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.

Slow Down and Breathe Every Now and Then

The following is a guest post from AUA Mosaic Fellowship recipient Ryan Rivera. He 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!

You have the heavy traffic: congestion that can be slower than the pedestrians walking by and taxis constantly driving by, seeing if you need a ride.  Lane changes are spontaneous, car horns are used more often than blinkers, and the only limit on speed is how well you can maneuver through traffic.   You have the shop keepers: various people selling almost the same thing but still finding a way to convince you that theirs is better than the other guy’s.  You have uniformed officers policing the public areas and streets, be it on foot or in a vehicle.  No, I’m not referring to Cairo here, although such descriptions could hold true.  If anything, there are only two conditions that control the taxi drivers of  New York and Cairo.  One is that New York has stop lights and cross walks and the other is that Cairo has innumerable cars, people and animals occupying the streets.  But this anecdote about the similarities I’ve noticed after returning from Egypt is but one of many.  As days passed and I resumed my routine at Columbia, more and more of the comparisons become apparent, both similar and dissimilar alike, between life in Egypt and life in the United States.

And even still, it is near impossible for me to communicate every minute detail of comparison.  When I am asked, “was Egypt cool?”  or “how different was Cairo?”, I find myself stumbling over the various reasons I could give for why I liked it.  There are the little things, such as how relaxed the atmosphere felt.  It was not uncommon to see people smoking from a Shishah outside at the tea shop at all hours of the day, nor was it stressful for the students at the American University in Cairo (AUC) to come spend an evening with us, eating Koshari and drinking tea, the night before they had a midterm exam.  But there are other things, such as how friendly the Egyptian people were.  When we met with the NGO groups and the university students, we were welcome every time.  Not once were we rushed through a meeting, unless we ourselves were running behind on a schedule, and the AUC students who we were originally only supposed to meet with on one evening, offered to meet up with us again throughout the week, and suggested some great places for us all to meet for dinner.

Nowhere else though did I feel more welcome than at the Sisters of Charity Orphanage.  Although the women caretakers did not understand at first why a group of Americans wanted to work in their neighborhood, it was clear that they appreciated the extra help.   Thankfully we had Aiya on our trip who was able to speak in Arabic to the women we were working with, explaining what we were doing in Egypt and why we were volunteering.  We were an extra pair of hands to feed, pick up, sooth, and play with the children since there were usually only 2, maybe 3, women in a room of almost 20 kids. We were able to form bonds with the children of the orphanage, communicating not with words but with tones, expressions, and actions, and a few of the children would cry when we had to leave at the end of the morning.  Our volunteer project not only taught me how to feed a baby without making a mess, or to say “Bring me the ball” in Arabic, but it allowed for a personal interaction between us, the children, and the staff of the Sisters of Charity Orphanage.

As I reflect upon the amazing experience I had in Egypt, I realize how easy it is to forget about the world outside of Columbia, outside your immediate happenings.  I find my self returning to the busy schedule of classes, work, exams, meetings, etc., and I realize how New York and this ambitious, fast-paced culture, could learn from the Middle East.  Everyone has work, and everyone has obligations, but at the same time we should be able to slow down and breathe every now and then, to sit on the side walk with a mint-flavored shishah, a pot of tea and bread, and talk with friends.  It is in revisiting my thoughts, pictures, and discussion of the trip that I keep contemplating what my next experience will be, what area of the world presents an interesting opportunity to learn and grow, be it Egypt, the Middle East, or elsewhere, and how can I get people involved and have the opportunity to have a similar experience as I have had.

A Familiar Trip With New Reactions

The following is a guest post from AUA Mosaic Fellowship recipient Christine Choi. 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!

By now, my family and friends are old hands at sending me off to various locations around the Middle East.  Where my first trips to Fes and Cairo generated a flurry of concerned e-mails, phone calls and lengthy discussions—I quickly developed a point-by-point strategy for addressing concerns ranging from kidnappings to proposals—my announcement of my recent spring break trip was instead greeted with responses of resigned acceptance (“Again?” my grandfather replied) or muted enthusiasm (“Cairo! Jealous.  More of your research stuff?” texted back my high school best friend).

