Thursday, November 11, 2010

Block and Roll

The villages Habitat builds are typically where the poorest of the poor live, the “humble class”.  They are homes to construction, agricultural and other day laborers. 

This rural part of El Minya has been described to me as the “Real Egypt”, and in reflection from the noise and haste of the all encompassing “Tourist Egypt”, it cuts quite a different swathe.  In El Gazaer, vendors peddle through town on bikes piled high with fabrics, fruits and grass for the livestock.  

Homes are decorated with red, blue and green geometrical designs as well as Muslim and Coptic symbols painted or fired into the intricate wrought iron doors and windows and for crafting these artful portals, there is a metal worker in both villages we visit.

Habitat Egypt has developed a loan program distributed in $1000 increments (5000 Egyptian pounds) determined by the Habitat board and a local committee of nine, formed from both local and religious leaders of the Muslim & Coptic Christian faiths and former loan recipients who are embedded in the community.  Each committee must have at least two women on their board as well.   The loans provide funding for families to build the upward addition, allowing for extra sleeping space to rebuild the house originally constructed from mud bricks.

Livestock is part of the unit here, and up to 10 people will share sleeping/living spaces, while animals are corralled on the roofs and in the kitchens.  It is not uncommon to find amount the unfinished tops piles of corn set out to dry next to the chicken coop and satellite dish.

The concept of volunteerism is very new.  People greet the bus and crowd around the job site to happily watch us work.  Women of the household prepare hot tea in hourly intervals.  There is a lot of stopping and starting, yet everything is pressing - Vella! Vella! (Go! Go!) or  Kataya! (Enough!), much like the movie business mantra: “Hurry up and wait”.

When a decision needs to be made in these limited spaces, like moving sand from one teeny room to another, the loud, heated Arabic attracts other men from the site until a group is formed.  Results of these conclaves can take a long time and before you know it, tea is being served again.  

Part of our work has been hauling 40 + pound limestone blocks, forged from the desert quarries nearby.  I imagine the same rock beds that the pyramid stones were cut from thousands of years past. The blocks arrive early in the morning and are dumped right in the middle of the street.  We have to move quickly in order to clear them from the road, standing side by side and passing them down narrow alleys. 
 
Sand is also piled out in the open, and before re-location and sifting duties begin, we encourage the children to plunge in.  We lug it into the houses with super cool buckets made from reused tires hooked onto a crudely rigged pulley system.  Later, it will be used for various types of mortar, from flooring to masonry and wall spackle.  

 Although it doesn’t seem like much, we save the families a significant amount of money in labor by just helping them to move building materials. (We calculated that we moved about 10 tons total) Maybe about $300 dollars for the entire time we are there.  For each home we provide help to at the four different locations, this is quite a savings.  

One of Habitat’s initiatives in Egypt is to offset the costly electricity hook up to the grid as well as proper plumbing. Utility bills are extremely affordable due to the hydro-power provided by the Aswan Damn.  Since its inception in 2007, this simple aid program has helped 432 families, with 100% repayment. Habitat Egypt hopes to help 200 families in the upcoming year.

It is only a taste of a typical ten day build, and the team wishes they could keep working if only there were more time.  This makes it very difficult to leave. It’s tough to be a team leader, but especially so in this situation.  You want everyone to feel like they've contributed and made memories with the homeowners they've met.

On our last day, the word “Nartura” lingers from the streets to the committee room to the security laden bus...


“You bring light to our village”. 

Tuesday, November 02, 2010

In Just a Few Key Strokes by Jamie Lowe

            In life there are times when we feel the need to go beyond our own limitations and comfort zones. This very brave venture and thirst can lead to a life-changing experience. My thirst was quenched with my travel with Habitat for Humanity to Egypt. Born and raised in the United States of America I can proudly say that I have been afforded certain luxuries. However, it is when those luxuries are stripped from you that you examine what caliber of a person you are. What will you do for another that does not directly benefit you? What will you sacrifice, both physically and mentally, to uplift another? These are questions that I asked of myself. Undoubtedly these may have been the same questions that meandered through the minds of the people in El Gazaar and Kolonas. Why would a group of Americans venture to carry tons of limestone and sand? Why would they work in the hot sun for no reward?
            The truth being that is was never a purely selfless act. While sifting sand I experienced the dynamics of a true giving relationship. Observing friends from different races, age groups and sexes working tirelessly to lift a family. Individuals bending their minds, bodies and spirits to melt into a perpetual ladder to bridge a family from where they once were to where they dream to be.

