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.

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.

How Acquaintances Become Friends and Fellow Nations Become Allies

The following is a guest post from AUA Mosaic Scholarship recipient Shayna Orens. 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!

In our meetings with college students, I recall hearing my Egyptian peers ask, more than once, if Americans think Egyptians ride camels to school. They usually proceeded to tell me that they had never ridden a camel or even visited the pyramids.

They were equally shocked when I told them how much I hate going to Times Square and that I’ve never been inside the Empire State Building even though I live in New York City.

Even though we sat down to talk about politics, democracy, and revolution, we spent more time talking about cultural implications of soccer and whether American high schools really have jocks and cheerleaders.

I guess it’s necessary to acknowledge that we go to a very diverse and very liberal University in a very diverse and very liberal city. Being in Cairo has made me see American perceptions of the Middle East in a completely different light—in ways I never saw back home. It is so ironic to realize that cultural stereotypes are embedded in popular culture and media everywhere.

Whether it’s through Disney movies or television news, Americans are conditioned to look at the Middle East in a certain way. I know my first “exposure” to Middle Eastern culture was the movie Aladdin. It’s one of my favorite movies from my childhood, but it also imposes so many stereotypes about Arabs: that they ride camels, have genies in lamps, live in palaces, or have pet monkeys. When I visited Saudi Arabia and had to wear a hijab, someone commented on the photo, saying, “you look like Princess Jasmine.” I don’t actually look like princess Jasmine… I just looked “middle eastern” because I was wearing a headscarf.

I never realized that people might see Americans through this type of skewed perspective. I attended an arts high school that had no sports teams or high school “cliques.” We didn’t have a prom queen, and that shocked my peers in Egypt.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to be an unofficial ambassador. I’m realizing that it’s not just about what I’m doing here and now on the ground in Cairo. I feel like it’s up to us to not only break down stereotypes about Americans while here, but to go home and let people know that the Middle East is not what we see on the news and in movies. Yes there are terrorists. But there are terrorists in other places too. Many years ago, Egyptians may have ridden camels to school in rural places. But today, camel riding is mainly a tourist attraction.

It’s also about realizing how similar we are, and that these similarities, despite many differences, warrant respect and friendship. I talked with one student who wanted to study literature but knew he’d be more likely to find a job as an engineer. I face the same dilemma as a humanities major at Columbia. I appreciate my liberal education even more because I know it’s a privilege.

By our third outing with college students, all the initial awkwardness was gone. That’s because we took the time to break away the stereotypes and really got to know one another. As peace-builders, this is indispensable. On both sides of the table, we have to ask the obvious questions and get cultural stereotypes and filters out of the way. That’s how acquaintances become friends and how fellow nations become allies.

 

Off to Egypt: Christine’s Pre-Departure Thoughts

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

Ahlan wa sahlan, dear readers, to the Columbia Cairo Trip blog.

This trip has been a long time in the making—nearly four years, if we’re counting.  Back in 2009, while I was interning for HANDS, a Washington, DC NGO that supports health and education projects throughout Egypt, I worked with a number of socioeconomically marginalized communities in Cairo, including the zabbaleen, a Coptic community that lives in on the outskirts of the city and makes their living collecting trash.

Then, this past August, I traveled to Cairo for a Columbia research project and reached out to Jennifer Cate, the director of HANDS, for some assistance.  After my return, as we were sipping shai and catching up, she mentioned that HANDS was looking into resuming their educational trips to Egypt that had been halted as a result of the revolution.  Six months of brainstorming, paperwork and applications later, and we had a group of eight Columbia students ready to head to Cairo in a week’s time.

But beyond the thousand and one administrative details that needed to be accounted for during that time, I also needed to find a way to balance the current “trendiness” of the Arab Spring against long-term and sustainable project goals.  Throughout 2011, widespread protests fueled by perceptions of socioeconomic injustice (including those here in the U.S. with the various Occupy movements) were attractive to participants, the media and observers alike due to their high visibility, emotional content and the perceivable sense of “justice” motivating their activity.  But in what way could this trip be organized so as to present a deeper view beyond the headlines?  Just as “war tourism” only presents a superficial understanding of a country’s military conflicts, I didn’t want this trip to end up being “revolution tourism”—but also didn’t want to deny the impact it has had.  HANDS’ pre-revolution trips to Egypt had always been about intercultural understanding by providing Americans with an alternate view into the struggling communities that they partner with.  This seemed like the perfect intersection: how has the revolution affected marginalized communities that HANDS works with?  And how could we provide some form of direct, short-term service while also learning more about the long-term impact of the revolution and its effect on communities? 