Upon our return, after waking up at an unseemly hour due to jetlag, I called my mother—thankfully an early riser—to check in.  She has for years indulged my long rambles about the places I’ve just returned from, but this time around, it was different. When I began to describe the environment of Garbage City and the way in which many of the residents there make their living through the collection of trash, she pushed for more details about the system of collection and the production of sustainable crafts at the Association for the Protection of the Environment, one of the NGOs in the neighborhood we had visited.  And when I began to discuss the difficult work of taking care of, playing with and feeding the young children at the orphanage, especially infants, she laughed and we debated at length the best techniques for getting stubborn kids to finish meals.  She’s always been interested (or skillfully feigns interest) in what I have to say about where I’ve been and the people I’ve met, but by transmitting my experience through the weight of the social issues we’d witnessed and certain shared elements of human interaction—particularly working with kids, an issue that resonates with her as a parent and a children’s librarian—she was, I believe, able to experience my retelling not just as rehashed narration of where I’d been and what I’d seen, but able to undergo and more vividly imagine, in a small way, the trip for herself.

That’s what makes trips and service such as ours so compelling and so important for more people to take on.  Traveling to places such as Cairo not only “normalizes” the individuals who live there—just as you may normalize or diversify the notion of what an American looks like to your new friends—but also normalizes the challenges the communities there face.  As I’ve mentioned many times before, media representations of the region convey circumstances of violent social upheaval, dangerous and militant milieus and seemingly intractable systems of social oppression.  And yet, when you see that there also exists the need for volunteers to feed children and hang up laundry, or you tour classrooms and are greeted by choruses of “Hello! How are you?  What’s your name?” or get a chance to chat with some local peers, you see that the challenges and issues they face are, in many respects, much the same.  There exists a need for greater support systems for children and education in all places around the world; there are teenagers trying to navigate the social environment in every city you go to; there are difficulties regarding the environment and sustainable infrastructure in all countries.  By visiting and serving in places such as Cairo, even if only for a short time, you are not only able to diminish the distance between yourself and the people who live there, but experience, if only briefly, their challenges—after which you will inevitably conclude that, in many ways, they’re not so different from ours.  And even now, more than a week since my return and the inevitable fading of sensory memories accelerates, small daily activities such as the Facebook updates from our AUC friends, the e-mails I’ve sent to Gihan, a women’s rights activist who talked with us, or the arrangement of volunteer opportunities at an Association of the Protection of the Environment crafts sale here in New York City in May through a HANDS board member help sustain the experience, making that short week a now inseparable part of all of our lives.

How To Tell a Story About Another Place

The following is a guest post from AUA Mosaic Fellowship recipient Laura Mills. 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!

Despite the flurry of midterms and thesis deadlines that hit us right before our trip to Egypt, the Kony 2012 video was something no one could quite avoid. It spurred virulent debate across the country, raising questions about how to portray the suffering of others and how to galvanize support for tragedy.

Strangely enough, this was something constantly on my mind before my trip to Egypt: I had never been to the Middle East before, and I was terrified that I would simplify things by bringing home a shorthand, fun-size version of my experiences. How would I tell my friends about the city? Was photographing children in a poor neighborhood wrong? Was it better or worse that I looked away from beggars outside our shiny tour bus? I wanted to show people both the National Museum and the barefoot man atop the fruit truck who tossed our driver an orange; both the delicious kebabs we had eaten and the pick-up truck piled with unconscious cattle, their necks swaying nauseatingly with every lurch of the vehicle. But how does anyone strike that balance?

I still don’t know the answer to the question, but I’ve found out something else instead: the hardest (and yet most wonderful) part of writing and talking about Cairo has been capturing the joy and the hopefulness of people there, not the difficulties they face. The people we spoke to were proud of their democratic accomplishments, excited about the upcoming presidential elections, and truly believed in the prospects of civilian government in Egypt. When I told this to an analyst at the NGO where I work, he was bemused. He was armed with all the analysis that gave him a more tempered, pessimistic outlook, and he only had a few words for me after our talk: “You must have spoken to a very particular group of Egyptians.”

