo, Laura and I probably looked comical attempting to carry two buckets of what felt like bricks up a rather steep staircase, while they effortlessly floated up the steps with the same load like some laundry washing ballerinas.

At first, I was shocked at how this tiny room, barely larger than the size of my bedroom, could hold so many children.  The first day I was there, all of those tiny bodies jumped on top of me, tiny attention starved hands curiously examining my hair. The smallest boy in the group of about thirty kids, who I nicknamed Charlie because he was not old enough to speak and tell me his name, was particularly attached and his big eyes threatened to water every time I would put him down. During lunchtime, it became apparent that there are simply not enough hands to go around, as one nun and three other women who also worked at the orphanage attempted to get thirty hyperactive toddlers to eat. As I held and fed Charlie, several kids vied for their turn to be fed.

After that first day, I wasn’t sure how my presence would help these kids, if at all. After all, would they even remember me after that week?

On the second day, as soon as I walk into the room, Charlie leap up into my arms before I could even take off my coat. I carried more laundry, played with the children, and chatted with the women that worked at the orphanage in a strange mixture of English-Arabic. It surprised how much joy and happiness I found there, that even though life was hard, there was plenty of laughter to go around. Through conversations with Sister Celeste, one of the nuns who runs the orphanage, I found out that some of the kids are orphans, while others simply stay there during the day while their parents work to find and recycle garbage. The last day before I left, the nuns asked me to stay on for a few more days, insisting that I must come back this summer to visit. It was then that I realized that though the tasks I was performing were simple, the orphanage was severely understaffed, and the personalized attention was what children needed during this developmental period of their life. I wasn’t changing the world, but these kids did not need a world-changer; they needed someone to hold them when they cry, someone to wipe the snot off their face, to sing them a baby lullaby before bedtime.

Sometimes, when I’m wrapped up in the monotonous tumult of everyday life and my sole interaction with the rest of the world comes from CNN or the New York Times, it becomes too easy to see the rest of the world as “them,” a distinct and faceless entity with no connection to me. Yet, when I ran into a close friend a few days after I returned from Egypt, I found it hard to capture the poignancy of my experience in a few sentences. He wanted to hear about the danger and chaos of living in post-revolution Egypt, but all that I mustered up was “I saw some pyramids…I took care of orphans from the zabbaleen community in Cairo… ” These sentences seem hollow and objectively passive, a mere glossing of the social education I’ve received over those past 8 days. But today, I found myself taking my clothes to the laundry room and thinking about doing laundry with Mariam and playing with Charlie, about my week in Cairo. My simple, every day interactions with these incredibly kind, friendly people reawakened in me something that I’ve become desensitized to: a sense of compassion. I realize that we are not “Middle Easterners” and “Americans” but we are simply people, people who do surprisingly similar things and have startlingly similar goals. I only hope that it is these human-to-human interactions that Mariam (and hopefully Charlie) will remember about me, that I somehow made their day a bit brighter by (literally) lessening Mariam’s load and tickling Charlie until he stopped crying.

Roadtrip Through Northern Lebanon: Three Season in One Day

The following is a post from AUA Network member and guest blogger Kyle Scott Herman who is volunteering by teaching History in Lebanon.

A few weeks ago, our headmaster invited us to join a roadtrip. We took a van up to Tripoli for breakfast. Tripoli felt like summer because it is on the sunny coast.

Tripoli's sunny coast and palm trees make it feel like summer even with snow-topped mountains towering in the distance.

But from there we could see the snowy mountaintops we would be driving up to see Lebanon’s legendary cedar reserve. A wintry wonderland after the first snowfalls in the mountains, it is a last refuge in a country that was covered with cedar forests thousands of years ago before nearly all of them were cut down. Today the cedars remain dear to the Lebanese as a symbol of their national heritage – a cedar is proudly displayed on the Lebanese flag. Along the way to the cedar forest and after, we passed through areas where leaves were changing colors, reminding us that even though the coast felt like summer and the mountains felt like winter, in some places Lebanon was having an Autumn that made me homesick for Ohio. After the cedars, we traveled up and over the Lebanese mountains to the Bekaa Valley.  Here are some pictures that do not do justice to what we saw:

The year's first snows in the mountains made the cedar reserve a winter wonderland.

The sun dips behind the mountains we have traveled through.

