The Big Switch: Egypt to Rwanda

Posted on May 2nd, 2010 under Rwanda

Gahini, Rwanda

Time to transition, my time in Cairo is done. A couple nights ago all my MESP classmates and I completed the program. Egypt became suddenly different when all my American friends were gone. I was in Egypt as a liability only to myself, no official program. No itinerary or classes. Bitter-sweet goodbyes were made and everyone departed, except for a few who stayed behind, myself being one of them. Home is not for another six weeks.

For the next five and a half weeks I will be working in Gahini, Rwanda alongside the Anglican bishop, Alexis Bilindabagabo. My job is to be, more or less, a scout for EU (that’s Eastern University, not the European Union): I do a lot of looking, listening and some talking, then start figuring plausible ways Eastern University can sidle alongside the Anglican diocese and Rwandans in their efforts to serve their people. My presence will hopefully be one of the first steps in an official EU-Rwanda relationship.

My flight for Kigali left at 3:20am. My friend Dena took me to one of the world’s oldest café’s to chat for a while. The intricate details of an Arabic architecture bedecked with shiny and useless merchandise in the Khan Al-Khilil market put me in a sort of trance. Some stray cat rubbed up against my leg while three men came at me selling something I didn’t want. Sipping mint tea, nudging away the cat, waving the merchants off all in one motion I realized- Rwanda ain’t gonna be one bit like this. Where exactly was I going? In that moment, the idea of going to Rwanda gained some weight and sunk as an ethereal idea into a reality into my gut; it started occurring to me even more as a reality.

For the past four months I have been living in an Arabic culture while struggling to learn an Arabic language in the city, but now I am moving into an African culture, where Arabic is useless and the city is moreover a giant village. New people, new culture and new land: I will once again slip down to the base of “the-language-barrier”. My surroundings will go from a flat desert to green hills and lakes; Arabic to Kinyarwanda; running water to barrels of lake water; concrete to dirt roads; yellow sand to red-dirt; bidets to toilet paper; no rain to daily rain (Actually, it even began raining while I am typing and the sky was clear half an hour ago.); standing out as a white foreigner among dark skinned people to standing out as foreigner among, well, even darker skinned people; switching from, nominally, a Muslim majority to Christian majority; instead of being called “Osama” people now call me “Meh-zoon-goo” (which more or less means “whitey” but with no real negative connotation, just a matter-of-factly title), and the list goes on.

The one particularly challenging shift is simply going from student to employee. This shift requires a deliberate mental shift on a couple fronts: everything I have been learning and all the questions about Islam, the Middle East, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and all the like that has been forming incessantly in me for the last four months has to be marginalized within the next day and replaced with the thoughts and questions about Rwanda. Even more, these questions need to be coming from Evan the Employee, not Evan the Student. As a student studying abroad I only had to go along for the ride my program organized for me. In Rwanda, I need to make plans, handle logistics and “crack-the-whip” on myself. My persona and how I see myself needs to be slightly tweaked to fit this new task and quite frankly, this has been tougher than I expected. How easily can you stop the momentum your mind has been gaining for the last four months?

Later that night after the café, exhausted from seeing my friends off the night before having slept only three hours and expecting none tonight, this reality of transition became even greater when I put my bags in the taxi and headed towards the airport. With each mile towards the airport, the reality kept becoming greater and greater. I tried making small talk with the taxi but was too distracted with thoughts of tomorrow. A couple hours later, sitting on a plane from Cairo to Khartoum, I stared at the seat in front of me thinking of what to do once I arrive. Hour later, Khartoum to Addis Abeba: how much will I be able to accomplish? Addis Abeba to Entebee, while the sun was coming up: what will going home be like with all that lays behind me, after all that lays ahead? Finally, from Entebee to Kigali, crossing over Lake Victoria and minutes later descending upon thick, green hills glimmering with tin roofs I stopped thinking. I stared at a rain cloud emptying itself miles away upon the land. It was beautiful so I smiled to myself. I thought of this job, this opportunity given to me and smiled to myself.

Istanbul (No, not Constantinople)

Posted on March 20th, 2010 under Turkey

Istanbul, Turkey

Turkey is a country of its own kind: not exactly Western or Eastern but a strange mix of the two. After the Ottoman Empire came undone with WWI, a man named Mustafa Kemal Ataturk took the reigns and established today’s Republic of Turkey. His aim was set on modernity/westernization to the nth degree. His project was a success in many ways and his name is still pressed in the mind of every Turkish citizen. He’s like our George Washington. So much has happened since then in a short amount of time that I would like to explain but I suppose I should save that for another time. Whoever would like to know always has our beloved search engine: Google.

