An Extended Break

I haven't posted in a while partially because I have been busy with classes beginning and partially because, again with classes beginning, we haven't been up to anything too interesting. My classes are still going well. I think I am going to like the Sunday, Monday, Wednesday, Thursday schedule.

For my Intro to Development class, I met with the NGO Nahdet El-Mahrousa (which is literally translated as "The Renaissance of Egypt"). The meeting was basically an orientation where we were given information about the NGO and its projects and functions. From what I can tell, it seeks to promote development in Egypt both through educating the youth and through aiding young Egyptians with development plans. The NGO has many arms, one of which is focused on scholarships, another of which is dedicated to an innovation competition among college students, and another of which helps college students network for internship and employment opportunities. Nahdet El-Mahrousa does not guarantee that innovation projects will be sponsored or that individuals will be hired; it simply encourages young Egyptians and aids them in getting their ideas to the forefront, either through innovation or through work in a specific job. It also has programs, such as the one I will be working most extensively with Ana Masry, which seek to promote tolerance among young Egyptians. I think the goal of the NGO is education of Egyptian young people. Through this education, young Egyptians will be more likely to be interested in fostering Egypt's development. Through Nahdet El-Mahrousa such young Egyptians with these interests will be able to move their tolerant, progressive ideas forward. After the holiday after Ramadan, I will be meeting with a representative from Ana Masry.

I have also signed up to teach English as a foreign language to refugees. The program is one night a week at campus, and I am excited for that to get underway in October.

I think most things will get underway in October as (and yes, this is both true and shocking what I am about to say) AUC has suspended classes until October 4. We were supposed to have a holiday from September 18 to September 22, but because the Egyptian government has closed all public schools in the country and has been putting pressure on AUC (a private university to close) due to health concerns regarding swine flu, the decision was made yesterday to cancel classes beginning today and ending October 3. The university will be open and will continue to operate. I think this is somewhat of a power play we are witnessing because AUC did not want to close (and rightfully so as I do not think there are many students sick), but was ultimately subjected to governmental pressure. It really shows who runs the show here, both public and private. So, AUC cancelled classes but I think it is an affront to the government that it is remaining open.

The closing of the university also showed me firsthand the spinning ways of the Egyptian media. My mom told me that online sources in the US spoke of online classes being organized. While other universities may be doing this and while it is true that there is an online sight where professors can post assignments and communicate with students, professors were given no where near enough time to organize anything. When I checked the site today, nothing new had been posted for any of my classes. I think most professors are upset about the way things were handled, and I can definitely understand that.

Most students on the other hand, especially study abroad students, are excited. We are using the time to travel. Tomorrow night/Saturday morning we are leaving for a Nile cruise to Luxor and Aswan. These were our plans before classes were suspended. We have been busy planning what we will do when we return however, because we will have 10-11 days left of our break. We are planning to go to Dahab, Petra, and Amman (and possibly other places along the way). We would be bussing or ferrying everywhere so costs for transportation will be fairly low. Soon we'll be figuring out our other accommodations and more specific details. It's all happening so fast! I'm both nervous and excited, and I think it will be a wonderful experience. I don't think I will have access to a computer on this excursion, but after our two plus week adventure is over, I will be sure to post everything about our trip!

...but after Ramadan...

Classes have officially begun at the American University in Cairo...kind of. I say this jokingly because like it affects everything else, Ramadan effects the school. Our classes have been shortened for the first two weeks to allow for a midday break at Iftar (literally breakfast, around 6:30PM when Muslims break their fast). Most students have enjoyed this, but the fact that evening classes have been pushed back until after Iftar has kept some people at campus until 10PM some nights, which is difficult.

I am taking two Arabic classes (one in the Modern Standard Arabic that I've been taking for two years and one in Colloquial Egyptian) and three political science classes. My Arabic classes seem as if they'll be difficult, or at least definitely at a different and faster pace than in the United States. I think that will be good for me though. Already, I think just from being around Arabic and hearing it spoken outside a classroom (which I rarely if ever did in the US), I can tell I am starting to become more comfortable with speaking and even more so with understanding what people are saying. I am by no means fluent, but it is exciting to be able to, or at least think I am able to understand the general idea of a conversation.

