Habitat for Humanity, Egypt

We YAGMs and YAVs decided to spend our March retreat in a village outside Minya working on a Habitat for Humanity project. I had been excited for this weekend since last October when I first found out about the opportunity to build homes during this year in Egypt. Finally the weekend arrived and we were on our way!

In Egypt, time is...well, not at all the way we think of time in America. Sticking to the clock is not necessary here, and I've grown accustomed to the laid-back nature of meeting times and days here. For the Habitat trip, however, we were back on America Time. Our weekend was mapped out starting 7:00am Friday morning (do not arrive at the train station even one minute late or else you might not be accepted into our weekend's program!). It was both frustrating and humorous for us to feel like a machine again--working on a set schedule and the expectations that come from that.

Also, from Friday morning 7a.m., we didn't take two steps away from the group without being followed by the Egyptian military escorts who traveled with us for the weekend. FYI--military men and Egyptian tourists police station themselves everywhere in Egypt, and although they carry huge guns, it's easy to forget they are there. Generally they just stand there, looking bored and tired, and sometimes sleeping. For the most part I am able to avoid them, but when a group of Americans travels together to a village town in Upper Egypt, it's mandatory to be escorted by these men. Frankly, it's a bit ridiculous. There are more escorts than Americans, and they cause more attention to us by surrounding us from all sides everywhere we go. But, i suppose it provides jobs, so that's okay.

When we arrived in Minya we hopped on a private bus and went to the small village, where we were let into a large room full of other military escorts and the major of Minya. We spent some time drinking tea, introducing ourselves, and asking the Major any questions we wanted to ask; discovering the main issue facing Minya is water sanitation and health problems related to this issue. Although these are concerns we face at home, the extent to which these issues matter to our daily lives is quite different. At home we might complain of too many minerals in the water; here people don't have running water, and if they do it's often too dirty to drink without becoming ill, but they drink it anyway.

After a late lunch, we split into smaller groups, each with a Habitat leader (an Egyptian man who spoke little English) and we worked on the homes. Jennifer, Stancil and I 'signed up' for roofing and became a team—YES! I can't tell you how excited I was to get out some nails and a hammer and do some manual labor. I just love this type of work. We grabbed our gear and we were off strolling the dirt-path maze of mud-brick homes.

Walking through a village is always a humbling experience, and it's easy to feel like you are in a fishbowl. Many of these people have never seen a Westerner in their life, and they are incredibly intrigued. As we walked through the village with our Habitat gear of carpenter's apron, hammer, saws, etc. young children and women came to the doors to peak out at us and giggle or stare. It was as if we were the parade and they are the spectators. I found out the next day there had been a rumor going on that we were from the World Health Organization and came to inspect the town for bird and the bird flu. Apparently everyone hid their birds that first day; I don't doubt it because on Day 2 I noticed people a bit more at ease about their chickens wandering around. (Don't worry, I didn't get the flu!)

"Roofing" on a village home in rural Egypt is either not at all what you'd expect or exactly what you'd expect. In other words, don't think slanted roof with shingles, oh no. Roofing meant nailing a layer of somewhat flimsy, sometimes uneven boards into the foundation pillars and then plopping home-made rocky cement on a layer of plastic over the boards and smoothing the mixture as best as we could. The concept of “leveling” isn’t so important, either. At times when the board didn’t fit so well, men would take out the brick beneath the board and use a hammer to shave off the edges and make it smaller to fit underneath the wood. The mud-bricks easily crumble with a single blow of the hammer—they are “mud” bricks afterall. I fear what would happen to these homes if a heavy rain ever came.

In the hot sun we pounded those nails for hours as family members watched and laughed. The women made tea and brought us these piping hot glasses of 'syrup' (more sugar than water) to drink in the hot sun. J Towards the end of the second day I was getting pretty tired and my hands were blistering, so the father of the house took my hammer to show me how to do it right. I swear I heard him say, "Just Jam it!" a number of times, which made me laugh, as it was the only words of English I'd heard from any of them all weekend. Of course, he wasn't speaking English, but something else in Arabic. They were pleased with our work, however, saying, "Maya Maya!" or 100-100! to us throughout the day. The family children loved watching us work. They also loved getting their picture taken, and then rushing over to see the photo--digital technology is beyond fascinating to them.

I was so impressed by Habibat for Humanity, Egypt. I've always had a lot of respect for the organization, and the more I get to know the more I like it. Habitat works with families on an individual basis to find out exactly what they need for a home and offers the family a no-interest loan to buy the materials and build their home. They work out a deal for how long it should take for the family to pay back for the materials; and the family is also expected to put in "sweat time" meaning they must work on building their neighbor's home. It an incredible way to introduce more empowerment and service, as communities gather together to learn how to build and help each other.

Oh, more tourist police fun: At night we wanted to take a walk along the Nile Corniche and enjoy the fresh air; we had to wait awhile at the hotel until a big enough selection of tourist police could gather to join us. As we strolled along the road, a truck full of police slowly drove right next to us. When we stopped, they stopped. When we turned, they turned—or called out to us to come back and not turn. That's not suspicious or anything. ;-)