The dynamics of this country are like none other. Every other Islamic country has been so weary of modernity and westernization in some way, shape or form, but not Turkey. Here, citizens actually assume modernity and Islam are compatible with one another. It comes through in the politics as quickly as it does the fashion. The women wear far more vibrant headscarves than the women in Egypt, some while strutting in tight jeans and heels but these fashionable headscarves are statements of political concern. In a country full of so many vying for secularism (Muslim and non-Muslim alike), they believe this public religiosity can be trouble, perhaps even a form of moving “backward” like all those Islamic neighbors out East.

Istanbul is a megacity, once the capital city of the Roman Empire, Byzantine Empire, Latin Empire and Ottoman Empire so it should be no surprise to hear me say this place is stunning in culture, art and architecture. The first day here I rode a ferry along the Bosphorus and stared for I cannot remember how long at this city’s waterfront. I admit: I was struck like the stereotypical starry-eyed tourist. This place sends a vibe, like the whole place knows a secret I don’t.

Golden Horn, Blue Mosque, Hagia Sophia, Sultan’s Palace, that thick mud they call Turkish coffee, sweet dripping Baklava, fish sandwiches, meerschaum pipes, obscure antique shops along steep cobble roads with Ottoman iron keys and Soviet Union flasks against the windows: I am getting Turkish culture by the loads but all this time as a tourist is split with being a student. At night we read books and articles in our hotel rooms and in the day meet with journalists, political representatives and professors, hearing lectures, having discussions forming our questions. One week ago I barely knew anything about this country and now… I still know next to nothing. But hey, it’s a lot more than last week.

P.S. I shaved my beard before leaving Egypt. Kept the mustache for a day, though. Found it hilarious. Then shaved it off too.

Mine’s Bigger Than Yours

Posted on March 7th, 2010 under Egypt

Apologies for not attempting any sort of prowess. These journal entries from the past are quick notes to help me remember things and just give you a glimpse of some of things going on here.

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Journal Entry: 1/17/2010 (a few days after arriving in Cairo, Egypt)

Sitting up against the wall on a mattress one step up from a sandbag. We’ve been set up with a flat in front of the “6 of October Bridge” (a.k.a. “Cairo’s Spinal Cord”). The bridge is one mile long, running through multiple districts of the city. It was built and named to commemorate one of Egypt’s “victories” in the Yom Kippur War. I can hear the traffic, coming through the windows and bouncing off these hilariously drab, pink pastel walls.

Today we went to the Mogamma in Al-Tahrir Square. It’s a massive building that sits awkwardly into the traffic circle. You’d think it was the work of the Soviet Union. Strange story to it: as it turns out, there once was a large evangelical church, the largest in the Middle East, from what I hear, sitting gracefully with the other buildings in Tahrir-Square but modern Egypt, being a Muslim country, would not have this: they government plans together for this bland government facility and built it directly in front of the church to upstage and nudge out of this prestigious circle. This spiteful landmark was where I got my international visa. The church still is there, only now in the shadow of Soviet-Egyptian architecture.

This is nothing too unusual, though, upstaging a church. Every single church built in this city must be matched with a larger mosque. Wander anywhere in Cairo and you’ll find a taller, more ornate and gorgeous mosque sitting near a punier church. I haven’t found out for sure whether or not this is official law or not, but just realize its actually hard to tell. Christian and Muslim tension is real thing here. Almost every local I’ve spoken with, usually Muslim, tells me there’s no real issue. Some Coptic Christians I met, a minority in Egypt, blatantly disagree. (It is a bit strange to see this when I have seen the exact opposite situation back in the States: Christian majority calmly and strategically upstaging Muslim minorities.)

Today was my first day on the metro. Took a random stop at Mutzallah (I think) on the outskirts of downtown Cairo. Walking only three minutes out of the station and up the street to the Nile, I cam upon a massive mosque, a citadel really. It looked like a city of domes clumped together with a single-crescent moon (the symbol of Islam) at its peak. The Cairo smog deepened the atmosphere, making it look almost phony, like some sort of back-drop to the trash-filled streets. Fifty-thousand mosques in Cairo. Fifty thousand. Some are just a humble-shop front, some are statement’s of Islam’s grandeur, like this one.

I suppose I should mention briefly, Cairo is dirty. I doubt any Egyptian would be offended I pointed this out. This city is uncoordinated and over-crowded. No trashcans, just large piles of trash that sometimes get set on fire once they get too big. Stray cats and dogs are everywhere, half of which are pregnant. I have only seen two or three traffic lights in the whole city. I’ll write more about that some other time.

