Hey, it's a long one here. Feel free to take a look at it in bits.
I am nearing the end of another phase of my work here in Beni Suef. My work in the school will finish at the end of April. The kids keep coming to school, but the beginning of May is all about revision and then writing exams, and I’m not even allowed to be in the school during exams if I wanted to, apparently. Anyway, we have a MCC Europe/Egypt retreat near Alexandria for nearly a week at the beginning of May, and when I get back I won’t have any more work at the school. This means I only have three more weeks there, which seems awfully short. I have come to love the teachers and students I work with and I’ll miss them.
After the one-month conversation class back in January we started a regular English class that will also finish at the end of April. The two levels I teach both have a few more students this time, and that is encouraging as the program seems to be growing slowly. I can’t tell exactly, as I am not a student in my own class, but I feel the classes have been improving slowly over time as I start to understand the material I’m using and how to present it better. I teach my classes on Monday and Thursday nights, and by the time both levels are finished I usually feel really good – I enjoy teaching them.
When I return from the MCC retreat at the beginning of May I’ll teach English in the evenings again until the end of June. There will be three classes a week instead of two to try and fit them into a shorter time frame, but I sense I will need to find something more to do in addition to these classes. I’m pondering this now.
It’s hard to give a full picture of what I have been doing, let alone how it has been affecting me and what I’ve been thinking, but I’ll share some stories and thoughts from this past month and a half or so.
One weekend in Cairo I forgot to bring the keys to the flat where I stay when I’m there. Shoot. Luckily there was an extra set I could borrow, but this extra set only had a key for the door to the flat, not the key for the door to the building, but I wasn’t too concerned as I hadn’t seen that door closed in all my visits to Cairo over the months.
Well, after a long day of being with friends and doing things in Cairo I arrived back at the flat quite late, perhaps 1:30 or 2 am, and found the door to the building locked. No way. Of all the times for somebody to close this door. My flat is on the second floor, and there are many windows and two balconies, so I wandered around the outside of the building, cursing to myself in the dark, trying to see if any of them were open, or if I could even climb up to them in the first place. Meanwhile I was worried what somebody might do if they saw me, looking an awful lot like a thief, sneaking around the place. After many minutes of frustration and anxiety (would I end up sleeping in the bushes?) I remembered that I had left the door to one of the balconies partly open when I left the flat earlier in the day – and there was a pipe running up the side of the building to that balcony. After carefully avoiding some glass shards embedded in the ledge below the balcony to keep people from doing just what I was doing, I climbed onto the balcony to find the shutters open, but the wood-framed doors with glass panes locked. With a little pushing and grunting, some cracking of wood, I forced the door and only cracked one of them a little bit bypassing the lock. Whoops. Quite an adventure to end an already long and exciting day.
One of the Egyptian families I know is trying to find a husband for their eldest daughter. When a guy is found who might do the trick, they invite him and his family over for a chance to meet and for their daughter to see this guy and decide if she likes him or not. Of course it seems awfully strange to me, an arranged meeting, and the daughter possibly not really knowing the suitor much at all before seeing him with his family at the meeting. I had the privilege of being invited to one of these meetings where we all waited anxiously for the guests to arrive, and when they did we paraded upstairs to the sitting room where we drank tea, cola, ate fruit and other sweets and I watched as these people who didn’t really know each other all that well tried to make conversation. Both the daughter and the suitor were obviously a little anxious about the whole thing. Gosh, I was trying to picture going through such a thing, the anxiety I would feel while meeting this person I might marry, and having to decide whether I like them or not based on a few meetings. I’m still learning about how this all works. This is not always the way it is done here in Egypt, by the way, as traditions are different among different families or different parts of the country. It was just one way, a small part of which I got to experience.
My bicycle is making it into the journals again. Let me reiterate how grateful I am to have a bicycle at all, but the reality of its tired condition can’t be ignored. So anyway, the back tire was out of commission for some time and I didn’t have the chance to bike to where I wanted to go, which is my main source of exercise. Instead, I started to take walks along the roads in the countryside around the retreat center. Especially after eating a meal I have realized how lovely it is to walk down the road among the crops, donkeys, cows and carts, soaking in the sun and taking some time to think about my experiences and feel good about getting some exercise. Even after I got my bike fixed I tried to keep up this habit a bit, as I was reminded of how refreshing it is to go for a walk. Go figure.
A last note on the bike is that our long and tumultuous relationship has come to an end. A large dent in crossbar split into crack, and I fear the bike will split in half while I am in the middle of a crowded Beni Suef street. I think it’s time to buy a new one.
I ate a pigeon! I didn’t really like it that much, to be honest. The meat was dark and apparently the organs are the “best part”, and I was thus encouraged to eat them. But when I told the teachers at school about this culinary experience they asked if it was stuffed or not. Well no, it wasn’t, and this is apparently why it didn’t really like it. The bird is awfully small – it seemed a lot of work to pry the thin pieces of meet from the fragile bones considering the time it took to cook the thing. This is why people usually stuff them with a mixture of rice and then you actually feel like you’re eating something. Maybe I’ll get a chance to eat a stuffed pigeon and the meal will be redeemed. To ease my conscience after I ate it, and had to be honest that I didn’t really like it that much, one of my Egyptian friends agreed that he wasn’t a big fan either. That made me feel better.
I also had a noteworthy horseback riding experience. A friend told me had seen an advertisement for a horse stable, so we went off in search of it together. It took some time to find it, as nobody seems to know about his place, but we did indeed finally arrive.