The barren top of the last mountain before reaching the Bekaa Valley

This was the last picture I was able to take because we ran out of sunlight. It’s a shame because looking across the Bekaa Valley is an amazing sight – your vision spans half of the country to the Anti-Lebanon mountains on the other side, which are the border with Syria.  We plan to return during daylight when we have more time.

Additional posts can be viewed on Kyle’s blog.

I Thought I was Done Losing Sleep Over Exams

The following is a post from AUA Network member and guest blogger Kyle Scott Herman who is volunteering by teaching History in Lebanon.

January was rough.  Don’t worry, I’m perfectly safe. I just didn’t post anything because I felt like I spent almost all my time since the week of Christmas sprinting to fulfill my students’ curriculum before their mid-year exams. And that sprinting is completely metaphorical because I ran less in January than I have in any month since my early years of high school. I have settled into a comfortable teaching style, but it is a ton of work. I spoil my students with visuals and notes written out for them on powerpoint presentations, which I use to tell history more like a story to keep them involved. It’s great, but I spend hours every night making hours worth of powerpoint presentations for the next day (not to mention mastering the material not covered on the slides so I’m prepared for daily oral examinations from my students’ questions.). And with 4 years worth of curriculum – including one I’m making up from scratch because this is the first year Lebanon has a 12th grade - I’m honestly doing more schoolwork and losing more sleep than I ever did at school, including my enjoyably challenging years at Ohio Wesleyan.  And missing a deadline is not an option because I would basically be letting down dozens of kids.

Many of my students could care less how much effort I put into their education. There are a few troublemakers who actively work to undermine me and stubbornly refuse to apply themselves. But I am also blessed to teach some bright students who are engaged and even appreciative. An honest one even called me “spectacular” and said he could listen to me teach for hours. Some students force me to waste time on classroom management because of ignorant or hostile distractions. I feel bad sometimes because I hear that a lot of our students have difficult family situations, but from my perspective that’s no excuse for being mean and disruptive. When they frustrate me, I just have to remind myself that those who want to learn make it worth it when I see that they are actually learning and even enjoying it.

I thought I would have a break last week because my classes were mostly review for the exams, but I nearly ended up pulling a couple all-nighters because I was writing two-hour exams for each of my four grade levels. You thought studying for exams was difficult? Try mastering the material to the extent that you can write one. Then there’s the challenge of selecting what information is the most important, finding a way to put it into question form, making sure that it is challenging enough without being unfairly tricky. I consider my exams to be works of art. Maybe I’ll post one if anyone is interested in matching wits with my students.

This week is light because the students are taking the exams. I hope our internet starts working better during that time because I wasn’t able to upload pictures to this post and I have a lot to share from our week off at Christmas. But afterwards I’ll have the challenge of grading the exams. The one part of teaching more frustrating for me than disruptive behavior is grading open-ended questions and essays. It’s really important to teach my students to write, but I agonize over judging the quality of their arguments and the extent to which they deserve credit for being partially accurate or when they are vague or when I suspect them of cheating. I hate knowing a student has cheated even if I can’t outright prove it, but I caught three students cheating red-handed on a test a few weeks ago, including the girl whose mother plagiarized for her AND her brother. A lot of the students here don’t seem to care much about cheating. There’s a phrase in Arabic that roughly translates: “The clever one gets away with it.” I never thought we had such a big cheating problem when I was in school but I don’t know if that’s because midwestern culture is more focused on merit and integrity or if I was just ignorant back then.

Even though I respected teachers a lot before I came here, I have WAY more respect for them now. I may feel a little overworked because I’m a first-year teacher with all four grade levels on my plate at once  and to be fair I am working harder than necessary by my own choice because I care about giving my students spectacular lessons. But I completely understand why about a third of new teachers quit within 3 years. I may not plan to be a teacher beyond my time in Lebanon, but now that I’m living the life (and mostly enjoying it despite the stress), it gives me perspective on America’s education troubles and our national debate over teacher salaries. Assuming a teacher’s effectiveness could be accurately measured, schools should be competing to hire the best teachers they can by offering salaries more reflective of the job’s challenges. And yet teachers get scapegoated for budget deficits because people think they are lazy for starting work at 7 and ending at about 3 in the afternoon, with summers “off”. Sure there are some lazy teachers and sure the unions are too strong in their ability to protect them, but in my experience classes are the easy part of the day. My most exhausting part of the job is the preparation behind the scenes, which results in overtime that more than makes up for having a couple months to plan for the upcoming year.