Tomorrow: Al-Moqattam, a.k.a. “Garbage City”. Home of mostly Coptic Christians. One of The Sister’s of Charity’s locations.

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Before ending this blog entry, allow me to anticipate an assumption some might draw from that bit about Christians and Muslims: Egypt’s religious issues cannot be understood as Christianity v. Islam. So please, do not assume stuff like this is simply a matter of Christian being persecuted (though in many cases it can be part of it). Just like the United States, you cannot divvy up Egypt’s circumstances into terms of one religion v. another. This country comes with a history older than the US and most of Europe. Within only the past century or so it has broke free from British colonialism, and that break was made with a militant revolution. The country has been in a state of emergency ever since President Sadat was assassinated in 1981. Things are not simple at home and they are not simple here.

Egypt is not America.

Posted on March 4th, 2010 under Egypt

Egypt is not America. You may think to yourself, “No duh.” But the substance of that statement is only as deep as your understanding of both America and Egypt. Blogs like this can really only be a brief insight into another place and anyone reading this would do well to keep in my mind who and what they are reading: the encounters of a 21^st century American, Christian, college student whose brain has not even physically finished developing, and his encounters with something new. I barely understand my country let alone someone else’s. Plenty of Cairenes (people of Cairo) keep in better sync with American culture than I ever do or would. I am struggling to understand my own faith daily so the chances of me figuring out a Muslim’s are pretty slim. All this is to say: read me wisely. Reading this blog will be nothing more than looking at Egypt through the wrong end of a telescope but hopefully an interesting look nonetheless.

Just a brief explanation of what I am doing here: thirty-two students are accepted each semester to participate in a study abroad option offered at Eastern University through the CCCU called, the Middle Eastern Studies Program (MESP). It is a Christian program led by a very able director, Dr. David Holt, which focuses on those two, big controversies of old: religion and politics. It is a difficult but refreshing program based in Cairo, Egypt that quickly cuts through the superficial conversation into the more genuine, troubling one surrounding the Middle East, the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict and questions of faith boundaries. We study in the weekdays and travel on the weekends for half a semester in Egypt taking one class on Islamic Thought and Practice and another in Egyptian Arabic. (I’m also doing a Tabla drumming class on the side.) Then we travel for a month through the Middle East (Turkey, Syria, Jordan and Israel) while taking two different classes on Middle Eastern Cultures and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, meeting with speakers from the traveled regions, touring, writing papers and sleeping on buses. As a philosophy major, this does not directly contribute towards my major but like my major I am doing this because I see it as an opportunity to help me be something worth being.

I have been here about six weeks now studying Islamic thought and practice along with Egyptian Arabic (both which are pah-re-tty difficult to process.) Like everything else in Cairo, Egypt, it zigs where I zag. We’ve been to Luxor (a bed of tourist traps and those stereotypical pharaonic temples covered in hieroglyphics), Siwa (an oasis in the Sahara desert near the Libyan border settled a long time ago by a bunch of Moroccans who didn’t feel like making the whole trip home after their Hajj to Mecca) and Dahab (a coastal town of the Red Sea on the Sinai Peninsula, loaded with sun-crisp Aussie scuba-divers and the cleanest stray dogs, cats and goats I have ever seen). I have stood in the shadows of the Giza Pyramids, walked by the paw of the Sphinx, sat on the tomb of a mummy, sand-boarded down the dunes of the Sahara, dipped my foot in the Nile, rode camels, climbed the Stairs of Penance to the peak of Mt. Sinai, swam in Cleopatra’s bath, stared into Saudi Arabia across the Red Sea, wandered through the Temple of the Oracle sought out by Alexander the Great, bartered in the markets, lived with a Muslim family in a neighborhood of absurdly poor conditions whose hospitality would put most Americans I know to shame, and that’s only half of it.

Egypt is bitter-sweet in every way. I love the food; it doesn’t love me back. Everything is cheap but only because power and wealth is absurdly lopsided in this oligarchic government. The air is cool in January but the dirtiest I have ever breathed. I could go on but more of this will come through in later blog entries.

For now, since I am wrapping up the first portion of my semester before the serious traveling begins I’ll submit some entries of past experiences from the first half of my time here over the next couple weeks. I have been keeping a journal with just a pen most of the time so I’ll pull some stories of moments and thoughts I find worth mentioning and post them up. Once I start the hefty traveling, I’ll start writing closer to the present.

Hopefully, whoever’s reading this finds it captivating enough to keep reading. This is for others more than it is me so please, questions and comments about anything are more than welcome. (That and they help me know someone is actually reading this.)