A Line or Two on America

The one thing I was repeatedly told about going to Egypt was, don’t have any expectations. Thus I, and I think my peers did the same, put myself in a mindset to be ready for surprises. I figured I’d probably learn a thing or two about Egyptian culture and society along the way; what I didn’t anticipate is how much it would tell me about my own. When I’m put into a new situation or something unexpected happens, I am usually not surprised. No big deal, that’s what’s supposed to happen when you interact with a new culture. In an earlier blog post I think I interpreted this as being unfazed by my interactions in Cairo. But the truth is that I am fazed, and the effect lies in the fact that something was unexpected in the first place. Instead of getting a better understanding of Egyptians, I think I’ve ended up learning more, through contrast, about Americans.

One of the main insights I feel like I’ve gained, and the one that’s been most on my mind lately, is that we Americans are obsessed with lines. Yes, lines. All types of them. In the metro, when there are massive mobs trying to get in and out of the same door of a car at the same time, or trying to buy tickets, it’s a bit foreign. I suppose earlier I dismissively thought (quite pompous in hindsight) that this had something to do with civility. But the truth is Egyptians are no less civil than the people I’ve been surrounded by for most of my life. My fellow Americans are just absolutely infatuated with organization, often for no real purpose other than to subdue their unyielding (and perhaps more unnatural than I thought?) fear of chaos. Our reaction to the mobs at the metro is just the surface of some sort of new metaphorical insight I feel like I’ve gained about the American and perhaps Western mindset.

And that’s not the only kind of line. The American is proud of nothing more than he is his open-mindedness and acceptance of others. Yet perhaps exactly that idea can limit his outlook, which sounds paradoxical and probably is. Whatever. Most of my Arabic class here is discussion based, so we often end up talking about important and usually sensitive issues in America and Egypt with our teacher. Our teacher would ask us how Americans viewed something or what the tradition was for something and we very quickly learned the word for “it depends on…” Within the first week it became absolutely necessary to explain to our teacher the concept of “politically correct.” In being so constantly preoccupied with not hurting anyone’s feelings or not generalizing, we were drawing another line- a boundary. A limit. And lots of them at that. I’d realized a while ago that Americans hate to generalize or offend people (yes, I know what I just did there. Clever, right?), but once we had to talk about something in a foreign language, without the ability to say things exactly right, I really saw just how stunting it could be for communication. Every society has boundaries about what can and cannot be done, but ours is an intellectual boundary and seems to be a lot more apologetic. Our group knows each others’ values and backgrounds; why, then, is there still this constant trepidation to say something that may, theoretically, have offended some person from some family in some random area of the country? Why do we get so uncomfortable when an Egyptian in a coffee shop asks us about our religion and feel the need to constantly repeat the fact that this is only one opinion and not everyone believes this way? Of course it’s your opinion- you’re the one who said it; it’s not about clarifying that. It’s about that historically deep-rooted, socially promoted discomfort- not with being wrong, but with being perceived as ignorant or closed-minded.

There is another line still, though it’s very similar to the former. A few days ago I was in a largely Christian area in a church with a few friends on a mountain called Moqattum (an experience that really deserves its own post, though the chances of that happening are pretty slim). We were discussing the relationship between Muslims and Christians in Egypt and one of my friends said something that struck me. He knows the country much better than I do and was telling us how he’d seen Muslim women come to the church we were sitting in and ask the patron saint for protection. He then related that followers of each religion have parades for their respective saints and how sometimes they attend each other’s parades. My friend prefaced this with the observation that the relationship between Muslims and Christians in this area was “pretty odd.” I immediately thought of Islam and Hinduism in pre-colonial India. First of all, I don’t think Hinduism even had a name at that point. People just believed in their gods. If one of those gods had a prophet by the name of Muhammed, then so be it. And if one of the Muslim prophets was a Hindu god named Ram, that’s cool. It was all very… natural. When the British came and went, they left lines. Not just boundaries like the one between Pakistan and India, but categorical lines. People were asked if they were Muslim or Hindu and were then filed in one drawer or another. I’m not arguing that partitions didn’t exist before the evil Western man came in and created them, not at all. But I’ve heard too many stories about people who had no idea if they were Muslim or Hindu, or what the differences were between the two, or even that there were any differences, before British occupation. I think that developed countries in the west, more than any other countries, feel some need to categorize things. It’s no surprise that taxonomy was invented by a Roman. For something to exist, there must be distinctions between it and something else. It goes back to the western preoccupation with organization.

Now don’t get me wrong- my friend isn’t some dumb American who’s completely unaware of the fact that societies have different religious and cultural norms. I, as primarily a westerner, also found the information he shared strange. I think I’m guilty of drawing all of these types of lines. I’m not even so sure if that’s a bad thing. I really don’t think I would have been able to fully appreciate it without the contrast of Cairo though. It’s definitely not the only thing that being here has taught me about Americans and probably won’t be the last; I’m curious to see if I’ll find even more biases once I go home.