And I won’t deny that my experiences are limited and unrepresentative, and that I was only there for a week. But I still believe that the only point of traveling to another place is capturing what is illogical, magical, and transcendent—everything you can’t get in the pages of a newspaper or a yearly analytical report. Nothing could make me forget the Egyptians’ hopefulness, their happiness, and their joy, and I’ll never stop rambling about it, even (or perhaps especially) to those who don’t want to believe me.

This year, I read Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Dead House for the first time. This semi-memorial piece can arguably be labeled a work about human rights—it captures the harrowing experiences of men in a Siberian prison camp for the average reader in Moscow. But much of the beauty of Dostoevsky’s work lies in his emphasis on the small, daily joys of the prisoners: they delight in hot ginger bread, they put on a play at Christmas, they give affectionate pet-names to the animals that wander into the prison yard. And it is these small joys that not only make life livable, but also make these men fully realized and truly human characters to readers back home.

Egypt is no Siberian prison camp—there are definitely a lot more things to be happy about in today’s Cairo than in 19^th-century Omsk. But Dostoevsky’s work taught me, in whatever small way, how to attempt a truthful rendering of a people and a land that are so casually distanced from daily life. People are people anywhere, with both their suffering and their joy. And all I can do is write about that with as much honesty as I can muster.

Two Different Countries – But We’re All Alike

The following is a guest post from AUA Mosaic Fellowship recipient Nicolas Miyares. He 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!

It’s hard to imagine that just last week I was halfway around the world in Egypt. The moment I stepped off the plane in the JFK airport, I fell right back into my college routine of excessive studying and eating a whole lot of pizza (the stereotype that college kids eat nothing but pizza is very, very true). By Wednesday (we arrived back in New York City on Saturday night), I was already so re-acclimated to college life—the endless meetings, the studying, and the lack of sleep—that when people asked me about Spring Break, I felt as if it all happened a long time ago. But it didn’t. The memories are still vivid and the story is still fresh; so when my friends eagerly asked me to tell them how I spent my time in Cairo, I was more than ready.

My closest friends—all action-craving guys—wanted to hear if I had been in any imminent danger or whether the region was as unsafe and unstable as the media outlets portray it. So they were a bit disappointed to hear that Cairo (at least the parts of Cairo we saw) felt relatively safe. Of course, we were only there for a week; but during that time I never felt particularly threatened. The constant sight of armored vehicles and military personnel took some getting used to, but overall, things seemed pretty tame. It was actually the sense of normalcy that surprised me the most about Cairo. A revolution that toppled a 30+ year–long regime was toppled only a bit more than 12 months ago. Since then, a council of the highest-ranking military officers has been ruling Egypt, much to the disapproval of many of Egypt’s revolutionaries. Although I didn’t expect to witness the instability that defined 2011 for Egypt, I certainly didn’t expect to see hardly any of it.

But what actually struck me the most about Cairo and its people was the fact that they are just like us. When I was a kid, I used to play with my globe and think of all the far-away lands I would one day venture through and the exotic, interesting people I would meet along the way. Now that I’m an adult with a passport full of stamps and visas, I’ve come to realize that while each culture and nation has its idiosyncrasies - humans in general - are nevertheless mostly the same. The college and English students (from the English conversation class we attended at the US Embassy) we met, for example, shared our same interests—they had similar social and political concerns and shared similar professional aspirations. In the Garbage District, where the zabbaleen make a living foraging through trash looking for recyclable goods, we found a community of people who placed a strong emphasis on education, business, and family.

I used to marvel at the enormity of the world and the sheer number of different cultures and people that inhibit it; now I marvel at how small the world truly is and how we’re all so very much alike. Our trip to Cairo only reinforced this notion, and I can’t wait to share it.

