April 14, 2007 Dear Friends, This will probably be my last letter to you from Egypt (at least for this time). My term with MCC ends at the end of May and my flight is booked to return to Canada on May 31st. Though at the beginning I often wondered if I would survive 3 « years, now it seems to be ending very quickly. I'm not sure I'm finished with Egypt in the long term, but for now I believe it is time to leave for awhile. I have grown to love Egypt and its people far more than I would have thought possible, and so though I am ready to come home and see all of you again, my heart is torn at the thought of leaving Egypt. It is hard also when friends here come to me and cry and beg me to stay. It is hard to leave knowing that it is very unlikely they will ever be able to come visit me in my country. It is hard leaving knowing some of the difficult situations of people I love here in Egypt. It is hard to leave when I see so much work I can still do. And yet I think that at this time God is calling me back to Canada. Perhaps it is time for some of you to consider working in another country. We could really use someone who knows more about equipment than I do, or someone who specialized in special education, or a whole range of other professions. Think about it. I very much enjoyed my visit with my family and friends in Canada over Christmas. I remember arriving in Montreal, excited to see snow again after 3 years, excited to see my breath in the air! The weather treated me very kindly while I was there. It was very cold when I arrived and very cold when I left but in between those times, temperatures were probably slightly above normal. In some ways a few days of real cold would have been nice, but I'm not sure how much I could have stood. The first few days at home, I felt quite cold when I was outside even though I knew that according to the temperature it was not that cold. It was good to spend Christmas and my birthday with my family. In fact we celebrated Christmas, my birthday, and New Year's all at the same time. I was also very happy to have the chance to do some cross-country skiing on some of my favourite trails in Little Red (Prince Albert, SK). I also did some downhill and cross-country skiing in Manitoba. And yes there are actually one or two hills in Manitoba. For my level of skiing it was actually very enjoyable. The last time I skied downhill was 10 years ago on my 30th birthday. I was able to keep up with my 6 & 7 year old nieces and nephews but just barely! If I keep up with this trend I should get in a few more downhill skiing trips in my lifetime. I also want to thank all of you for your generous birthday gifts. With the money I have been able to purchase some equipment for a perceptual motor program as well as some equipment for the playground. The playground equipment has not yet been installed but has been ordered. I hope to purchase a sandbox and some toys to go in it as well. Hopefully I can send some pictures with my next letter which will probably be sent after I get back to Canada. Thanks to my family for giving me a digital camera, I should be able to fill up my computer with pictures before I leave! I am also very excited to be able to say that the Seeds of Hope Centre (the school where I am working) has been accepted as a Global Family Project. For those who don't know, this is MCC's child sponsorship program. They don't sponsor individual children but instead provide a lump sum of money to cover the cost for a number of children to be able to attend school. As I think I have said before, many children come from very poor families and are not able to pay their tuition. Some are able to pay small amounts, but not all of the tuition. This has made it very difficult for the school to operate to buy needed equipment, to pay adequate salaries, etc. The ratio of teachers to students needs to be high and preferably higher than what we have right now. We have children who need individual assistance but are not able to get it because we cannot afford to hire any more teachers. Now you have the opportunity to make a difference in the lives of these children as well as those who work with the children. If you wish to help sponsor the children at the Seeds of Hope Centre you may now do so through MCC's Global Family Program. For more information on Global family check out www.mcc.org/globalfamily. From there you can follow the links by clicking on "projects by country" until you get to the Seeds of Hope Centre. During term break at the end of January I headed up South to Assiut (In Egypt, upper Egypt refers to the south because of the direction of the flow of the Nile River). The secretary at school, Martha had invited me to visit her home town near Assiut several times before, including last August. I must admit I have zero desire to travel to Upper Egypt anywhere near summertime. Cairo may be hot, but the Saied (south) is hotter! And so I thought this might be my only chance to visit her family in her home town. And at the same time I was able to visit fellow MCC'ers Barrette and Sandy Plett so I had two reasons to go. The trip was very quick. Martha's family was quite angry with me (or so they said) that the visit was so short. Perhaps someday I will go again and make it a longer visit. Martha's mother knows that I like fateer and aesh shamsy (Upper Egyptian bread) and so she made some for me the day I came to visit. Because it was during term break when pretty much all the schools in Egypt seem to be on holidays, there seemed to be many relatives from all over who had come back to their hometown for a visit. Throughout the evening there were all kinds of relatives coming and going. I could not keep track of who was a cousin or an aunt or a friend or a friend of a cousin or whatever. But I enjoyed meeting them and experiencing their warm and hospitable welcome. They seemed to want to do so much for me and were quite insistent I stay longer. I stayed overnight and in the morning I was fed quishk with milk. Quishk is another upper Egyptian food. It is made of a grain (I believe wheat), ground up somehow and made into small balls, allowed to ferment in buttermilk or sour milk or something like that and then dried in the sun. I have had it before in other forms. I think I prefer it when it is cooked into a soup or eaten with eggs. I was able to eat a little, but not too much. After breakfast, Martha and I went to visit the Abuna (priest) who then took us to visit the church. As we got near the church door, I saw a man holding a goat and then