Maalish

My biggest concern before coming to Egypt with DukeEngage was that I wouldn’t be able to handle the bureaucratic red tape strung all over anything you want to get done in developing countries, particularly in the service sector. My next biggest concern was that I would be able to handle it. I figured my anal-retentive personality type would get the best of me in the end and I would be irrevocably frustrated with the small, unforeseeable obstacles that proved to be insurmountable. But the flipside, which may almost be worse, is that I would be completely unfazed by the roadblocks that not only obstruct me, but are also a representative symptom of a disease-ridden system, and that I would become jaded to the zeal that would have been the root of my former frustrations. That, I thought, might be a more permanent effect, and the idea of it didn’t sit well with me, to say the least.

There’s an important word in Egyptian Arabic called ‘maalish,’ and it means some combination of ‘Excuse me,’ ‘I’m sorry,’ and mostly ‘It’s okay.’ There is no English equivalent. Someone’s crying and you’re trying to make them feel better- maalish. You bump into someone in the street- maalish. Something stops your work from going according to plans- maalish; just say maalish and move on. It’s an ‘Hakuna Matata’ of sorts and it’s quite descriptive of the Egyptian mentality. On a somewhat tangential note, I think that’s one of the reasons I love Egyptians. They’re hilarious. They seem to carry such a light-hearted, carefree frame of mind and they are so flexible and accommodating that they are fantastic to be around and make friends with. However, when it comes to getting things done, it’s that exact type of thinking that makes work difficult in Egypt.

Granted, you have to be flexible to function here or Cairo will eat you alive, and that’s been surprisingly easy for me and I think most of us to adjust to. I often hear people in our group say, “ah, it’s Egypt. Maalish.” Yet I can’t help but thinking that being so forgiving is irresponsible and, quite frankly, a little condescending. One can’t be completely rigid, but I think an actual asset Americans bring to the table here is that indignant sense of entitlement to efficiency. Because the truth, pompous as it sounds, is that we often get it. The Sudanese are infamous for being late. We simply told our class that we will begin on time and now all of our students are in the room before we walk in. Part of me wants to argue that the culture and socioeconomic situation of Egypt make it so that the country and it’s people can only do so much; the other part of me is asking, who the hell do you think you are not to demand more? 

A Little Lesson

I think I’ve learned something about sincerity in this country. When I got here my first response was to spurn any advances made by Egyptians. It seemed like the more appropriate thing to do to try to fit in and seem like I knew what I was doing; just ignore all the ‘Welcome to Cairo!’s and ‘Ante Gamila!’s (You are beautiful!).

On Wednesday we took our St. Andrews students to the park and as I sat down to play cards with some of the girls, a woman and her daughters asked to join. We ended up befriending the group and they proceeded to spend the rest of the time with us at the park. The mother and I talked for a bit, or attempted to at least with my broken FusHa, classical Arabic, and her strict Eamiya, dialect, and she, for god knows what reason, took a keen liking to me. She insisted that I come to her house for dinner one day, to which I responded Insh’allah, God willing, which any Arab can tell you is a go-to word when you want to politely decline an invitation. Her daughters asked me for my phone number, which I gave them hesitatingly, and email address. The whole situation was incredibly sweet but I just wasn’t entirely sure how to react.

Afterwards, I told Brendan how the woman had invited me over and he said “Really? That’s awesome! Are you going to go?” Just the fact that he asked made me realize for the first time that I hadn’t even considered it. The people here are so friendly and welcoming I think I’d be foolish not to take advantage of that beautiful aspect of the culture that seems to be dying off in the states. Sure, there are a handful of people with ulterior motives and you must be careful about who you acknowledge, but if a flower shop owner gives you a rose for a simple 5 minute conversation in return, like one did to me today, what’s the harm? You get to practice some of your Arabic and, who knows, you probably made their day.

Some Poorly Constructed Thoughts…

This is probably going to be my nerdiest post and the one most loosely connected to DukeEngage, but I haven’t been feeling so hot and I’m at that weird in-between where you can’t sleep but you’re too tired to do anything else.

So here’s the deal: I kind of miss Science. And by kind of I mean a lot. A few months ago I was beginning to feel really burnt out with school. That’s when I decided that I would strongly consider taking a year off after college before going to graduate school, which is still something that is quite probable. But along those lines, I thought DukeEngage and my following semester at UCL would be a great test run. It isn’t a complete respite from academia, but I thought it would be a good chance to fully immerse myself in subjects I hadn’t really focused on yet. You know, exercise some different parts of my brain. I’ve been here a month and I’m already a little concerned.