Connecting Through Shared Nationalities

The following is a guest post from AUA Mosaic Fellowship 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!

“Welcome to Cairo,” echoes the pilot.

Exiting the terminal, our jobs as America’s Unofficial Ambassadors began. Here we were, a group of 8 students representing America to Egypt. Not that we came with a detailed political agenda, but what we did and said was all some Egyptians got to see of the West. As we got onto our bus, the guide was amazed that I spoke Arabic.

“You’re Egyptian?”

With a smile, I nodded, and he was at ease. Perhaps due the comfort of sharing a nationality, he immediately asked me detailed questions about our trip. He had stopped himself from asking the others, scared he would be asking too much, or miscommunicate in his efforts and not make much sense. He was surprised that we had left the busy streets of New York during our school break to come and volunteer in the streets of Cairo, which he thought – and correctly so – most people considered “too dangerous.” It brought him joy that we were coming, even though we weren’t coming as tourists, because the past few months have been rough on the tourism industry. I was able to explain our mission in coming, the genuine helping hand we were offering, and in doing so, already dissolved his stereotype of who Americans are. This interaction allowed me to foster an understanding, even if on a small level, between the two cultures.

For me, I too gained an appreciation of my cultural identity, a surprising outcome of this trip I was not necessarily expecting. Even on our first day at the orphanage, the women were surprised that I spoke Arabic. They thought Arab-Americans would not be concerned with preserving Middle Eastern culture. After being somewhat relieved that this is not at all the case, they asked a dozen questions about our trip in just a few minutes. The focus of these scenarios, however, is not my Arabic fluency, but what the Egyptians told me and may not have told the rest of my group. Two of the women at the orphanage similarly questioned our choice of location, the motives behind our trip, what we hoped to gain, and of course, why just a week? These conversations and the answers I provided perhaps taught me more about our group as a whole versus teaching the women who asked the questions. They clarified our mission and gave the trip a stronger meaning for us as a collective group.

Our time at the orphanage is only for four days and although we will do our best to play with the children, feed them, put them to sleep or stop them from crying, I think more of what the orphanage means for us is the perspective it allows us to take hold of. The orphanage is located in one of the poorest towns around the globe, and centering on garbage collection, is far from being the most healthy environment. Our experience reminded us of the difficulties involved with living in a poverty-stricken environment, and how this may shape our interactions with the respective town’s inhabitants. The garbage community ultimately served to highlight the impact of social conditions on individual perspectives, and by volunteering our time there, we learned to appreciate and understand the differences between those people and ourselves.

While it’s a blessing that these children have a place to sleep, eat, and play, it is difficult to grasp the idea that they need so much more. Children with developmental problems are unable to receive the adequate care and attention they need, but better something than nothing.  One of the workers at the orphanage had reminded us that by giving up the hours of our mornings, we are giving some of these children the emotional personal attention they usually are missing as they grow. It made me realize the universality of what we were doing. Replace this orphanage with any other in a poor town around the world – what we were doing transcended cultural values, what we were doing was a human to human interaction. Americans and Egyptians alike, helping humanity with the time and resources we had.

Although one may think otherwise, from what I’ve seen in just a matter of days, the people of Egypt, even in the garbage community, are full of a distinctive hope that their respective situations will get better, that Egypt indeed will restore itself.  It was inspiring to see that they are able to carry on with their lives with a vigor that, cliche as it sounds, money can’t buy. No matter how bad their socio-economic situation, the Egyptians never failed to hide their smiles.

US Embassy in Cairo, Where Impressions are Everything

The following is a guest post from AUA Mosaic Scholarship recipient Ryan Rivera. He 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!

It was Wednesday afternoon when our group had planned a meeting at the US Embassy in Cairo with the English Conversation Club. This group was a group of Egyptians from all levels of English proficiency who met regularly to practice their verbal skills while discussing various topics and issues. This group was college aged and older, and mostly male, but still held a wide range of opinions and beliefs.