My political science classes seem similar to the political science classes I have taken at Notre Dame. I think I will enjoy all of them. One is Comparative Politics of the Middle East. My professor said we will be taking a thematic approach as opposed to a country by country or case study approach. I have only dealt with comparative politics using the case study approach, and I enjoyed that, but hopefully I will find this interesting also. Another is Introduction to Development. Development is an important thing to discuss when discussing comparative politics, the area of political science I think I am most interested in, so this course, although it seems a little dry as it deals mostly with theory will hopefully be helpful to me, especially if I plan to do any research in the future. However, for this class we are required to volunteer for an Egyptian NGO. At first I was skeptical about this seeing as my experience with Egyptian bureaucracy has not been the best, but after contacting someone from a program called Ana Masry (translated into Arabic: I am Egyptian), which is a part of Nahdet El-Mahrousa, I think I am going to enjoy and benefit from my experience. Ana Masry focuses on promoting development among young Egyptians by promoting tolerance among Muslims and Christians through the use of various forms of art. In my e-mail to the program coordinator, I explained that I was a Christian and that I had taken a class in Islam at Notre Dame which focused is part on the often overlooked similarities between Islam and Christianity. The program director said this was a part of the program that had yet to get off the ground, but it sounded like I could design a way to integrate it into the program. That sounds like a huge responsibility (though it is probably for the better because those of you who know me know that, in the nicest of terms, art is not quite my area of expertise!), but I am excited to meet with the director to discuss how I can begin to work on that and help with the program. It should be a great experience. For class, I am required to keep a blog detailing my experience, so I will be sure to post a link once I begin my volunteer work.

My final class is a Development Studies Seminar. I think this will be very interesting and most like the comparative politic class I took at Notre Dame. We began our class by discussing the term development and what it means. I was surprised when the professor, who is Egyptian, asked the Egyptians in the class if they considered Egypt a modern society. When they answered affirmatively, he, through questions like, "How is the farming done in Egypt? Do people use machinery or do they use their hands and their animals?" insinuated that it was not modern but transitional. I thought it was interesting how hard he was on the Egyptians in the class and how negative his attitude seemed about his own country. Through talking with other Americans, we have concluded that professors tend to be harder on the Egyptians. This is possibly because the students that attend AUC are of the upper class in Egypt. Although the Americans in the class probably come from families with more money, these Egyptians when compared with other Egyptians are among the most wealthy in Egypt, and that is apparent through things like the dress on campus and the maid and laundry service in the dormitories. It's an interesting class dynamic to witness.

And although the professors are harder on Egyptians than Americans, I don't think anyone is particularly hard on anyone at AUC. In my Comparative Politics of the Middle East class alone, the professor informed us that he would be strict about attendance, meaning he would take it every single day...after Ramadan ends in two weeks of course. He also said he would not tolerate lateness in any form...so we should be sure to enter the room no more than 15 minutes late. Even the Ana Masry director, who sounded so enthusiastic about the program and eager for me to get started, told me to contact her again after Ramadan. At first this may seem lazy to Americans but I think it is an important thing to note about Egyptian society, and societies in general that are predominantly Muslim, that religion is so pervasive into all aspects of life. It's certainly not something we are used to in the United States, and I would venture as far as to say it's not even something I am used to at Notre Dame. An 'Our Father' to begin a class pales in comparison to the daily calls to prayer, which are braodcast throughout the city, the praying in public, and the vast majority that strictly observes Ramadan and makes it a part of not only their religious life but their daily social life. As I have said, it is the most interesting cultural phenomenon I have ever witnessed.

I guess I will close by saying I finally made it to the pyramids today, and they were amazing! I took a lot of pictures (which I am still having trouble uploading to my blog-sorry!), and spent most of the day in shock and awe, as I think most tourists do. Unlike visitors though, I have to come home to do homework, which I should get to now. With classes starting it's kind of a wake up call that this is not only a sight-seeing, cultural-immersion experience-it's school too! I think Notre Dame would probably appreciate it if I kept that in mind! Hopefully I won't have too much schoolwork and I'll be able to post again soon!

Admiration is Greater than Love

I have been in Cairo for almost a week, a I have learned quite a bit. I'll cover the basic tourist things first:

The Egyptian Museum in Cairo has endless artifacts, so much so that almost everything on the first floor is not enclosed in glass. It is unbelievable to me that I was touching things that are literally thousands of years old! The mummies were also definitely a sight to see. Unfortunately, the do not allow photography in the museum.

Khan El Khalili is as crowded and crazy as everyone describes it, and then ten times more so. It's definitely an experience though.

Ramadan is the strangest cultural phenomenon I have ever experienced. Muslims do not eat or drink or smoke at all from sun-up to sun-down. As a result, they stay up almost all night, beginning at 6:30PM with dinner (or iftar, which literally means breakfast in Arabic because that is when they break their day-long fast) and ending with suhoor, which is the Arabic name for the meal eaten before dawn during Ramadan; this mean usually takes place around 4:30AM. Ramadan is amazing to me not only because it creates an interesting schedule here but also, and even more so, because every Muslim follows its rules in the strictest of ways. It really is one of the greatest displays of devoted religion that I have ever seen, and I am grateful that I am experiencing it here.

