By Barbara Epley-Shuck
They've all gone. The last school bus has snorted and belched its way up the hill, and my husband is on his way, late after he tried to drive off with the 11 year old's bike under the car bumper. When I heard the terrible noise, I ran out in my housecoat and pulled out the bike, undamaged.
The dishwasher is roaring, full of glasses, coffee cups, plates that held pizza, cereal dishes, etc –gathered from under beds, the television stand, balanced on sofa and chairs. I cringed and yelled some more about the white marks the glasses left on the coffee table.
This beautiful quiet. I am going to savor it before going to work.
There is no one yelling, “Mom quick quick”, or “ What's to eat?” The perennial TV football game has been silence and no one is yelling, “Get that guy”. The radio is playing, soft background sounds and there is no caustic comment about “old folk's music”.
Ball point pens, Scotch tape, toenail and fingernail clippers have been retrieved from all corners of the house. The can of dry gas has been removed from the dining room table. Newspaper, which were scattered all over the floor as evidence of their being read are now piled in the garage waiting for a paper drive.
Jeans, shirts, shoes, socks, which covered the carpets of all the bedrooms have found their proper places with my help, and oh, it's wonderful to just sit here and let the peaceful atmosphere saturate me.
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Stories from the past
When we returned from the movies, our 19 year old son's room was all clean. I knew that his girlfriend had been over during the evening, and I asked if she had cleaned his room. He answered. Yes.”, but I helped. I decided which ones should be washed. I smelled them.
There was a deer in the neighborhood yesterday. He came out of the woods uninvited when the children were getting ready to go on the school bus. His initiation to civilization frightened him so much that he forced his body through a picture window, leaped through the neighbor's house and out a back patio door. He then too off for the woods, bleeding. I hope he is OK.
My friend's little boy threw his silverware down the air vent into the furnace where it was destroyed. When his mother discovered what happened, she is mad and just about ready to say something she will regret later. Seeing her, he opens his arms wide and says, “Amen”. She thought “Yes, it is a good time to pray for patience”, and then he said, “I'm sorry”. He was forgiven.
Sometimes we don't see what is right in front of us. My husband was looking for his favorite sport shirt. He was in a hurry, we looked in closets and muttering to himself he finally put on something else and left. After he had gone, I looked at our son studying at the dining room table, and asked him if that was his shirt he was wearing. He said, “No, dad's” . My husband and I had both looked right by him when he was wearing the shirt that his dad had wanted.
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Memories of Egypt
The people I met in Egypt eleven years ago when I was with 17 Presbyterian Women from all over the United States impressed me with their hospitality. My roommate and I were shopping and the owner sent his helper for tea for us because he wanted to talk. We ate lunch in the settlement where people who gather the garbage from the city live and work. The paper they salvaged made beautiful greeting cards.
Mubarak signs were everywhere as an election was soon There was no competition and if his name was mentioned, eyes rolled and the body language said he wasn't liked.
We worshiped in two very different Christian churches, one where the men sat on one side and the women on the other and the other , a very lively , mixed, younger group. Both churches were full. We heard stories of neighbor Muslims helping a Christian church rebuild after earthquake damage. After one church service, we were served the 3 P's....pita bread, pastries and Pepsi.
Driving was crazy. There were few stoplights and everyone played chicken at intersections. We were hit one evening. The radiator burst and we spilled water on the street. The crowd arrived quickly. One young man reached inside the window and patted my hair (I thought to comfort me in a bad situation) but the policeman pulled his hand away and scolded him. Our driver soon got water and we continued the short way to our home hotel. The welcome mat said “Hallo”,very similar to hello. We were getting used to the greetings of kisses on each cheek. The coffee shop across the street always had customers smoking the traditional water pipe at outdoor tables.
I met some wonderful women in a community center where they had the first care center for aging people. Traditionally , care of the elderly was done at home but this small center was a help for some families struggling with that. One of the women I met there wanted to adopt me.
One of the most inspiring visits of the trip was with a woman lawyer who had her own firm and was fighting for women's rights using the Koran. Her father was an Egyptian movie star and her mother was the CEO of a non-governmental health care group. She talked about changing family law. She said, “cultural images may be stronger than the law, for example the girl child may be malnourished because popular belief is that women are stronger and can do without. Women are trained to carry the burden.” She said working with principles in the UN convention on the Rights of Women and Children helped narrow the gap in education and rights.
On an earlier tourist trip, there was violence and our hosts wanted us to be protected. Whenever we went on our bus we had a police escort with us.
The second floor neighborhood center we visited was noisy, hot, even with a fan going. We heard the roosters crowing on the roof across and also saw a goat. There were carts and donkeys on the street below and someone banging a pan with loud yelling back and forth. In the room near us young women with babies were studying nutrition and family planning. Here, we, too, were served refreshments ,Pepsi or orange soda and wrapped Twinkies. This refugee camp/ slums was part of the city of Cairo, but not included in city services, so there was no water. This was typical of many of the Palestinian refugee camps we saw. in Middle Eastern countries I kept watching a basket going up and down outside the window as we had our meeting (from a window higher than we were) and I wondered what was in it. It was a way to get things delivered from the street below without walking up the winding, stone steps.
We went by the city of the dead where people were living in mausoleums. We were divided into small groups to visit special projects and I went to Tanta Hospital , an hour and a half from Cairo in delta country. This ministry included a hospital and a school. We had a hot, wild ride there as we were sandwiched on the highway between truckloads of cabbage, cotton and eggs going to market.
The hospital had no air conditioning though some rooms had verandas. There might be 12 people in a room and the mattresses were thin. People are grateful for their care and this Christian hospital has received many donations from grateful Muslim's who have been treated there. We met a volunteer doctor from England who had managed to get a dialysis machine donated but it got held up in customs because of a new Egyptian law which prohibited getting used machines that are invasive. We discussed that later with the woman lawyer we met and she said the law was intended to keep junk things out of the country, but like all laws they had gone overboard and she thought it would be changed. At that point, a good machine was idle.
One of the major health problems for the hospital was a worm that multiplied since the Aswan Dam was built and caused liver failure. The blood vessels get large and burst. There is a lot of blindness. There is a custom of putting black ointment on the eyes which helps cause this and the hospital was opening clinics for health education in some of the smaller villages.
We visited a Think and Do project by the salt pits of Wadi Natron. People were taught carpentry, cooking, . Muslims in nearby villages were antagonistic at first but when Christians shared candles with them for Ramadan and some of the milk from their farms they have become friends.
We visited Alexandria, spent time in the Mediterranean Ocean, saw pyramids, sailed the Nile and visited the King Tut exhibit. So there was some tourist time.
It is at this time, when I see those pictures of trouble in the streets of Cairo that I think of and pray for the wonderfully warm, welcoming people I met when I visited there.
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