Like a native!

We went to an outdoor cafe tonight, braving the slightly breezy weather. Midway through our time there an Egyptian guy our age came over and started talking to us. Mark was a friendly guy and spoke very good English (had just returned from 3 years in DC). He said he was impressed that I had ordered in Arabic and wanted to find out our background. Now I hadn't said more than 6 or 7 words in Arabic, but apparently it was enough to impress him. I don't think the compliment was really warranted, but still nice :)

We have an Arabic lesson tomorrow. That is the true measure...

Intercultural dialogue

One of the things CEOSS does is promote dialogue between Egyptian Muslims and Christians and between Egyptians and Europeans. One of the Danish meetings the other day was about this program, and CEOSS had brought in someone from the prominent website Islam Online to talk about his experience in dialogue groups. He talked about how he had been scared to interact with Christians and assumed they all thought the same (weird) things. But through involvement in this dialogue he found that some Christians are good people, respect others, don't think he's necessarily a terrorist... etc. A victory for "positive co-existence."

Then, since the group he was talking to was largely Danish, he inevitably turned to the cartoon issue. He emphasized how open he was to dialogue and how good it was to build relationships, but that dialogue will fail if people keep insulting the prophet. In other words, everything is cool if you act according to our rules.

The Danish bishop responded by trying to explain their perspective. 1. Denmark is a free country, where people can say what they want. 2. In a free country religion is sometimes derided, jockingly or otherwise. The newspapers often make remarks about Christians, for example. 3. A lot of newspapers reprinted the cartoons that hadn't the first time in 2006, in an effort to demonstrate solidarity with the cartoonist and his worldview, in effect saying, "If you kill him, you'll have to kill all of us."

The blogger nodded often during the bishop's explanation and didn't say much in response, except to reiterate his point: free speech is fine, just don't do stuff like this.

End result: impasse.

The website

Our major project at CEOSS thus far has been to overhaul the website. (You can see it here.) Well, "overhaul" is perhaps too strong a word; we've rewritten everything, but the website design is still miserable. CEOSS paid a design company far too much money, and got an immutable website template complete with misspellings, broken features, inconsistent formatting, and ridiculous layout. There seems to be nothing we can do about this. It's sad that an organization as competent and admirable as CEOSS has such an unprofessional website.

(One example of former text:

"...The course for girls covers every major aspect of a young woman's life, from child development, nutrition and first aid, choosing a marriage partner and the dangers of early marriage, pregnancy and family planning..."

The unfortunate sentence structure says something we doubt they meant...)

Those pesky Danes

Into the mix of the cartoon controversy comes the visit of a dozen Danish religious leaders and donors. They had been scheduled to visit CEOSS long before the issue re-emerged, and the timing was unfortunate. CEOSS asked (indeed, begged) them to postpone the visit, but the Danes decided to come anyway.

It's true, they probably weren't in mortal danger as long as they weren't stupid, but there were other factors at play here. The policy security that watches over foreign visitors to Upper Egypt refused to protect them. The police chief insinuated that if CEOSS were hosting a Danish group, then CEOSS must agree with the cartoon publishers! Accusations such as this could jeopardize CEOSS' entire mission.

The Danish group is here now, but they are not going to Upper Egypt and they are not visiting any program sites. Instead, CEOSS partners came to HQ to meet with them. Milli and I are hoping to sit in on a meeting tomorrow.

Was it worth it to fly all the way over here and not visit any projects? I suppose they did get to see the pyramids and the Red Sea...

Making "canned" pumpkin

Step One: Lug the pumpkin back home. The smallest pumpkins we could find here for 15 kilos! Luckily, the fruit guy around the corner sells them from time to time, so it's not too far to carry.














Step Two: Hack through the pumpkin in order to cut it into small and more manageable pieces.















Step Three: In multiple batches, boil said pieces until they become tender.
Step Four: Once the pieces cool, peel the thick pumpkin skin off of them.
Step Five: Blend the peeled pumpkin pieces to make pumpkin puree.
















And then you have the stuff of pumpkin pies.

It makes you kind of grateful for canned pumpkin.

