MCC

"My home is not a place, it is people."










There is never a dull moment at one of our MCC gatherings. This one in particular (last friday) was a goodbye party for the Smiths who have only one month left in Egypt. I remember finding MCC meetings rather boring but the group this year is much more entertaining i have to say, especially that Barrette guy.












> Barrette and Sandy are disgusted by my lack of knowledge about the geography of Canada and quickly pull out an atlas.





- Nelson and Barrette admiring their presents from Beni Suef

> This picture is very misleading. It is called 'nose blowing' and it's a game that Barrette taught us. Apparently when you blow on someones nose a strange sound comes out of their mouth.

Smell the Breezes

"Walk among the orange groves and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into the trees.The winds will blow their own freshness into you...while cares will drop off like the bumper of an ancient Fiat made in Egypt."

Several weeks ago was the Egyptian national holiday, Shem el Naseem (literally translated as "smell the breezes"). It's a holiday dated back to the pharonic times so it has no religous connections at all. It is just simply a day where everyone in Egypt takes the day off, finds any piece of green grass they can plop their bottoms down on (even if it is surrounded by a busy highway), and have a picnic. This year my parents were invited to join some friends in the Nile Delta for a picnic in their village. It was the most random (my parents can be very vague sometimes) and fun trip i've had in a while.
We met at Abouna Marcos' house and he, and his sons, drove us out to a farm about half an hour away from their village which sat on the banks of a canal surrounded by the lushes green fields of the delta. There we joined the Abouna's entire family for a day of food, long walks, and games. I quickly made friends with two girls named Miriam and Ingy and a guy named Mina, who knew practially no english. I was suprised at how much arabic i've picked up over the years and spoke fluently with them and even got some laughter from a joke i told them in arabic!


Mina and Ingy (college kids) treated Miriam and I (highschoolers) like little sisters and made us help them pick lettuce and get all the kids involved in a game of hide and seek tag. They gave the two of us advice about school and taught us some Egyptian songs. I really didn't feel like the oddball forigner with them.



Then it came time to eat. We sat on mats on the floor and the women brought us raw fish, garlic, and very very old cheese (traditional foods eaten on Shem el Naseem). Then we took a long walk through the endless orchards of green orange trees and stopped to climb some of them and eat fruit off them. We also tried to ride a vicious donkey but that didn't go very well.

maa salama

“Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes.”

I hate this time of year in Egypt, inevitably there are going to be people leaving. That is the problem with getting to know x-pats (i don't know if i like that term...) because none of them are here permanently. This is the the hard thing about living overseas: the goodbyes.

I've met so many people from North America and Europe over the years and they just keep coming and going and they all become a blur of memories after while. Some have come searching to find out who they are, to experiance another culture, to study Arabic, to do service work, to teach English, on government buisness, or one of their parents might be Egyptian and want their kids to experiance their native culture. Some have showed an enthusiasm for being in Egypt, some never stopped complaining about how difficult it is to live here, and some don't know what to think of this place. All of them have something in common though...they leave.

They all come for different reasons and they leave for different reasons as well. Sometimes their assigned terms come to an end and it is a slow process watching them pack up and say goodbye. Sometimes they get kicked out of the country by the government. Sometimes they just go crazy.



















^^ This year is going to be the hardest. I'm losing so many good friends who have been with me over the years watching other people leave and now it's my turn to say goodbye to them.

in the begining...