With these considerations in mind, we decided to focus on an orphanage in one of HANDS’ partner communities, the Sisters of Charity Orphanage in Mukattam, the zabbaleen neighborhood.  While there, we’ll be assisting the nuns who run the orphanage in daily activities, such as feeding the children, as well as providing emotional support through playtime and interactive programs.  Foreign volunteers have been scarce as a result of travel scares, and in this respect, we’ll be providing much-needed direct service.  In turn, as we’ll be in the Mukattam neighborhood on a regular basis, we’ll also be able to talk with and interact with a religious and socioeconomic minority community, and learn about the change (and lack of change) that has come to their neighborhood with this transitional period.  We’ll also to be meeting with sustainable development NGOs, women’s activists and fellow college students to learn about the experiences they’ve undergone during this period.  We hope to bring back our own experiences to raise awareness in our Columbia community about the issues we witnessed and stories we heard and spur further and sustained discussion.  By doing so, we hope to provide both greatly needed short-term service and long-term awareness.

Of course, it is all too easy to set up these goals on paper and watch them fall to the wayside when we meet the reality of the situation.  Although we’re confident we’re heading to Cairo with open minds, we can’t anticipate everything that will happen while there.  For some of us, it will be quite the culture shock.  No matter how many times you hear descriptions of crowded streets, pollution and public attention, nothing can quite prepare you for the experience of being there.  For others of us who have been to the Middle East, and even to Egypt, we’ll be in neighborhoods we haven’t visited, so the same thing applies: we may hear descriptions of the smell, and watch documentaries about the community, but ultimately we can only go with a willingness to be flexible in the situations that may arise. 

But that’s what we’re here for, and I don’t think we could be more ready or excited.

We’ll all be updating every day during the trip and every few days after we return until the end of the school year, so keep checking back for updates!  Each of our group members will be writing, so you’ll have a wealth of voices to hear from.  In the meantime, ma’asalaamah.

Christine

Mohammad’s Glimpse into the Life of Tanzanian Orphans Infected with HIV/AIDS

The following is a guest post by Mohammad Zia who traveled to Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania in January 2011 and  lived/volunteered with Muslim orphans who were infected with HIV. If you would like to share your story about volunteering in a Muslim-majority country or region on the AUA Volunteer Voices blog, please contact charlotteh@creativelearning.org.

In about thirty hours, I will be landing in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania. This trip will be my first independent, international travel experience. A suitcase full of donations, a carry-on, and an open mind will be accompanying me on this trip. With so much travel time at my disposal, I will get a fruitful opportunity to collect my thoughts and to reflect on my purpose for traveling to Tanzania. During finals week, I was busy with exams and for the last ten days I have been busy packing and planning the technical details of my trip. With the worries of college life behind me, I am eager to begin my journey. My current state of mind is like a dry canvas, waiting to get drenched by the colorful culture, lifestyles, and experiences of the Tanzanian people.

I am eager to learn more about myself and to discover things that will incite me to think about the world around me. The following quote sheds light on my expectations of this independent volunteer abroad experience. “You never know how someone else’s life is like until you take steps in someone else’s shoes.” I am ready and willing to put on a pair of kiatus (Swahili for shoes) so I can get a glimpse of what life is like in Tanzania.

I am excited to work in Dar Es Salaam which is a majority Muslim city that has a rich history. Prior to traveling, I have studied the culture and social setup of Tanzania and there are many social issues that are plaguing Tanzanian society. HIV/AIDs (the leading cause of death in Sub Saharan Africa) and malaria are salient problems that are incessantly affecting people in the developing world. Sadly, the situation continues to deteriorate.

Often times, women and children are the ones who bare the negative impacts of living in an underprivileged nation. I hope to learn about these struggles during my trip to Tanzania. Sitting here in a beautiful airport in one of the most developed countries in the world, all I can do is close my eyes. Close my eyes and imagine. Imagine living in a world without clean water, adequate nutrition, or basic education. I can only imagine. Imagine how it must feel like to witness my friends and family members dying from easily preventable ailments. I can only imagine being an orphan in a developing nation that lacks many basic social safety nets. In a world without amenities, an orphan also doesn’t have access to arguably the most important aspect of a decent childhood-Love. Love often fills the void left by a lack of basic needs in impoverished families. Without basic needs. Without a family. With HIV. Orphans who are victims of HIV in Tanzania are suffering each and every day with a disease that they cannot control. In about twenty-nine hours, this imaginary scenario in my mind will become an everyday reality.

I will be living with a group of young orphans in an urban slum in Dar Es Salaam. I am not afraid of living in poverty because I have been exposed to life in the developing world before. I lived in Pakistan for two months and I saw, firsthand, how poverty affects daily life. I am, however, afraid that I will not be able to connect with the children. The orphans have suffered a lot in their lives and they might not feel comfortable speaking about their life experiences. Also, I am an American and I am unsure of how I will be approached by the Tanzanians based on my nationality. Consequently, I have to work hard to build a strong relationship with the children. This first hand experience of connecting with the children and immersing myself in Tanzanian society will definitely change the way I think about the developing world. I hope that this trip has a profound impact on me as an individual. I hope this trip helps think more critically about global issues.

Tune in on Wednesday to read about Mohammad’s arrival in Tanzania and his initial impressions of the city and people.

20,000 Miles, 1 Volunteer, 230 Kids Made a Dream Come True

Maggie Doyne, a former LEAPNOW volunteer, tells her amazing story about how she helped change the lives of others, as well as her own.