Cairo Update
Greetings
and a belated Happy New Year to you all!
I have just come to the end of a busy few weeks. Earlier this
month my agenda was full of engagements for Christmas children's
celebrations (most Christians here follow the orthodox Christmas
of January 7th).
One meeting which I really enjoyed was in an area of rocky desert
outside Cairo. I have been there once before and I really liked
it. To describe the area as being "poor" is an understatement.
These people have nothing, and the reason they live in the desert
is because it costs them nothing. To make a living they sort through
rubbish from a part of the city and as a result there is a distinctive
"pong" as you approach the village, which has about
400 people living in it. The residents have made their houses
from any material they can get their hands on. There is no water
supply, sewage disposal facilities or electricity. Water is brought
into the village by a water tanker, which fills large barrels
outside the dwellings. The village name is "Zebeleen",
a rough translation would be "Rubbish people", but about
30% of the villagers are now believers and they have renamed their
village "Living Waters".
I went there earlier in the month to take a special meeting for
Christmas. I went there with a group of street children who themselves
have very little, but they each brought a gift for the children
at Living Waters. The journey there was quite an experience. The
Egyptians expect travelling to be done on the cheap and to be
crowded, and this was no exception. The bus we took had 26 seats,
and somehow it managed to take about 60 children and 10 adults.
With so many children in such a confined space the choruses we
sung on the way were deafening.
The meeting place we went to is the only place in the village
with a electricity generator so it is quite good for attracting
the children. The children from the village seem to appreciate
anyone coming from the outside to see them. Since finishing my
part-time computer job I have a bit more time for regular appointments,
so I decided to offer my services to go there on a regular basis;
consequently I hope to bring more reports from there in the coming
months.
Last week I spent a lot of time shooting videos. I mentioned in
my last Cairo Update that I do a lot of teacher training for Sunday
school teachers here, mainly in the area of thinking creatively
(and changing the Egyptian way of learning everything by rote).
The videos are intended to give teacher training ideas AND give
creative Bible stories to children in remote areas of Egypt, especially
where there isn't an existing Sunday school. The time taken to
shoot the videos was rather exhausting, but satisfying. We decided
to take the videos with children in attendance so the children
watching feel part of a "crowd". What the video guy
didn't realise is that children have a limited attention span
. . . and taking videos of this type can be very time consuming!
Many scenes had to be taken again, and the children behaved well
but were extremely exhausted at the end. The younger children
had to be dismissed earlier because they just couldn't sit still
. . . the filming took up to seven hours a day. I now understand
the film-makers' old adage- "Never work with children or
animals". I haven't seen the finished results yet, but this
is quite a low budget project so I'm not expecting anything flash
or of a high standard.
Lydia had her first birthday earlier this month. She was quite
ill and so she didn't enjoy the day very much. The combination
of nappy rash, teething and a cold knocked the strength from her.
By the end of the day she started to pick up again and played
with her new toys.
Hannah and Esther continue to grow and develop. Hannah has a particular
liking for playing princesses and she likes to dress up and order
people around. She is really enjoying her ballet lessons which
she takes twice a week, but at the moment she does not like her
Arabic lessons. She explained to us today that Arabic is boring
and she doesn't want to study it. Of course we have sympathy with
her, but she is learning such a lot. Unfortunately she keeps it
all to herself, she is too shy to speak Arabic in front of Egyptians,
and she won't even talk to us. The Arabic teacher told us the
other day that she could say the whole story of Zacchaeus in Arabic,
but when the Arabic teacher asked her to, she refused!
Esther is now going to nursery twice a week and she enjoys it
very much. It reminded me of the time I took Hannah for the first
time. Hannah did not want to go. She made it very clear that she
didn't want to go too. We had to carry her down the stairs in
our block of flats and heads kept on popping out of the doors
to see what all of the commotion was about. We had to prise her
fingers from the banister and she screamed at the top of her voice
throughout. When we eventually arrived at the nursery my last
view of her was being restrained and carried away by two teachers,
with her holding out a hand to me and pleading "Daddy! Don't
leave me here, please . . . " She has a special gifting for
knowing how to make me feel bad.
In contrast Esther kept on asking about going to nursery with
"the big boys and girls". On the first day she let me
take pictures of her outside the nursery and she walked in excited
about meeting new friends. I returned a few hours later and she
cried because she had to leave. We are hoping that Lydia will
be a bit more balanced when she grows up! Esther's English is
still developing but her words often make us laugh. I have compiled
"Esther's Dictionary" to record some of her blunders
for future reference, here are some entries:
ari-doos (n) A drink made from squeezed oranges
baff (n) - Long open vessel used for washing oneself.
baff'um
(n) - Place in which the baff is located.
boppum
(n) - The part of the anatomy that interfaces with the potty.
boppum-purp (n) - flatulence.
glak-ees
(n) - Bifocal aid to correct eye-sight.
kank-oo
(n) – An expression of appreciation
porn
cakes (n) – A cereal food often served with milk for breakfast.
That's
all from us for this time, we hope the weather will get warmer
when we write again, it is now dropping down to about 12 degrees
C at night!
Toodle
pip,
Jason
PS
photos of the children: Lydia on her birthday looking very ill,
Esther going to nursery and Hannah & Esther playing with Lydia's
birthday present (a small ball pool)
d
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Update Index
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It's
a Fact!
Facts
about Egypt:
- Egypt's
population is 66 Million
- Egypt
is four times the size of the UK
-
Only 3% of the land can be used for arable crops
- Cairo
has 18 million people and is growing by 1 millon each year.
- Cairo
is the Largest city in Africa and the Middle East
- Official
literacy rate is only 45%
- A
total of 11 languages are spoken in Egypt
- Public
Debt per person is $790
- Average
annual income is $630
- Unemployment
is estimated to be 17%
- Religion:
Approx. 85% Muslim and 15% Christian
- Most
Christians are affiliated to the Orthodox Church, less than
1% of the population are Protestant
- There are
an estimated 100,000 street children in Egypt
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