Beni Suef

I just had one of the best weekends and best vacations of my life. Now, you might say this is strange considering I'm living in Egypt, and considering all travel books and resources will inform you that the only reason to be in Beni Suef is to be en route to somewhere more interesting, but this weekend feels like the first adventure I've had in a long time. It was also the first time I've felt completely taken care of and relaxed in that knowledge since I came to this country. Independence has its joys, but dependence does as well, especially when you've been running on independence for months.

My roommate J and I discovered that to get to Beni Suef to visit our friends we could catch a bus from Moneeb, the end of the Giza metro line. We get there and find a bus station, which evidently is not what we want, we walk up and down a line of about 50 microbuses yelling at us and finally find out we need to walk all the way down the street to the station under the bridge. We get there and ask about tickets from a smart-ass ticket man who tells us tickets are 7, except for us its 10. I guess at least he's honest that he's overcharging the foreigner, but then, in response to our inquiries as to why, he answers the Egyptian equivalent of "because I said so," multiple times. Ick. 2 hours later, after finally paying the foreigner price and waiting for the bus to fill up, we make our way to Beni Suef, past green field after green field that J is begging to roll in, trucks stacked full of garlic and water buffalo.

We disembark one stop too early at the Beni Suef zoo and the guys come pick us up. We head to the best restaurant in town, and then the club on the Nile (where the taxi driver argues with our friend M about him wanting to be dropped off in front of a hospital). We sit next to the Nile and look across at the green fields and the monastery where we're gonna be staying, and we just sit and talk for hours, far away from all our stressers.

Next we head to a youth meeting at the new, beautiful, gigantic church. Youth meaning our age. We face the wall with everyone as they pray, they sing chanting hymns while we try to read the hymnal in arabic, and then we come to a bible lesson and then the real lesson, the title is "sexual culture." I'm excited. The woman presenting really mostly just describes child development through adolescence. There is a brief detour into sex changes and homosexuality and people who feel like they were born the wrong gender. Evidently all these things are the same problem, and the fault of parents who don't indoctrinate their children with quite enough gender stereotypes. And now that the newest science has discovered that homosexuality is a mental disease... Wow, so I did not agree with most of what was being said (with the exception of giving ur adolescent children some privacy is a good idea), but it was freakin interesting, and I loved how these women were free to challenge the authority and discuss these issues at this meeting. They voted to continue the sexual culture topic and I really want to go back.

Then we got to look around the new cathedral. Its half built, with only stained glass windows and the dome in place, but standing in the middle of it in the dark was beautiful, and exciting. Maybe partly because this amazing church is in the process of being built, and maybe because I was in this half built church in this random Egyptian town with good friends.

We then made our way to the monastery where we were staying. We are driving literally through the middle of nowhere where our taxi driver is telling our friend about how he loves a Christian girl but her church father told her that she needs to move to America to marry him. Then we get out, M asks taxi driver to wait (and God preserve you, you are honey!), we go in, finally get the father to approve a room for us, and we find our room with a balcony overlooking green fields, crickets, palm trees swaying in the breeze, and lit up mosques in the distance. The most beautiful sight I've seen in a long time. I sit for probably an hour writing and just taking it in. I sleep as close to the window as possible to hear the crickets. Unfortunately that meant that when the deafening dawn prayer was called throughout all of Beni Suef, I was definitely awake, although so was J. Evidently this is why M wears ear plugs every night.

In the morning I spent some more time on the balcony, this time watching the farmers and their donkey carts and buffaloes go by. J and I head out for a walk, we walk down through the fields and buffaloes and farmers and donkey carts, and mudbrick farming sheds, the sound of birds having replaced the crickets. I can breath real air here, and people here seem much more polite here, they don't stare and they don't yell at us, even though foreigners are completely non-existent in Beni Suef (except for M and his two colleagues, due to aforementioned lack of travel destinations). After coming back to observe the sniper tower and mote that give this monastery a sort of fortress feel, we have a nice breakfast, pay, and head out to the middle school where M teaches. The kids all rush to greet him and we as the visitors are treated to tea and a sit in the school admin office. We also get to observe a collection of posters, art, a ribbon dancing ceremony, and a talent show, on this, special visitor day. We get to see first graders do a skit about stealing money from parents, a skit about women being able to work alongside men, a story reading, and a collection of English songs. My personal favorite was when ten kids with monkey pictures on their chests stand in front of their class as the whole group sings, "ten little monkeys jumbing on the bed, one fell of and bumb-ed his head" in heavy Egyptian accent. I'm a little tea pot was a close second.

We head off for Kosheri and then concluded our wonderful time waiting in the bus station. After being told at the office the bus for Cairo will be leaving in ten minutes, twice (we all know what ten minutes means in Egypt: anytime today) we meet some people headed there too. After a while we've been waiting and we don't see our fellow Cairo passengers. We head over to the office and ask again when the bus is leaving. The same guy who told us ten minutes now looks at us seriously and tells us no buses are going to Cairo today. We all question how he can tell us this after he said ten minutes not so long ago, he acts like he has no idea what we're talking about. He asks random other people, they all confirm no buses to Cairo today. Now, we are in Beni Suef, there is really nothing here as we acknowledge, and Cairo is nearby. Where the heck are buses going if not Cairo? So M tries to look angry and tell them he's very angry and will never ride a bus again! Unfortunately M just emanates pacifism and goodwill, and anger just does not really work for him. So we find a shared taxi and make it back to wait on a bridge, catch another taxi, and find our way to see our fam in Maasara, where I listen to the fears and jealousies of a 16 year old girl trapped in an unfair society (as are all societies), nursing a love interest for a man she hasn't seen in eight months and has been rejected by her parents, and feeling alone. I wish I could help, but even I am leaving, and even I am not around all the time.

And so, this weekend was a ridiculously lovely balance between independent adventure and allowing myself to be dependent on others. It was great to be on the easy end of that situation, and it was great to see where my friend spends his life and has somehow fit himself into the most unlikely of places as a beloved member of the community. It makes me feel hopeful.