Newsletter #5 - 19 July, 2003

Hi there,

One month in, since we last wrote, we've started Arabic study, spent one afternoon in a hotel's rooftop pool, watched the Wallabies lost to South Africa, had a gorgeous felucca ride on the Nile at twilight, drank fresh mango & banana juice for A$1, been abused by a couple of taxi drivers, worked on our objectives for the year, eaten at a very odd Chinese restaurant (Le Peking), planned to start a new bible study, tried some Egyptian beer, hired a house cleaner, found an authentic Korean restaurant on our street, visited the garbage city and the cave churches, asked lots of questions about the Tukul craft program, caught up with some other Aussies in Cairo, tried ordering home delivered kushari in Arabic (with reasonable success) and found five pounds in a packet of chips.

Whew! It's all true, except that Joanna didn't watch the rugby. I must apologise to all who have asked about Joanna and life here as a female. After spending hours writing an email on life from the back seat of a taxi (I'm always sitting in the front), I deleted it without saving it. I'm terribly sorry.

There are three stories I'd like to share. Surely one of the most bizarre provisions came when trying to pay the language centre. Needing another six pounds, as they didn't have change from a twenty pound note, I asked Jo and Rachael if I could borrow a five pound note to add to my one one pound note. After they both said no, I answered malesh, the Arabic word which I understand to mean, 'doesn't matter/I'm sorry/oh well', I opened a packet of chips only to find a five pound note inside which I'd won as part of some competition.

To celebrate the end of our first week at Arabic, we went with Claudette and Rachael on a felucca ride. It was a reasonably cool night, by Cairo standards, and there was a decent breeze blowing. Though such a 'tourist' thing to do, it was a very relaxing way to enjoy dinner, away from the traffic noise, some of the smells and all of the people while the sun set over the buildings and transformed the colour of the sky.

Lastly, to catch up with Simon and Kylie Holding, also here with our company, we went on a mini-bus with a private tour guide, one of Simon's colleagues, to drive through the garbage city and then to the cave church at the top of the hill. A large proportion of Cairo's rubbish collection is brought to the garbage city where it is sorted for the meager earnings of the people who live there. Streets are lined with it, as are insides of houses and utes drive by with bags of rubbish as high as a semi trailer. There was so much to take in and the photos I got cannot depict it (or convey the smell).

At the top of the hill is an incredible Coptic church. The cave church is aptly named after the fact that there are halls/chapels that are built into caverns in the hillside. On many of the rock faces are enormous carvings depicting Jesus, Mary and some other bible characters. On my website (http://joshua.kuswadi.com) are some photos I took of these carvings and inside the St Matthew chapel. The main auditorium is massive. It seats 25,000 people and its natural shape has very good acoustics. There aren't enough superlatives to describe being in the congregation for a service there, nor the contrast to the rest of Cairo.

Our time here has reminded us how blessed we are, in a very material sense, through the sheer luck that we were both born in Sydney. This has its own challenges in how we spend our money, what we think of having a house cleaner or how often we eat out at extravagent, by Cairo standards, restaurants.

Though initially quite daunted, we've learnt a lot of Arabic, and can even read some of it (8/28 characters so far). Though we're often scared to try it in public, we are generally more accepted and respected as we fumble our way through communicating, with many humorous results.

We are still finalising what our objectives for the year here are, so wisdom and discernment are required to match enthusiasm with realism, creative ideas with doing the day to day tasks and seeing many great opportunities with finishing those we start work on.

We'd love to hear back from you about what is happening in your lives, in your part of the world.

Thanks,
Josh'n'Jo

Email me - joshua at kuswadi dot com