This was the first time I had been to a US Embassy abroad and I was extremely taken aback by the level of security and the immensity of the building.  Many of the other embassies were converted, classical Egyptian building and did not carry the same air of intimidation that I felt from the US embassy. Before we could reach the library of the embassy we had to pass through three levels of security, and were pretty much not allowed to bring anything into the building.  As I passed through this maze of walls, security check points, and military guards, I couldn’t help but wonder what kind of impression this gave to people about America as a country and Americans as a people, especially if they have never had an interaction with either of the two.  At least during this brief conversation that we were about to engage in, I hoped to show a different, more personable side of the American people than what may be conveyed from our embassy.

There were probably about twenty Egyptians who had come to the meeting to converse and discuss comparisons between Egypt and America, as well as the direction of the post-revolution country in all regards: politically, socially, and religiously.  We told them about our time volunteering at the Sisters of Charity Orphanage in Mukattam, a facility which helps the Zeballeen, a primarily Coptic Christian, garbage collecting community.  This sparked a brief discussion about the immense separation between Egypt’s rich and poor, and how opportunities are not as available for low income families as they are in America.  We also discussed the recent discovery of the New York Police Department’s surveillance of Muslims, including the monitoring of Columbia University student groups.  This topic inspired a mutual frustration and disgust at such measures, where both we as non-Muslim Americans and the Muslim Egyptians, could agree that this governmental action was completely out of line and uncalled for, supporting post 9/11 racism and Islamophobia.  We briefly touched on the ethnic groups of Egypt in comparison to the diversity of America.  But our conversations didn’t focus entirely on such weighted political issues.  As the discussion progressed, we broke off into smaller groups to have more intimate discussions.  The group I was with focused on Egyptian universities and higher education, allowing me to discuss my experience as a Biology major at Columbia in relation to their experiences.

Touring the Association for the Protection of the Environment

Overall, from this single experience and many other’s like it, I have seen glimpses of the Middle East, a view which is not shadowed or influenced by the terrorism of 9/11 or the revolutions of the Arab Spring.  I hope to go back to the US and share this discussion, giving them an alternative view of the Arab people as I have been introduced to.

Similarities in Goals Amaze Me

The following is a guest post from AUA Mosaic Scholarship recipient Rubii Pham. She is currently 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!

Cairo is an unforgettable city. From dawn until dusk, the traffic never stops and neither do the people. They work to carve out for themselves a place in this hectic city of 20 million. The recycling school we visited in Mukkatam is the embodiment of that spirit, albeit it being a school in a very non-traditional sense of the word. Like a typical elementary school, there are small children learning multiplication tables and reciting vocabularies in Arabic, but in this place women can also come to learn how to weave and make other arts and crafts as a vocation in order to help them sustain their livelihood. They collect papers from offices and schools from all over the city, then mix them with water and dry them on a wooden screen in order to make sheets of thick, durable paper. With this “recycled” paper, they create beautiful hand made cards, paintings, and small jewelry. The process of producing this paper is not easy, but the women cheerily chatted on while they worked and even invited me to join in to help them make the paper.

Touring classes at APE.

There were not enough tables and chairs for every child; some classes were even held outside with only a tarp for a roof. However, what struck me was not the sparse structures and limited of the school but the enthusiasm of the students. In one classroom, the students were learning English, with the simple English words like “watermelon” and “woman” written on the black board. When we passed by to say hi, the children eagerly waved back and excitedly practiced their hellos and how are yous.  Their warm hospitality reminds me that the more I travel of the world, the more I realize it is often not the differences in people’s goals that amazes me, but rather the similarities. Whether Egyptians or Americans, we all simply want to learn and to connect with others.

It was important to see that people in underprivileged communities are not completely helpless like they are often portrayed in the media. Even though life is hard, they have means and agencies of their own to help themselves to escape the poverty they were born in to. They have dreams, aspirations, and lives far more complex than any half-hour “slum tour” could ever depict. Cairo has become an unforgettable chapter in my life, for the warm reception and generosity that I’ve received from these strangers that have quickly become friends. This is a trip that I will never forget.