I saw he was also holding a knife and very quickly I understood what he intended to do. They asked me if I didn't want to take pictures. Did I want to take pictures?! I didn't even want to see the event. Goats happen to be my favourite animal in Egypt! Ah well, though I was behind the man I couldn't help but see when he put his bloody hand against the church door to leave the print of his hand. Then I was invited to step over the dying goat to go into the church. When I asked Martha about this later, she said the man was the local butcher and this was his (their) way of welcoming me to town. Um Thanks I think. I did very much enjoy my time in this small village near Assiut. The people seemed even friendlier than other Egyptians. People went out of their way to assist me with anything I could possibly need. The streets were very narrow, but generally the place was cleaner and a whole lot quieter than Cairo. There were not many vehicles in this small village. Most of the men I saw were wearing galabayas (the traditional flowing robes worn by Egyptians). The whole place seemed very peaceful and quiet. In the morning we had a driver take us to a monastery where I met up with Barrette and Sandy again. Martha and I, my backpack, a bag of bread they insisted I have and all the bottles of water they bought for me we were packed into the front seat of the small pick-up truck. On our way to the monastery we stopped at some tomato fields belonging to the driver who was taking us to the monastery to admire his lovely tomatoes growing out in the desert. Since that visit, the brother of the driver we had that day, took this same truck to go somewhere and was killed in an accident. I seem to hear of so much death here and so many people dying young. While in Assiut, I was also able to visit a large orphanage known as the Lillian Thrasher orphanage. I cannot remember how many children live there but it is large. Children come there for a variety of reasons. They can come of course if they have lost both parents. However, also if there is only one parent, children can come to the orphanage because in Egypt it is very difficult to be a single parent. Fathers without mothers have no one to take care of the children. Mothers without fathers often have no means of supporting the family. This orphanage was started some 50 years ago by a young American woman named Lillian Thrasher. At a young age, she felt called to come to Egypt. So she came, leaving behind her family and her fianc‚. When she came she did not know exactly what she would do in Egypt. Sometime in her early years in Egypt, she visited a young mother who died and left behind a child who had no one to care for it. So Lillian took it and took care of it. Through this she felt the call of God to look after the orphans. Though she had very little money of her own, donations came in for her to begin her orphanage. Today it is a large orphanage that has the support of the community behind it. Time is flying by. I started this letter a month ago, and am finally finishing it. My schedule is similar to what I wrote in my last letter. However, since I have come back, I have gotten most of my work translated before the workshop. The teachers and I then read it together, and if there are parts they don't understand we work at adding things or changing things to make them clear. This has helped a lot and I am able to move through material much more quickly and it now looks like there will be some training materials in Arabic when I leave. I still of course would like to be doing more! During Lent, I switched my Monday afternoon workshop to Saturday afternoon to allow the teachers to go to mass in the afternoon if they chose to do so. During lent, the Coptic Orthodox Church generally celebrated mass in the afternoon on weekdays. There were several days off over Easter but as far as school work goes, I didn't accomplish much during this time. Several days were spent in church Thursday 6AM 11:30AM; Friday 6AM 3:30PM; Saturday 7PM 11:30PM. Sunday and Monday I spent time visiting people. Monday was the spring holiday here for both Christians and Muslims and everyone (or almost) goes out and tries to find a spot of grass somewhere to sit and eat their lunch of smelly fish. It seems on this day most people eat a type of salted or smoked fish which doesn't taste too bad, but the smell and sight and thought of it was enough to turn me off of it. It didn't help that my stomach was a little on edge from eating too much meat too quickly after not eating any for the 55 days of Lent. I went out with the secretary from work, Martha, her husband and son, and her sister and her family. We went to visit Coptic Cairo, and then went to another church on the Nile for a boat ride and to eat Ringa, the type of fish I described earlier. It was an absolutely beautiful spring day, with a lovely cool breeze, and just enough sun to make the temperature comfortable. Though tiring, it was a real pleasure to get out and "smell the breezes" which is the translation of the Arabic name for this holiday. In the past several months I have been invited to a number of homes and a number of people have been happy to teach me how to cook all kinds of Egyptian foods! This is me in a galabeya helping to cook Koshary. Those of you who know me, know that it is much easier for me to agree to go visit someone, than to go through my stuff, pack, organize, and do all the other things I need to do before leaving here. And as the time draws closer for me to leave, everyone who didn't get around to inviting me before, wants me to come visit. And everyone who did invite me before wants me to come again! I do enjoy the visits so much. Alas, because I am flying on a plane I cannot just throw my stuff into boxes at the last minute and drag them with me to sort at a more convenient time. And there is a deadline. The plane is leaving at a specific time, with or without me. I want to thank everyone who has taken the time to send me e-mails or letters or cards. I do appreciate every one of them. Please accept my apologies for not responding personally to every letter, especially in the next month. Remember also that it is probably time to change your mailing address for me. Until further notice you may mail letters to: Box 700 Arborg, MB R0C 0A0 Canada. My e-mail remains the same. May the blessings of the risen Christ be with all of you! Sincerely, Gloria Dueck gd@dueck.ca http://www.dueck.ca/gd/ 011 2 (012)456-5320 24 el Emam Aly St, Midan Ismailia, Heliopolis, Cairo 11341 EGYPT hjh