Two weeks ago was spring break for all of us here with CIEE at the University of Jordan. My friends and I took advantage of the week to travel to Lebanon and Egypt. It has already been about a week since I've gotten back and I'm realizing that I only have a month here left! literally, it's April 14th today, and I fly out May 14th. Still so much that I want to do, there's no way I have time to write in depth posts about everything we experienced in the week of spring break. So please ask me to tell you more stories next time we see each other in person! Here's a message I sent to a friend back home about one adventure we had while we were in Cairo. If you want to see pictures, look on Facebook. My friends and I uploaded tons of pictures last week.
Little kids almost ate me over my spring break. My friends and I were in Cairo for a couple of days. And while we were there we visited the garbage man's neighborhood, Mansheet Nasser. It's a slum of Coptic Christians just outside the main city of Cairo, and the government has been basically forgetting about them since as long as anyone can remember since they're Coptic. All the garbage of the largest city in Africa, AND the middle east (Cairo) ends up in this one neighborhood where all these Christians sort through everything and either pack it into bags to be driven off to the landfill, or continue sorting recyclables until they can just melt them down and sell the shredded plastic, or melted aluminum or re-make paper with the old paper that was thrown away. We visited a local Egyptian NGO that works there and were shown all the work they do to promote recycling efficiently, empowering women to work, and working to cure Hepatitis C in the slum since the Mubarak Regime used to re-use needles to vaccinate the people there. On our way out of the NGO's campus we stopped by their school for the kids of the women who work there, and my friends and as we walked by one of the classrooms the entire class 30 or so kinder gardeners came running out wanting us to take their picture with them. So we were taking pictures with them and I picked up one of the kids. Next thing I knew the entire group of them were pulling on my t-shirt wanting me to pick them up next...all at once haha. It was just a matter of time before I ended up with one or 2 kids on my shoulders, and another one or two wrapped around my waist and and a group at my feet that I could barely help but not fall on and crush. For a moment I kinda felt like Godzilla. They asked us when we were coming back.
As we walked from the NGO to the churches they have built into huge caves in the mountainside, we were almost trampled by a stray cow, saw a pig being gutted on the side of the road--the man gutting it then grabbed the heart right out of the pigs torso and put it in his mouth. Right after that we almost were squished by a pickup truck overloaded with enormous bags of garbage because we were so shocked. We also saw a lady sitting in a pile of trash, sorting trash, drinking tea, picking trash out of her tea as it fell in, and simultaneously chatting with her family/friends/neighbors. Their lives here truly do revolve around garbage.
Little kids almost ate me over my spring break. My friends and I were in Cairo for a couple of days. And while we were there we visited the garbage man's neighborhood, Mansheet Nasser. It's a slum of Coptic Christians just outside the main city of Cairo, and the government has been basically forgetting about them since as long as anyone can remember since they're Coptic. All the garbage of the largest city in Africa, AND the middle east (Cairo) ends up in this one neighborhood where all these Christians sort through everything and either pack it into bags to be driven off to the landfill, or continue sorting recyclables until they can just melt them down and sell the shredded plastic, or melted aluminum or re-make paper with the old paper that was thrown away. We visited a local Egyptian NGO that works there and were shown all the work they do to promote recycling efficiently, empowering women to work, and working to cure Hepatitis C in the slum since the Mubarak Regime used to re-use needles to vaccinate the people there. On our way out of the NGO's campus we stopped by their school for the kids of the women who work there, and my friends and as we walked by one of the classrooms the entire class 30 or so kinder gardeners came running out wanting us to take their picture with them. So we were taking pictures with them and I picked up one of the kids. Next thing I knew the entire group of them were pulling on my t-shirt wanting me to pick them up next...all at once haha. It was just a matter of time before I ended up with one or 2 kids on my shoulders, and another one or two wrapped around my waist and and a group at my feet that I could barely help but not fall on and crush. For a moment I kinda felt like Godzilla. They asked us when we were coming back.
As we walked from the NGO to the churches they have built into huge caves in the mountainside, we were almost trampled by a stray cow, saw a pig being gutted on the side of the road--the man gutting it then grabbed the heart right out of the pigs torso and put it in his mouth. Right after that we almost were squished by a pickup truck overloaded with enormous bags of garbage because we were so shocked. We also saw a lady sitting in a pile of trash, sorting trash, drinking tea, picking trash out of her tea as it fell in, and simultaneously chatting with her family/friends/neighbors. Their lives here truly do revolve around garbage.
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