Last two weeks

Last two weeks

I have done a couple of things the last two weekends. In general during the week most of the time we hang out drinking something or/ and smoking a shisha in café or something similar. I played soccer a couple of times, which is quite nice. We always play very late in the evening so that the temperature is ok. Since public soccer fields do not exist or they are in a very bad condition we always go to a Shooting Club, which I rather would call Sporting Club, but who cares. Anyway the soccer is really good because we play on a small field a very fast game.

Two weeks ago we went to Coptic Cairo, which is some sort of an enclave in Cairo, there are a couple of churches to visit, a monastery and a graveyard . Since the Coptic people are close to the Greek Orthodox sometimes you see words written in Greek. Furthermore there is the place where Mary and Josef and the baby Jesus hidden from Herodes who wanted to kill all newborn, when he heard that a new king is born and so the holy family escaped to Egypt. In addition there is one of the few (as far as I know only 3) synagogues in Egypt. Unfortunately we where to late for that, I will go there another time, I expect it to be heavily protected. Just a short walk away from Coptic Cairo we wanted to visit the Nilmeter, but unfortunately it was also already closed. But we had a nice view on the Nil so that was worth it.

Last weekend I worked as a volunteer in an NGO distributing Ramadan Food Bags and clothes. Since Ramadan is a special months in Islam people try to help each other and do something good for society. In this case the NGO collected donations (money and used clothes). With the money they were able to buy 400 Ramadan food bags, which contain rice, oil, sugar, beans… very basic products. The bags were distributed to poor families (each family one bag). The family had to apply in advance for the food and they got some kind of stamp to prove that they were allowed to get the food. Last Friday finally they were allowed to pick up the food (only women were allowed to come, because the men always fight), in addition there was a clothes bazaar, where the women got pick up the used clothes.
I mainly helped packing the food bags and helping the women carrying them down the stairs. I really enjoyed my time there, because everybody (helpers and the poor people) were very friendly. I could see the joy in there eyes when they got the bags. They were especially surprised that some foreigners helped them. I sometimes feel strange when I am walking in the streets of Egypt and seeing all the poverty. I want to be a good guy, so this was a good chance to give back something to the Egyptian society.
I was very surprised because the room in which we distributed the food didn’t belong to be NGO. We were able to work in this room through the sheik of the nearby mosque (sorry I don’t have a clue how to write this, but the sheik is as far as I know a monk that is living in a mosque, these sheiks are very religious and high honoured in Egyptian society). The sheik noticed that I and some other volunteers were not Muslim. So he allowed us to eat and drink in a special room. Nice move.
In the evening we all had a nice Iftar (the first dinner of the day during Ramadan, in Egypt at 6 pm) together. It was really an encouraging day.

On the next day we went sandboarding on a small dune close to Cairo. Really funny but the dune was not high enough to gain a lot of speed…. I need to do this in the real desert.