My friend told the guys at the stables that we wanted some strong horses, because we both had images of running free and wild in the desert on our mighty steeds. Neither of us had much riding experience, but we had a desire for some adventure.
I really wanted to gallop with my horse. I have been on horses before, but have never been on a galloping one. I tried all I could think of to convince my horse to run, but he seemed entirely content to walk and ignore my pokings, proddings and yellings. Fine, I resigned myself to the idea that we would just explore the desert a bit in a peaceful walk..
Then out of the blue my fair steed decided he was ready to run. Off he went, trotting across the plain without me having done anything different that I could tell. I was excited to finally be carrying some speed and certainly didn’t discourage him. It was terribly bouncy and I felt I might come off the horse. The saddle was very simple, without a saddle horn and the stirrups were thin metal loops. My shoes were too wide for the stirrups, and would either sit partly in or all the way in if I really pushed them, but I feared my feet would not come out if I did indeed come flying off this jittery horse. Anyway, the trot was exciting because I had to fight every bump to keep in the middle of the saddle rather than on the ground.
Then he started to pick up more speed, he started to gallop, and it was quite something. It was as if everything suddenly became background and it was just me and this horse, gliding along. Really, it was so smooth when he galloped, I could finally let got of the saddle and just hold the reigns. I felt like I was charging into battle, flying across the land, it was incredible.
At first I trusted the horse to decide where to go, but it soon became apparent that he was simply interested in running, not thinking about the next step. This soon proved problematic as the desert was full of hills of rock and sand with flat bits and roads winding among them. My horse was charging along a flat bit, but we were soon coming to a dead end where every direction led to a rather steep decline down a pile of sand and rock. No where to go, ah!! And the horse was making no sign of slowing down. I got mental pictures of him galloping full speed over one of these slopes and me going flying. So I try to gather up the reigns and pull him in, and we managed to stop just on the edge of a plunge.
Then he wouldn’t move. I didn’t have a clue what to do to, but to talk to my horse in Arabic (as I guessed he probably doesn’t speak English), encouraging him, telling him how wonderful he was, how much fun I had, and how we were going to have more fun, but he needed to turn around and walk some more. Finally, after a minute or two of not moving he seemed to listen to my words, turned around, and we walked back to where my friend was riding with some of the other guys from the stable. They all thought I had used my horseback riding skills to go racing across the desert intentionally, I found out later from my friend.
This was the pattern for the rest of the hour. Walk a bit, no hope getting my horse to move faster, then him suddenly bolting around like a crazy beast, nearly throwing me from his back with the jolts as I tried to grab the reigns and stop him from running off a huge drop and killing us both.
Finally my foot came out of the stirrup as we turned a corner and I went for a dive in the sand. The horse trotted happily off back to the stable, and I walked along behind it, relating my adventures to the rest of the group when they finally arrived to see me walking, on my own legs, back to the stable. I wouldn’t willingly do it again, but it was a thrilling adventure in the moment.
Another afternoon Keith had constructed this kite with his children. He invited me to join them as they found a taxi to take us out of town along a desert road (he must have thought we were a little ‘off’), and had a great time. The one bump along the way was that the kite broke during the taxi ride as it was sitting on the roof rack. We conducted an emergency surgery procedure on the kite, Keith, the taxi driver, and I, on top of the trunk with some tape and a stick found in the sand. Everything worked out in the end, and it was delightful to watch the kids take such joy in the kite. I don’t know why, exactly, but flying a kite is simply a lovely experience. I felt so refreshed after being able to spend that time with Keith and Sofia and their kids.
Speaking of Keith and Sofia we started watching season 2 of ‘24’ on the weekends. I didn’t have time to come for every episode, but they would fill me on what I had missed and we would sit on the edge of our seats together for hours and watch Jack Bauer fight the forces of evil. It’s been great.
Lastly, I had a memorable moment with the kids at school. During their 20 minute break in the morning I try to go into one of the classes and play a game, teach some fun words, or just chat with the kids. Well, one day with the grade 6 students they wanted to sing their Egyptian mother’s day song for me (it was gong to be mother’s day the next day). They did this, and it was fun as they all chimed in together, but the fun didn’t end there. Once they got some momentum they started singing other Egyptian songs, and it didn’t take before the more outgoing students were dancing, the rest of us making a circle around them and clapping along with the beat. It was so awesome, these kids singing and dancing with huge smiles, and we started to draw a crowd of other students and some of the cleaning ladies who came in from the hall when they hear our party. I will treasure this moment, because it just happened and there was such joy on everybody’s face.
I went through a phase in late February and the beginning of March when I was having trouble enjoying my days here in Beni Suef. I couldn’t help but think of all the things that were bothering me about living here, and I wanted to be with my friends and family in Canada. It was hard to be positive during this time. However, I seem to have climbed out of that particular rough patch and am finding joy in my life here again. It has helped tremendously to have some new experiences lately, heading to Cairo a couple of weekends to see the other MCC workers, experiencing palm Sunday, passion weeks, and the easter weekend here in Beni Suef, and taking a trip to Luxor. My perspective and thoughts are constantly changing throughout this year, and it is not so surprising, in retrospect, that I went through a phase of more negative perspective and thoughts. I have a lot of hope that the coming three weeks will be great as I spend my last days at the school and wrap up this session of courses. I look forward to the MCC retreat in May and to the new schedule I’ll have in May and June.
I will certainly have to write about my Easter and Luxor experiences, but they just happened and I’ll get to it in a bit.
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