 My experience in Egypt wasn’t merely a testament to the fact that I plaster a wall, sift sand nor move limestone. It was a testament that I can move beyond my own limitations. It was a testament that despite a language and cultural difference the still underlying tone in a relationship is humility. It is the setting aside one’s own ideologies to melt with an unknown group to form a more harmonious entity.

           

Sunday, October 31, 2010

A Room With A View


The team has arrived safely, without any lost luggage or mishaps.  Along with the GV Egypt personnel, we pile into a mini-bus for a five-hour drive south to El Minya, following the Nile the entire way.

Hundreds of empty buildings crowd the outskirts of Cairo; windowless red brick developments with dangerous looking prongs of rebar pointing northward on each corner. 

The unfinishedness of the houses, Egypt Style as it’s known, is preparation for the upper floors that will be built once sons and daughters are married. Land is often tenured, staying in the families for generations.  Because of this, Egypt builds up. 

This explains a lot of things, especially the fact that ancient Egypt was uncovered from years of windswept sands and towns built entirely of mud bricks that consistently collapsing onto itself, forcing the inhabitants and subsequent relatives to move on top.

Our local coordinator explains that most of the vast construction is being built by developers hedging against the market, using the economy’s decline to hire cheap labor and then hoping that it will surge again so that they can sell these spaces at a premium.

Structures closer to the city are part of a failed government initiative to provide affordable housing, but city officials didn’t count on the expense incurred by construction and thus, the pricing to purchase proved to be beyond the means of the people who actually need the housing. 

With 17, 000,000 in Cairo (that’s 200,000 per square kilometer), you can imagine the need for affordable housing.    Children are literally being kicked out of their homes since parents cannot afford to pay for both rent and mouths to feed, leading to a new statistic of 1,000,000 homeless children in the city itself.
*Just to give you a comparison, there are 10,000 people per square kilometer in New York City, population 11,000,000.

Pictures cannot accurately describe the sprawl that continues on and on throughout our drive, I try to think of ways to describe this vast acreage of empty windows that stare out like jack-o-lanterns and metal fingers stretching up towards the sky. 


At the Hotel Cleopatra, the front desk manager assures us that we have a beautiful view, but when we open the shutters and throw up the sash, I discover that our room faces two unfinished apartment buildings with a narrow alleyway leading down the bank.  “I want to see the Arno” I sigh, remembering Lucy Honeychurch’s words upon hearing that her room promises a view as well in E.M. Forester’s classic.   

We will be sequestered here for the three and ½ days, not a typical time frame for any Habitat build, but Egypt is unique in that the villages where we are working are combinations of Coptic Christian and Muslim, both religions having non-working holy days beginning Friday and ending on Sunday.

More so, however, Egypt remains a police “state”, and because of the terrorist bombing in 1995, requires all tourists to be accompanied by armed guards.  Tourism fuels a major portion of the economy, with 14,000,000 visitors expected this year alone.

With us at all times is the swankily dressed Omar, packing a Colt .45.  With a beam in his smile, he proudly tells us that he was on Obama’s detail when he spoke in Egypt last year.  I can tell that he’s picked up a thing or two from the Secret Service by the way he leaps off the bus while it’s in motion and clears the street before we exit. 

A Toyota truck with at least six armed soldiers on benches follows our bus to and from the hotel, although we never see these men until our last day when a gaggle of kids, home from school, crowd around the team wanting pictures and touching everyone; a bustle of noise rising to a hundred gleeful shrieks and giggles and causing much agitation to the soldiers and the village security men, clad in matching galabayas, who start waving long, thick canes in front of the children, causing them to scream and back off, only to return to their excited state a few seconds later.  Soon after, Omar orders the street cleared and we are on our way back to safety of the mini-bus and the long ride to Cairo.






Sunday, October 24, 2010

It's Two AM, Do You Know Where You Are?


On these international journeys, I’m always seem to arrive in the middle of the night stumbling after other bleary eyed fellow travelers through brightly lit and impossibly white customs counters, exiting out into the gassy glow of orange municipal lighting and the combined smell of smoldering embers from city incinerators and roadside trash disposal, diesel and leaded fuel, dusty streets. I love it. 

You bump along to some hotel where the staff is surprisingly wide awake, crash into a bed that you hope is comfortable, knowing that you will wake up in a city you've never visited before and a whole new experience that will forever mark your life and give you memories to later dream on.  

If you expect The Four Seasons on these Global Village treks, you are on the wrong voluntourism trip.  I've stayed in bunk beds four across in a crowded cabin, cement block hotels with armed guards and bare light bulbs hanging from the ceiling to shabby chic hotels, remnants of some grander era of the ‘60s… which is where I find myself on the morning of October 9th in Heliopolis district of Cairo. 