I am eternally grateful to so many of my teachers at Stow-Munroe Falls and professors at Ohio Wesleyan who obviously worked hard because they cared about us and not because they wanted an easy paycheck. They really made a difference in my life and I can only hope I’m having a fragment of such impact on my own students.

The weather has started to improve. January was basically a rainy season, but the past couple days have been sunny and in the 60s. We can still see snow on the mountains though, which is good because two weeks from now I’m going to learn how to ski!

When I Hear…Muslim

AUA Network member Claire Everhart is currently living near Jenin in the northern region of the West Bank and volunteering with the Palestine Fair Trade Association through July.

Last week after work I went home with Deena, one of my co-workers at Canaan Fair Trade. She and her family are wonderful. Deena has one brother and four sisters. She and her sisters Maram (17) and Haya (12), and their parents live in the village of Anza outside of Jenin. This village hosts a cooperative of the Palestine Fair Trade Association and supplies Canaan. Vivien Sansour, a Palestinian who helped organize the Run Across Palestine has written a beautiful profile of this community on Canaan’s website (along with several other village profiles). A devastating element of the visit was my camera battery dying before I could take more than 2 photos! I will definitely visit them again though, as I very much want to and they emphatically insist! – so I will take many photos next time.

Happy (belated) Mother’s Day to all the mothers out there! Last Wednesday was Mother’s Day here – always the first day of spring, very fitting I’m sure you can agree:) So, I went with Deena throughout Jenin as she shopped for her mother (and her sister Nour whose daughter is only 2). We stopped by Nour’s house in Jenin to give her a beautiful bouquet of flowers, then off to Anza!

I could not have felt more at home. All the women showed me around their home, several yards (separated by short stone walls), and a fantastic view. With Palestine being so hilly, there are gorgeous views almost everywhere. They, of course, have an olive tree, along with an impressive number of other vegetables and herbs. I seemed excited when they showed me gorgir (not sure about that spelling), a type of very tasty lettuce, so they picked a bunch and made a salata (“salad” – one of the very VERY few easy Arabic words) for dinner. Najia, Deena’s mother, prepares her own za’atar (the green herb I’ve shown in a previous post baked into bread) and lebane (salty cheese/yogurt combination – so good!). Below is the delicious dinner Najia made for us, and the flowers that Deena gave her for Mother’s Day.

After dinner, Maram and Haya had fun teaching me what seemed to be hundreds of Arabic words! I couldn’t get them to stop! I said “hallas” (enough) several times, but after a few minutes they would start again. It was very endearing. Their english is quite good, all students learn English here from first grade.

Later, Najia taught me how to make a delicious cake I love that Deena made last week and brought to work.  I’m going to make it tomorrow and bring it to work for our Monday meeting. It’s simple and not dissimilar from cakes in the US, except for maybe fresh squeezed orange juice with oranges from the tree in their back yard! They also taught me all the ingredient names in Arabic. When the cake was finished Najia flipped it over and poured an entire cup of orange juice on it! It’s fantastic! I wish I had pictures to show. I will take many when I visit them again.

I learned a lot more about Deena as we whispered together before falling asleep. Then we were up early and off to work. Deena’s father, Walid, left us chips, chocolate and juice before he left for work (Deena told me he does this every morning), and Najia packed xubz (bread in a circle shape with a hollow inside) with lebane inside and a cucumber. Way better than peanut butter and jelly .

It is painful to know that so many around the world, hear “Muslim” and automatically think of terrorism and its forms and organizations. A small few have corrupted the peaceful interpretations of the majority. I wish more could know the Muslims whom I know. When I hear “Muslim” I think of Deena’s family and the hundreds (it really has been hundreds with the Run Across Palestine) of other Muslims I have met here, in Ethiopia, and in the US who have been nothing but gracious and peaceful. I think of Maram who got me a pillow to put behind my back while I was sitting against the wall. I think of Laila and Deena who always call me “habibte” (sweetheart). I think of Osama who takes time out of his day at Canaan, several times, to pray. Some of the kindest and most generous people I have ever known have been Muslims.

Run Across Palestine is still taking donations!! Please visit http://onthegroundglobal.org/.

To read more about Claire’s time in the West Bank you can visit her personal blog: http://learningfrompalestine.blogspot.com/.

