Cairo Update

God is sure working overtime for us, because things are going really smoothly here!

My Arabic lessons are still fast-paced, but I feel like I’m learning so much every day that I’m able to use immediately in daily life here.  Yesterday I went to several little markets to get groceries, and I was able to make the whole trip speaking only Arabic!  People tried to answer me in English, but I asked for them to speak Arabic, and repeat things when needed.  People seem to get a kick out of that. 

For the most part, I really like going to the markets, which are all pretty much mom-and-pop stores, where the whole family pitches in to run it.  We’re “regulars” at a couple of places, and they’re friendly to us. 

We’ve started to boil and bottle our own water, which will cut down on costs, but is a continual process.  We’ll probably have to supplement by buying some bottled water.

We found out that we live very close to “City Stars,” which is apparently the biggest, newest, best mall in much of the Middle East and draws no small amount of tourism.  After church on Friday (that sounds funny to say!), we were invited to join a group of folks from the church to eat lunch at the food court at City Stars.  Afterward we walked around and got really, truly lost.  Woodfield and Robinson have nothing on this mall.  There were some recognizable stores like Guess, Timberland, and Claire’s (every mall has got to have one, I suppose!), but there were a lot of other stores, too, and they were all very high-end looking.

We stayed after the church service for a prayer meeting, which was really cool.  We did a lot of praying for the church’s ministry.  I was also praying that the Lord would bring me some friends, because I had really been craving some girl time.  Sure enough, right after the prayer meeting, a girl named Leila came up to me and asked me how I was doing here – was I feeling lonely, out of place?  I said “yes” without hesitation and she laughed and said, “Well, we’re just going to have to get some coffee soon, then, won’t we?” and that was that!  Today I called her and not only did we set up a time to meet for coffee tomorrow morning, she called me back and invited me to come out to the movies with her and a friend tonight.  We’re going to see “The Proposal,” and though I’m a little nervous, I’m very excited!!

I am posting some more pictures on Facebook shortly.  Sorry that all my information is scattered in various sites; our internet is too spotty for me to put everything everywhere.  Anyway, love and miss you all.  Thanks for keeping in touch – the notes and Skype calls are ALWAYS welcome and so appreciated.

Back after a long Hiatus

Jay and I are here in Cairo and though it's nice to have some experience under my belt regarding Muslim, developing, steamy-hot countries, I've getting over some culture shock three days into our stay.  Here are just a handful of things that make me know I'm not in the States anymore:

-NO rules controlling traffic - "one way" streets frequently have people going the other way, triple-parking - why not?;  speed limit?  seatbelts? crosswalks? -- what are those?

-you see a LOT more men out and about than women.  You can tell a lot about a woman by the way she dresses (Muslim women are entirely covered, Christian women don't wear headscarves, foreigners wear beach clothes).

-drinking tap water is like drinking pool water - they overchlorinate the water so we can't drink it

-shops are very segmented - there are restaurants that serve only koshari (the signature dish), only chicken, only shwarma, only falafel, etc. Because of this, there are no menus -- you have to know what you want to eat before you start walking there.

-I am near-famous because of my coloring. These reactions range from fun to annoying.  For example, a lady and her friends all pointed at me and, after conferring together, proclaimed aloud to me, "Beautiful!"  Of course, no girl I know would protest that kind of reaction.  But yesterday, a woman smiled and waved at me and then she seemed to think that the attentions she had given me had earned her money.  We even bought her a drink to be nice (we had been stopping to get some juice ourselves), but she refused - she wanted cash.  This reaction was not as fun.

Overall first thoughts:

I do like the lifestyle here.  We found a great apartment, thank God!, in a suburb called Heliopolis which has a lot of trees, flowers, is quiet, and is a family neighborhood.  We walk to the nearby market several times daily for whatever we need - bottled water, freshly-baked bread, fresh produce.  For bigger trips we go out late at night (9 or 10) so that it's cool.  The produce here is mostly organic, and, I'm guessing, less genetically-engineered.  You can tell because everything is smaller in size, tomato skins are thick, green peppers are so thin you can barely taste them.