Prevalent in this Mother of all Cities are sand particles that breeze in from both sides of the Nile where the desert stretches on for miles.  It adheres to cars, buildings, your feet and turning white limestone buildings brownish yellow of silt and dust. 

My first mission after getting rousted out of bed at 1:30 pm is to locate the “Cilantro” coffee shop our coordinator has suggested directly across the street from the Hotel Baron.  Not in her detailed account of arrival procedures and neighborhood conveniences was the life threatening street crossing. One has to cross two wide streets separated by double trains tracks in a shallow ditch.

I’m determined. I get my New York on, hold up my left hand first and dance between cars and motorbikes and tour buses, gingerly hopping down to the train tracks that separate the two boulevards, then climb up the other side and do the same thing all the while clutching my laptop and looking directly into the driver’s eyes as I do my same little dance to coffee. 

Although there don’t seem to be any streetlights in this part of town, in downtown sections of the city, crossing lights display a green man running in a quick animation as if this has always been the way to get to the other side.

Before leaving, Cairo: The City Victorious was recommended to me via 43Places.com.  The history is astounding and everywhere I look, I try to match the words to actual locations. There so much to write about Cairo, but I am anxious to talk to you about the build and so I will save that for later.


Wednesday, September 22, 2010

The Summer Sessions






At 5 Second Walk, a clam shell announces, “A Day at the Beach is the Best Day Ever” in blue magic marker. I couldn’t agree more.  I remember the sentiment as I tumble to the Atlantic, where I rejoice in the waves…. the waves the waves the waves as they crash and retreat. I like my towels to be orange and red, a reflection of the heat and joy of beaches and summer. The ocean is a perfect Sea Green from the Crayola color wheel.  Swimmers jockey for position between a dozen men casting fishing poles and ogling girls clad in bikinis, but it’s an older woman in a colorful kurta who reels in dinner, a blue fish she smartly totes off for cleaning.

Next to where we have laid our spread, a group of former Delta Sig sisters reminisce about their college day - their kids run amok attempting to force a kite to take flight.  “The smell of the ocean”, our neighbors comment “... so my favorite thing.”  I write this down this bit of eavesdropping.

It’s a great excuse to be lazy and while away an afternoon on soft sand, two months worth of New Yorkers and Oprah's latest issue as inspiration for September, quickly approaching.  And the theme of this issue is appropriate.  It is time for a makeover; although I’m unclear on my start date for this makeover, this New Me.   It’s something I contemplate over the next two days, lounging on my triple wide spread of towels, umbrellas, books, lotions and coolers of frozen fruit and ice cubes.

One of our houseguests left on the 5:20 ferry Saturday. The rain hadn’t settled in yet, but the wooden walkway was slick and our flip-flops squeaked and squawked as we made our way to the ferry landing marked by a single lamppost, oddly reminiscent of the wardrobe leading to Narnia.  We wanted to see her off, across the short bay to the LIRR & Penn Station where she would train it to 2nd & 4th readying herself for a morning flight across the country to LA.


A new beginning. A whole new chapter.  I took that journey myself once – and at her age  - from the same side of town East Side to the same side of town West Side.  I’m excited for her, but sad for me. Goodbye this time wasn’t a “see you next week”; it was goodbye good luck to an uncertain path and a sparkling future. I’m half jealous. 

Remnants of the hurricane season hit us early Sunday morning, raining all day and leaving Monday a windy mildly warm and tempestuous day.  An olive skinned beauty, say 15 or 16, stands with her left hand on her cell and her right cupping her cheek vacantly looking out from the Grill Counter, normally full on sunny days, yet eerily empty, devoid of people and their pleasure crafts.  Whether boaters left last night in the rain or early this morning, choppy waters in the closed quarters of the marina is probably not an ideal spot. The beach near the casino and ferry landing is full of bathers and two lifeguards watch over the low tide and rolling waves. Grey skies or not, people continue in their doggedness about enjoying their vacation time. 

I can’t believe I waited until mid afternoon to come out to the beach. Being in the darkness makes one lazy, sloth like. We need some form of light to awaken our souls. Outside, even in this bright yet cloudy day I feel better, less stuck in the mud. The ocean has turned from a sea glass green to soup – a steely pea green mixture with five-foot waves that tempt the surfers.  Five tweens hold hands and face the white caps. Kids rush the foamy parts of the waves, determined on their first day of a family vacation not to let the grey skies ruin their fun of the week before school starts.  Parents are keeping close watch, bundled up and hunkered down against the wind. The sun brightly and bravely tries to break the barrier of clouds, but from its position now, I can see it has resigned to settling in until tomorrow.