I always thought that what I liked about Science, or rather what I thought set it apart from most of the humanities, was that it’s concrete. It’s very methodical- there are experiments and controls and you must have a definitive measure of your results; even the credibility of your answers is determined by its statistical significance. Of course this is an over-simplification but you can see where I’m coming from. I always thought Literature did a much better job of appreciating subtleties and the social sciences were way bigger on nuances, both of which I think are beautiful and important ways of understanding the world. I can’t say much about Literature yet, but I have been rather disappointed with the intellectual experiences I’ve had with other people so far, Mr. Schleifer’s talk being the only notable exception. Of course I’ve learned new facts, but I’ve found the actual use and discussion of that information very uninspiring. There will be an argument for one side of an issue and an argument for the opposing side and people just talk all day about the bases of the two arguments without, it seems, acknowledging the fact that if both sides are legitimate and made by intelligent people, then there are strong foundations for both and grey cannot be resolved into black and white so easily. It appears to me that some people have trouble letting things sit and working in a realm of that grey. I know this isn’t always the best thing to do, and I definitely acknowledge that I am often guilty of what I am accusing others, but I suppose I just expected something else from people who claim to prefer working in subjectivity. I realize this makes me sound extremely pompous and while, to an extent, that may be well founded, a lot of it is just my inability to articulate exactly what I’m talking about.

On the other side of the same token, I’ve found that there are quite a few subtleties and nuances in my field that I’ve taken for granted because of the people I am surrounded by in class. Everyone I talked to about my subject functioned under some basic premises: a confidence in scientific experimentation, a knowledge base, and a general feel for how the discipline works. I didn’t expect people outside the subject to carry the second of these premises, but it’s the third that really irks me. I find that I’m surrounded by intelligent people with whom I cannot have a conversation about the field that I love. I mean, I deal with that quite often when I’m not at school, because science, especially neuroscience, is a very specialized area. But this amount of deprivation, particularly when I have so much academic respect for my peers, is really getting to me, and I’m beginning to feel like other people just keep talking in circles about stuff I already know. I’m 100% aware that that’s not true, but I’m feeling a serious lack of intellectual conversation. Not only do I find that disappointing, but I’m worried that after a few more months of this I’m going to get pretty rusty with my ability to think in a scientific manner. The worst part is that I just know I won’t have the willpower or time management skills for a self-motivated study of neuroscience when I’m studying English and Art History at UCL.

I feel like I’ve offended almost every non-science major I know in this post and I apologize for that; it’s completely unintentional. I’ve tried really hard all my life not to be academically elitist, and I suppose I’m just frustrated with how difficult that is in a subject I’m so passionate about.

Also, for anyone who cares (A.K.A. parental units), I’m really not that ill. I’m beginning to feel better already J

Ma’Salaama!

Our Trip To Alexandria

So we made a group trip to Alexandria this weekend. Remember that the weekend here is Friday, so we left on Thursday evening after working with our NGOs and returned Friday evening. It was about a 4-hour bus ride and was completely uneventful, as was pretty much the entirety of our stay in the city. I know we were only there for a day, but I feel like “uneventful” is reasonably characteristic of Alexandria. Many of my colleagues loved it. Before we’d gotten off the bus some of them were asking why we couldn’t stay there longer. It’s cleaner than Cairo and less busy. The ever-present Mediterranean coast is also a pretty big perk. My roommate, Andi, will be studying abroad in Alex (as Egyptians call it), and we discussed how she would be much more comfortable there. But that’s exactly what it is- comfortable. And I find comfortable obscenely boring. I couldn’t tell you about living for a long period of time, because as I mentioned earlier I haven’t encountered any particularly frustrating circumstances in Cairo yet, but I can definitely say I’d rather spend 2 months there than in Alexandria.

The only real redeeming quality I found in the city is its tangible history (though in my biased opinion, Cairo is “The Victorious” in this matter as well). The site seeing was pretty cool, though my camera died early in the day (sorry, parents). We saw the palace of the last monarch of Egypt, which was this absolutely gorgeous piece of land on the beach and is now infested by both tourist and Egyptian beach-goers, with their shoulder-to-shoulder identical commercial umbrellas sprouting on the beach like a dense mushroom garden. Before we left we also got an outside view of the city’s famous citadel, but we unfortunately could not take a look inside because it was Friday. I have a strong feeling that the inside looks like a standard modern-day museum, fully equipped with a gift shop and pretty-looking seashells in glass cases (which I saw when I peaked in). That’s the thing about the place- everything is just too renovated. I suppose I can, or at least need to, get over the fact that a place like that is going to be commercial. And I can’t really think of an alternative solution, but I feel that in Alexandria, much of the antiquity has been lost in the preservation. It’s just too new to be that old.

Before the citadel we saw the Library of Alexandria, and I’m pretty sure that this was the part that many of us Duke nerds were most excited for. I knew that the original library had burned down but I was hoping that I would still find some sense of history and transcendence of time in this revered symbol of academia and scholarship of another era. I think most of my friends were even more disappointed than I was. I heard them talking about how they expected symbolism and meaning and just found themselves in a cool-looking building. I think I still enjoyed it more than I would have a normal library, but only because I could remind myself of the significance of where I was. It’s a very academic place with fantastic archives and some pretty impressive technology, but I wasn’t really there to see what the advancements of today have to offer. I was interested, rather, about how and in what environment the great minds of the time managed to lay the foundations of thought for our age.

Faluka Ride With AUC Students

Hey all! I recently wrote a post for our main blog on a faluka ride the group took with some students from the American University of Cairo. I'd love some input :)

Again, the main blog is: dukeengagecairo2010.blogspot.com/

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!