We're on the second floor, and our apartment has large windows in every room, with doors to a balcony that stretches past our living room and bedroom.  I love opening all the windows and letting the air flow through the whole apartment --  though it does make your neighbors' noises amplified.  Yesterday I heard a catfight (literally) that I thought was taking place in my living room!

It bothers me to see the women dressed in all black, wearing a nikab (which is the head scarf that only allows small eye holes with a mesh fabric even over those).  Even though I think it's a little over-kill not to show any skin at all when you live in the desert, I understand their cultural/religious desire to be modest.  The nikab, in my opinion, steals dignity from women.  It would be interesting to get to a point where I could talk to a woman who wears one to see how she feels about it.  I saw a nikab-clad woman standing in the median of a busy highway in the blazing midday sun holding a baby and selling "hello kitty" sun visors for your car window -- my heart went out to her.

Today was our first day of classes.  A few surprises awaited us: our school's website explains how there are 14 levels, 1-14.  I'm in level 0.  Hahaha!  Second, Jay and I had no idea from the aforementioned website, but the student body at this school seems to be comprised almost entirely of Muslim converts.  Many may know, but in Islam, their holy book, the Koran, is not to be translated into other languages.  Therefore, anyone who converts to Islam must learn to read and speak Arabic at least enough to say the basic prayers.  The more they know, of course, the more they are able to study the Koran.  Finally, I'm in an all-female class, in the school's all-female building -- yowzas!

I know many of you are waiting for pictures, but I can't seem to figure it out at the moment and Jay's napping, so that will have to wait for the next time our neighbor's wireless is strong enough to allow for another update. 

I've been very encouraged by the little notes, no matter how small, so please keep them coming!  Though my spirits have generally been high so far, praise God, I really thrive on hearing from home!  Love and miss you all.

Out of steam

Back from the Bush

Okay so...I got back almost two weeks ago.  I have good excuses and bad excuses, but I'll just skip to the meat and potatos of where I've been.

-St. Louis is a picturesque, quiet town with beatiful shops and nice people.  It reminded me of something like Lake Geneva or Annapolis.  Everyone loved it...and I missed bustling dirty ridiculous Dakar. 

-My friend Kiki and I needed to take a 'sept place' (literally: seven places -- a station wagon) to Matam, and get off a little early in the town of Boki Diawe.  Simple?  Not really.  The deal with the sept places is that they don't pull out of the garage until your car is full, no matter how long that takes.  Unless, of course, you're willing to pay the fare of the extra people.  So it's a waiting game...  and wait we did.  But after several hours with no bites, we decided to pay the last fare and get on our way.  But the other thing was that we couldn't get a ride straight to Matam, and needed to change in the middle.  When we hadn't gotten even close to our first leg stop and it was already dark, we decided to bail early and stay the night with a peace corps volunteer that our program director knew.  It ended up working so well, because we got to spread a little English-speaking toubab cheer, and as we found out the next day, the second leg of the trip was longer than the first.

-The PCV that we stayed with told us that there was only one male volunteer in the region.  On our bus trip the rest of the way to Boki Diawe, a toubab with an IPod gets on at the first stop.  Yup.  It was him.  He was a Godsend, speaking Pulaar on our behalf, keeping us from getting hit on, and letting me know when a stop was going to be long enough that I could jump off and get a bottle of water (because we were driving through the sand in the Sahara desert for 6+ hours and I ran out of water...scary).  We also spread the toubab cheer to Chris.  He let us know when we were in Boki Diawe to get off and he continued on ahead of us.   

-My PCV was Jane Kleven.  (Kiki peeled off with a different PCV a little further down the road).  She was HILArious and sarcastic.  It was so funny because she has an ongoing private conversation with herself throughout the day to keep herself sane.  I counted myself lucky to get to hear the running dialogue.  Lots of times it went something like this, "I don't have any IDEA what this lady is trying to say to me."  or "This kid driving our donkey-cart (called 'charrette') is trying to rip us off. We paid for the whole charrette but he's letting other people on.  He probably thinks I don' t know any better.  I'm not surprised the horse won't go, even though he's beating it like there's no tomorrow...we're not even on the path. Ok...he's not supposed to be bucking like that.  By the way, if he hits you with that whip, I'll chew him out.  Just let me know."  (I just described the 3 km trip to the village of Kirire, population 1,000.)