Idleness certainly does not slow down time’s passages.  For me it acts as lubricant, speeding up the last year.   Davis Park, 2nd Walk, 2009 feels like two months ago. How did we get to here so quickly? A week is just not enough time to have a proper summer vacation. By the fourth day, you’re counting backwards, retracing steps trying to slow down the next few days that are anything but lingering.  I think of O, and the September issue and my list… the list that never ends with questions like: What I am doing? Where am I going to live? What is my ideal life? What makes me tick? Why do I love sugar? I need to more yoga, start up guitar lessons again, Call that Dan Smith, memorize those uke songs, finish sweaters I’ve started, write postcards, discard old things and unused possessions, go to the post office by the lamppost, find a new apartment, tap into my brain, organize my thoughts, finish planning my trips, go the library, call my mother, call my sister, call my brothers, birthday cards and baby gifts, return calls, so much to remember, so much to do and in the midst of this all, the storm the storm and this dark cabin.

The sky is a milk glass with a light bulb shining through and I don’t want to leave just yet. It doesn’t seem right that it should be storming and 70 degrees in the dog days of summer.
I am on the beach with the kids… the kids and dogs who don’t mind the weather. They are just as happy to jump right in the surf no matter what the skies portend.  Sgt. Pepper loves the beach, loves the sand, loves above all chasing the sand pipers. They mock him, flying wide circumferences over the beach dunes and back across the beach to the sea trying to get him into the water.  I swear we walked five miles and Pep has run about ten retracing his steps again and again in his pursuit.  And the next day, he’s ready to do it again.

I want more. I want an entire summer. I will settle for just one more sunny day at the beach - that is all I want.

We’ve decided we will pack up and catch the ferry about twelve hours earlier than our planned departure. All of the equipment I carried for my lazy days at the beach - magazines, journals, lotion and SPF 15 Chap Stick, seems wasted.  No matter how many hot days there are to come, summer is over for me. It ended the day the rain came, leaving it soggy.  It has been melancholy for other reasons as well. I think I crave the endless summer – the coast that I recently left. There is nothing sadder than finding oneself under twisted oaks in the dark, dark shade while outside it pours relentlessly and the mosquitoes find refuge inside your dim cabin.

We get back to our little cabin; the rain turning swiftly on us, a reminder of the mercurial seasons here and this realization hurts me personally. I used to rejoice in the advent of autumn.  New cords, new desks, brown paper bag book covers, crisp air, but now it only makes me feel sad and helpless. I can’t stop the wheel from turning and soon it will be autumn for sure and for me, that means a new home as of yet to be determined, and an adventure of my own to not one but two foreign lands and hopefully a new path and purpose. I suppose this is a make over of sorts.

Cabin cleaned and bags by the screened porch, we take that last beach walk before heading back to the city.  As if on cue, the sky has revealed a Tiffany blue gift, a hot orange sun– a new day. It is so gorgeous, so perfect that the mosquitoes have even taken a break.

To the north, yes, you can see exactly where the wind has pushed the clouds away from Fire Island, big cumulous clouds gather, bunching up like mounds of whipped cream. The ocean sparkles with the sun.  Though not returned to its glassy green, gentle waves roll in, lolling swimmers to arise and get wet.  A few more days of summer, it beckons, just a few days, whispering with the gentle wind, provoking us to take in this day and the next to come.

On the east coast, this is something to savor, a warm memory to return when the real cold comes on and the days turn bitter, short and the sky closes up once again but with snow.  It is the tokens we take with us, shells and bits of broken worn down glass that fill empty bottles and jars later made into lamps, the bits of sand not shaken out of tote bags and socks that find us, that will remind us to seek out these days.

The sounds of the surf are loud and vibrant, and there is no need for talk or thinking.  Just nothingness and the sense that everything is as it should be.



Shameless Crushes...

find life experiences and swallow them whole.
travel.
meet many people.
go down some dead ends and explore dark alleys.
try everything.
exhaust yourself in the glorious pursuit of life.
-lawrence k. fish

Yoga For Peace

read much and often

Cleopatra: A Life
Travels with Charley: In Search of America
Never Let Me Go
The Angel's game
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
Bel-Ami
Dreaming in French: A Novel
The Post-Birthday World
A Passage to India
The Time Traveler's wife
To Kill a Mockingbird
The Catcher in the Rye
One Hundred Years of Solitude
The Kite Runner
Eat, Pray, Love
Slaughterhouse-Five
Les Misérables
The Lovely Bones
1984
Memoirs of a Geisha


read much and often»