A More Realistic — Less Sensational —Perspective

The following is a guest post from AUA Mosaic Scholarship recipient Mirabel Rouze. She recently returned from volunteering with Hands Along the Nile Development Services, Inc. in Egypt. To find an amazing opportunity like this one, search the AUA Directory of Recommended Organizations© today!

In this week following my return from Egypt, I am continually working to process the experience—doing so while drinking my Egyptian hibiscus tea and wearing my brightly colored scarf from Cairo.  I expect this constant reevaluation will continue for months: our week in Cairo was so incredibly condensed.  Throughout this time back, though, I have noticed how my conception of revolutions and transitions is shifting, as Cairo provided me with a more realistic—less sensational—perspective.  While there were many instances that strikingly highlighted how the nation was undergoing political and social transitions (as I had expected to see) there were nevertheless signs of a return to normalcy, which I had not strongly considered beforehand.

Traveling to Cairo, I was prepared to see the notable remnants of a revolution: in many respects, I did.  Beginning with our first day there, as I walked out of our tour of the majestic Egyptian Museum, I was immediately confronted by the burnt façade of a former-Mubarak-regime governmental building.  This created such a shocking contrast with both the ideals of the revolution and the rich cultural history.  As it has not undergone restorations since, it in many ways represented the continuation of transition.  Seeing this in person was both frightening and intriguing.

In the area surrounding the museum, as well as throughout the city, there were security guards densely stationed together.  The tightened security around governmental and media buildings particularly stood out.  I was told that aspects of this security were common before the revolution as well, but it nevertheless seemed another reminder of the transitions the nation is undergoing.

I also saw this same atmosphere of transition while visiting the recycling school in the Zabbaleen village.  Here, I met a man who had lost a brother in the time following the revolution.  He showed me a memorial poster created for the lives lost in the riots directed against his predominantly Coptic community.  This again represented how both the nation and state are in the midst of change.

However, these stories of revolution and transition were alongside witnessing lives that have begun to return to some level of normalcy.  The first morning I spent in Cairo, I was awoken to a prayer call upon a loud speaker.  Hearing these calls each time throughout all of the subsequent days served as a continual reminder of how this integral portion of life to many living in Cairo was transcending the political tumultuousness of this period.

Speaking with Egyptian activists highlighted how the revolution is being used as a means to expand upon work that was already being done before the revolution—Egyptians are not just continuing their lives during this period: they are further advancing social advocacy goals.  Meeting with a lawyer from a freedom of expression organization exemplified this, as his organization has been working to advance its mission since several years before the revolution began; following the revolution, it simply has more work.  For me, this created an element of continuity that many times is overlooked during a transition, because a sensational account is presented that disregards how there are roots to changes.  Furthermore, in his explanation of his individual cases, he reiterated for me how there are success stories even during what seems to be a tumultuous transition.

I saw this again later in the week when I met the women’s rights activist.  She had been involved in working to initiate a women’s rights movement from a grassroots level as early as the 1980s.  Today, her organization is working to support young women desiring to initiate change.  As with the lawyer, she highlighted for me how there was thought and involvement in these issues starting well before the revolution.  Likewise, she presented me with positives as the lawyer had, as more women are becoming socially active and participating in programs to prepare them for public service.

Both of these meetings helped me recognize just how much revolutions are mystified. Tunisia very much left anyone following the Arab Spring with sense that everything happened overnight.  Yes, the spark did abruptly occur.  However, this undermines the voice of those who had been involved in social activism before any of the revolutions.  It was not that Tahrir suddenly caused a recognition of the state of affairs—it instead provided the opportunity to create a more public, cohesive response to express long-held grievances.

This continuation of daily life despite the transition was further reinforced during my meetings with college students. When meeting with them, our level of comfort with one another and topics of conversations was very similar to ones I have at Columbia.  We sat together laughing, discussing politics, interests, and school during this time that is perceived as so dangerous and imbalanced in Cairo. There was something incredible about meeting them in an informal context that transcended the stereotypes about a transition period.  These students were so calm and collected—for them life moves onwards.

The lives of people living in Cairo are continuing.  Collectively, this trip presented an element of realism to a nation that is reduced to the category of a revolutionary nation.  Although the significance of the overthrow of the Mubarak regime should be highly emphasized—it was so significant—at the same time, it is very important to recognize how life in Cairo has not stopped.  The traffic is still horrendous.  There is bustle in the markets.  Prayer calls continue throughout the day.  More than anything, I want this human perspective of a political transition to stay with me: it left me with hope for Egypt’s future.