$10 if you can put that in your mouth...

Mean streets

I saw an accident yesterday while walking home from the store. A taxi stopped suddenly (presumably to let out its passenger), and a motorcycle slammed into the back. I was just across the street when it happened and one of the first people on the scene – though within a minute there were 20 people there. (I don’t know where they come from. The street was relatively empty.)

They pulled the motorcyclist off his bike, which was lodged under the car. He was limp, not moving. Someone tried to wash some of the blood off his face with a water bottle another person had. The man’s eyes were closed and he wasn’t responding. I wanted to do something, but plenty of people were attending to him. Someone was calling an ambulance.

Just a couple days ago we saw a pedestrian get hit by a taxi. His suitcase flew 20 feet through the air – some indication of the force. This man was conscious at least, though probably had two broken legs. In time he’ll be fine. Though the man last night… I don’t know…

It’s actually surprising that we don’t see this more often. Drivers here are insane, and pedestrians are fearless. Close encounters happen every day. It’s rather miraculous, really, that most of the people in this city are still alive.

And before y’all say anything: yes, we try very hard to not get killed.

Asking to be mugged

Yesterday I road a crowded subway with LE 5,300 in my pockets. That's almost $1,000. (For reference, average annual income in Egypt is about $1,500.) One thick wad filled each of my front pockets. People were pressed up against me the whole time. I kept my hands in my pockets the whole ride.

So why was I carrying so much money in cash? The only way to buy tickets with Egypt Air is to purchase them in the office; their website does not work and they will not sell anything over the phone. Their customer service is astoundingly bad, with each person telling you something different. Each method -- internet, phone, in person -- yields different rates. We use cash to avoid the extortionary fees they hit you with for using a foreign credit card. We were buying six tickets for a flight to Upper Egypt when our family visits in May.

So, lots of cash. I felt much better once I had tickets in my pocket instead of eight months' wages.

High culture

With Japanese financial support, Cairo built a grand opera house 20 years ago to serve as a venue of all types of performance arts. We had been thinking about going for a while and finally did this past weekend. Tickets are heavily subsidized by the Ministry of Culture -- $7 for the best seats in the house! (We should go more often.) We went an hour early to get tickets, but the ticket booth wasn't open until just before the show. Not that you really need to book in advance; it was only half full at most.

We had thought it was the Cairo Symphony Orchestra performing that night, but it turned out to be a string-less wind ensemble. We still enjoyed it very much. The marches and concertos reminded me of stuff I used to play in the high school band (though they were a bit better). They even played music from Indiana Jones! Not the place we expected to find John Williams, but it was great.

Since we were dressed up, we had planned to make an evening of it and go to a nice Thai restaurant. Unfortunately, it was closed -- too early in this evening! By the time they opened at 7:00 we wouldn't have had enough time to eat. Our nice dinner will have to wait for another night.

So instead we sadly walked around looking for food near the opera house, finally finding... KFC. We might have stuck out a bit in our operatic attire...

(Interesting sidenote: this KFC was staffed entirely by deaf employees! They took orders through pointing and hand gestures, and actually communicated pretty well. There was some miscommunication, though, about being charged too much, which required the manager to emerge and actually talk to us. But, all in all, a laudable enterprise.)

The Samuel Habib Award

A couple nights ago we had the distinct privilege of attending an awards ceremony wherein CEOSS annually bestows honor and certificates upon worthy partners in the development field. We were told by our supervisor Medhat that it was an extraordinarily fun event, that everyone dresses up in their best finery, and that the music was wonderful. Oh, and that it would only last 20-30 minutes. Turns out few of those things were true. Many of the men were indeed wearing suits, as I did, but none of the other women had on dresses like Milli's. The music turned out to be a DVD of a Yanni concert, which they let run for almost half an hour! Quite strange (but no on else seemed to think so from our observance). Needless to say, it lasted a bit longer than 20-30 minutes... And it was in Arabic. One of our friends (loudly) translated for us for a bit. The most interesting part was that one of the award recipients was blind and read his acceptance speech with three placards of braille.