Bittersweet Victory

This week is what I imagined my trip to Cairo to be like. As our handy dandy DukeEngage Academy had warned us, last week morale in the group was pretty low. The combination of exhaustion and frustration was making everyone a little cranky and as the novelty began to wear off, some people were getting pretty disillusioned with Cairo. To be honest, I’ve been pretty unaffected and continue loving this city more and more. I guess that means the excitement of being in a new city hasn’t quite gone away for me yet and the frustrations will probably hit me all at once, but I’m pretty curious to know what it is that puts me over the edge, so bring it on. Either way, while Cairo wasn’t really getting to me, the negativity was, and I was irrationally frustrated that the others couldn’t handle it with the tranquility that I hadn’t even expected from myself.

But I digress. This post is about this week, not last. As most of our group began having a regular class and getting over whatever it is about Egypt that got to them, morale rose. Also, Brendan (who is my partner, in case I haven’t mentioned that) and I realized that we’re pretty awesome. I’ve always been aware of my weaknesses when it comes to children and to creativity and Brendan seems to make up for everything I’m not. I have a year of Arabic on him, so I’m a little better at communicating with the students, but he’s the one that makes the class enjoyable. I think we discovered this about our partnership last week, but we got to see the results of it this week and they were both bitter and sweet. On the first day of class this week half the students were there 5 minute before it was supposed to start (the implications of which you can appreciate if you’ve ever worked with Sudanese refugees). Some came up to us before class and told us they brought their friends; everyone just seemed so happy to be there. I felt so proud that we’d already managed to make them consider our class something worthy of their time. However, as a few more students began to trickle in, Brendan and became a little concerned. I’ve included a picture of our classroom on this post; it’s not exactly a giant room. Luckily, there is a second room in the center, and though it doesn’t have a fan and we were short a few chairs, we decided we had to split up. I know it’s great that we have so many people that we need 2 classes, but I feel like the students will miss out on something in both classrooms. Also, I’m not exactly a huge fan of the fact that I won’t have someone else’s support in class anymore.

Well, as usual, I’ve managed to ramble on for longer than I expected, so perhaps I’ll write another post about the rest of the week. But until then, Ma’Salaama!