On Monday, we showed up to this village without knowing a single thing about it -- not even the directions to the village. Once we got near the village, we had to ask 8 people for directions until we successfully arrived. The village's roads were soaked in mud as it had just been raining for the past two days. Once we got out of the car, everything smelled like sewage. You didn't know if the mud you were stepping in was really mud. We were a site to see for the locals. Two city slicking Egyptians and 3 Americans. One lady thought we were an international police force from the UN, and she started out by saying her family didn't do anything wrong. We talked to a couple people nearby explaining our development project, and just 15 minutes later, we were drinking tea with the heads of the village. One person had called another who had called another who talked to the mayor/sheriff/whatever.
We sat down with the head of the village and a bunch of his nephews and cousins and began introductions. The head was what you might visualize as the stereotypical leader in a village. He was about 60-something with gray hair and a round belly. His beard was a couple days old and he wore a jalibea. He greeted us with "Hello, how are you" with a chuckle and then reverted into Arabic. It's hard to appreciate the "Hello, how are you" without hearing it from an Egyptian, but the idea is that little kids want to practice there English, and often times, they only know how to say that phrase, so they'll say that phrase to any foreigner passing by. This guy really reminded me of one of the little kids practicing his/her English.
After introductions and an explanation of our project, we agreed to come back on Thursday to talk with the different member of the village to hear how we can help this village. So, we came back today. This time with about 16 people (4 Americans and 12 Egyptians). We sat down in two different rooms, and the locals would enter the rooms 2 at a time to explain to us the general problems of their village and how we can personally help them.
We met with six groups of people. The first two women asked for clothes. And, we realized that we needed to make our projects goals much clearer to the people of this town. We're trying to spark development, not just give a handout. The second two guys were Microbus drivers, and they wanted us to pave roads around the village. This resonated more with our interests: infrastructure building. The next pair of guys were freshmen/sophomores in high school. They wanted to open a Central (a place to sell mobile phones), and they were looking for a loan to start up their business. The following group had the exact same idea. And these ideas are definitely worthy of consideration for the project. The next guy wanted us to help him find a job in Alexandria. Once again, this isn't really what the project is about. The last guy wanted money to start up a bee farm to harvest honey. He said he was a pro, but something wiped out all his bee hives a year ago, and he hasn't had enough money to buy beehives to recreate his bee farm. This is a weird, yet very workable idea.
We're going back to the village in a week to continue our discussions on development ideas. Once we get some good ideas, we'll write a proposal to the International Rotary Club to obtain a grant for $15,000 to put towards the development of this village.