-I was relieved to be able to understand one word in Pulaar, "Toubak!" (Wasn't I clever to make the translation?) when the children screamed it at me.  I really did get a warm reception, though.  Everyone wanted to shake my hand.  I had a veritable receiving line.

-Jane's family compound is nice, made up of four mud huts with thatched roofs and a woven fence surrounding it.  She has her own hut and 'bathroom' (which equals a hole in the ground...which in itself is a luxury.  most families just take a ramble into the bush.).  We chatted until the sun set, and since we had no power, we watched the stars...as you can imagine...they were spectacular, with shooting stars so long that I could point them out to Jane and we could watch it together.  We slept outside on a concrete bed (with foam mattresses).

*I need to go eat lunch.  To be continued.*

-Thanks to everyone who sent me birthday cards (and to those who gave me 15 *ahemOliviaahem*).  I had a great day (more later)!

Hot off the Presses

I'm going to be out of town starting tomorrow for a week and a day.  First, I'm going to St. Louis, the former capital of Senegal and its second largest city -- the whole program is going there for a weekend of exploration and relaxation, and then I'm heading straight to my rural visit with a Peace Corps volunteer near Matam http://i.infoplease.com/images/msenegal.gif  (check out the map -- Dakar is the peninsula on the westernmost point of Senegal, St. Louis is the northwest corner on the coast, and Matam is along the Mauritanian border in the northeast.)  I will be staying with a woman PCV.  I hear it's sizzlin' hot there, as well as...rustic.  Disclaimer: I will most likely be out of contact the whole time.  I come back Saturday, November 18 -- my 21st birthday!  Vince made me promise I would go out dancing, no matter how tired I am :)

It's cool to see how my prayers are getting answered one by one, and my goals for coming here are all getting checked off (I owe you all that list soon -- it's really cool how things have fallen together aka God provides).

One other answer to the prayers listed is that the NGO research I was assigned to do has been incredible.  We realized that our program vision sounded a lot like YMCA programs....and then stumbled across the fact that there is a YMCA Dakar!!! I couldn't believe it.  My friend and classmate Kendle and I went there, without an appointment, and Joseph, the guy who started a good number of the programs that are now successful, knows basically everything, speaks English beautifully, and is soooo nice, was willing to put aside his work and talk with us until we ran out of questions.  That is Senegalese hospitality.  We were particularly interested in one program he described because it is uncannily similar to what we have envisioned for our after-school program.  He invited us to come along and see it in action.  So yesterday, we went along with, and we were able to talk with the head counselor, who gave us so much valuable information.  I can't wait to go to class this afternoon with all of our findings!  We're really on a roll with this project -- we have a panel discussion with parents and university professors and students to refine our mission and vision statements, goals and strategies.  After that, we'll have lots of blanks in our constitution filled in and will focus more on grant research.  We're generating a lot of excitement and vision, and lots of people outside of our class are jumping on board to help. 

I collected some funny observations from last night (which are coming at the expense of my dear brothers Vince and Abdoul, who would kill me if they saw this): 

• We were sitting outside trying not to melt after a 36-hour power cut, and a white Ford Taurus drove by (granted, a nice new one), and Vince was like..."oooo...that's a nice car."  And then I told him that it's a grandparent car and he punched me. 
• At the reggae concert I go to every week, there was a guy there who was clearly trying to look like a hot stuff with his blingbling accessories and nice shades (after midnight, mind you), and (drumroll please)...his lavender visor with "LTD TOO" written on it.  OHHHhhh my.  Snoop Dogg's next video should take place in the Limited Too, getting madeover with fluorescent-colored boas and glitter.  It could be big. 
• They wanted to know how many McDonalds were in my state...'Five?'  they asked tenatively.  hehe. 

I'm off -- wish me luck!