Now onto the more serious things I have learned:

There are Egyptians who love Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian president who is largely criticized in Egypt for both ruling with an iron fist and misusing the American aid that is funneled into the country. (It was eye-opening to see a USAid sticker on a projector in one of my classrooms). The woman who is teaching my survival Arabic class, a thirty-one year old Muslim woman living in Madi (a section of Cairo) insisted that that US, and not Mubarak, was responsible for the funds being misdirected in Egypt, pointing out that USAid came to the American University in Cairo and not to Cairo University. She meant that the US was looking out for its own interests. This is obviously true to some degree, but her refusal to admit any fault of Mubarak in the misappropriation of aid and other funds in Egypt made it seem as if she ascribed to some sort of personality cult. She claimed she loved Mubarak, then said she did not love him, but rather admired him, and in her mind "admiration is greater than love." Her reasons for loving him included the elegance he and his family showed in dealing with the death of one of his grandchildren six months ago. When someone in our class pointed out that this meant she admired him as a person, and not a politician, she claimed that there was no difference in her mind. She said she did not know him personally, so he as a person and he as a politician were one and the same in her mind, and she repeated that she loved and admired him. This woman is definitely not in the majority of Egyptians, and she knows this, but that even some Egyptians think this way is eye-opening and possibly insightful as Egypt further develops.

There is hope for a solution to the Palestine-Israeli conflict. I realized this from listening to two students talking. One was Palestinian. The other was an American Jew. Both boys, neither one of them older than 21, knew the issues surrounding the conflict well. They each had first hand-experience in the conflict. The Palestinian is prohibited from landing in Tel Aviv because his father owns and has the deed to land that is now controlled by Israel and has been strip searched at the border. And the Jewish boy has been to Israel and also has first hand experience with border security. Despite their experiences, they intelligently discussed the issues involved in the conflict, and surprisingly, each was conciliatory to the other side. The Palestinian went so far as to say that the Holocaust was the worst case of genocide in the history of the world. And the Jewish boy agreed with him that Israel cutting off food supplies to refugees during the flare up in December of last year was a comparable offense. One of the boys offered a solution, as each agreed that one of the biggest obstacles to a solution is the fact that were the groups to each live as Israelis, the Israeli government would become controlled by Muslims. The idea was to ensure a Jewish/Israeli ruler, while letting Palestinians full involvement in all other elections. At first it was laughed off by everyone listening, but the more I think about it, it's going to be compromises like this (certainly far from perfect, maybe even far from fair) that will open up a dialogue between other moderates like these boys who I believe have the capability to one day solve the problem of the Palestine-Israel conflict once and for all. This may be hopeful and optimistic thinking, but I think the next generation of politics is going to see more moderate people rise to power and have a say, and what now seems hopeful and optimistic may indeed become a reality.

I apologize that this has been heavy content for a blog, but these are the things I think I need to take from Egypt. The final thing I will talk about is important but can be, and often is, spoken about much more lightly. I don't completely know how to begin describing AUC. It's a brand new campus in the middle of the desert and it's absolutely gorgeous inside and out, but an example of efficiency it is certainly not. I this the best way to convey my point about this is to describe the student services office. It's most similar to a deli counter. When you walk in, you take a number. I think there are three sets of numbers, or at least there are for orientation week (one for IDs, one for bus passes, and one for other/general questions and issues). You can spend hours in there, especially considering it a bus pass is a stamp on your ID, however they are done in different lines with different numbers so you can wait over and hour for your ID and then, instead of getting it stamped, have to pull a new number which is usually at least 100 away from the number that AUC staff is "Now Helping" (not a joke, there's really an electronic board). There is also very, very little communication between offices. There are constant scheduling conflicts during orientation, conflicting e-mails are often sent, and procedures are subject to change at any moment (which is frustrating for students but sometimes even more frustrating for staff and orientation leaders). We complain so much about bureaucratic inefficiency in the US, but not until I came here did I truly understand the definition of such a term! And to finish on the lightest note possible, nor did I truly understand the definition of traffic before I came to Cairo, Egypt! Simply being transported anywhere safely and somewhat timely are sometimes, and I think will often be, my greatest victories each day!

Hope everyone enjoyed or at least enjoyed skimming this LONG entry. I'll post again soon. And I'll work on putting up more pictures. I've been having some trouble uploading them, but I'll definitely try to work on that, especially after I visit the pyramids next week!