Mokattam, Cairo, Egypt
July 8-24, 2009
by Scott Cherry
D R A F T
Part 1 of 3 (subsequent parts will be added later in August)
Contents
Preface/Acknowledgements
Intro: The Nature of GUT
History/Overview of GUT
How I learned about GUT
Why I Participated in GUT
Orientation to Garbage City/Mokattam
Where we stayed: the Coptic Monastery
A Little More on the History
About Our Trek Team
Preface/Acknowledgements
This report is intended primarily for a general audience of those who follow my ministry. Having said that, certain aspects will be of particular interest to my immediate InterVarsity supervisor, Ann Beyerlein, and to other IV personnel who are familiar with the vision and history of the Global Urban Trek. The broadest audience, however, will surely be the Anchor Ministries network. In general this is a descriptive report and is not intended to evaluate the Trek or its leadership. Still, some of my personal opinions about the Trek, though understated, will be evident in various segments of the report, as well as my reflections about the value of this experience for me.
I want to acknowledge and express my appreciation for Chloe Papke and Steve and Monica Mehaffey for allowing me to “merge” with the Cairo-Mokattam Trek three weeks into it. Chloe is InterVarisity’s Area Director for the Pittsburg area of the Great Lakes East region who oversees the Cairo-Mokattam Trek and has led it in past years. Steve and Monica were this year’s on-site team leaders under Chloe’s oversight. A third leader was a young lady named Earnestine who served as support staff with Steve and Monica. She had been on the Bangladesh Trek the summer before and just graduated from a university that I can’t recall now. Steve and Monica were both student leaders at Carnegie-Melon University in Pittsburg in recent years, and now they are volunteers for the same chapter. (I was impressed that they could both take a full six weeks off from their jobs for this trip, and go right back to work upon their return.) They both served as Cairo-Mokattam support staff for the Trek two years ago.
The prospect of my participation added an extra layer of complexity for each of them while we were discussing the relative virtues and defining our expectations of each other in my “short-term support-staff” kind of role. Monica was my primary correspondent; she was especially responsive and thoughtful as we exchanged numerous emails in the months leading up to the trip. From everything I could observe, Steve and Monica together did a stellar job of coordinating and leading this Trek experience (not that they need my approval in any way). This was a very complicated project to organize, and it was their first time doing it. So I strongly affirm their leadership with regard to both their practical and spiritual capacities, and I thank them again for accommodating me.
One important disclaimer I want to make is this: I am aware that I have a limited window of understanding about the Global Urban Trek. There are many things that I am not privy to about the history of its development in Mokattam up to the present time. Therefore, some of my observations, perspectives and opinions may be ill-informed. That's why I am calling this a draft at this time. I will depend on IV persons to make corrections and fill in the gaps for me.
Intro: The Nature of GUT
The Global Urban Trek is essentially an experiential study on urban poverty around the world. If I rightly understand it, its purpose is first to bring fresh attention to this largely 20th century phenomenon of urban slums, especially in the eyes of the West. Second, it is to understand its personal and systemic human causes and dynamics, as well as its related social problems (causal and resultant) such as forced prostitution. Third, it is to develop or rediscover a proper biblical perspective on poverty in light of a “Kingdom framework” and show that a proper Kingdom theology should move the Church to help solve this global problem. The Kingdom concept is no minor thread of the fabric of the Global Urban Trek. Indeed, it is one that runs through the whole design, and much could be said about this in relation to the Trek. InterVarsity staff and students will be especially familiar with it, I suspect, since it is a dominant theme in many of our IV meetings and conferences, and also of some IVP books such as Kingdom Come by Allen Wakabayashi (2003). It is a holistic reading of Scripture in which gospel proclamation and social action/justice are to be seen as equally important facets of the Christian mission. I found this focus on the Kingdom and on urban poverty to be both troubling and refreshing.
In light of the nature of GUT, therefore, this report will say very little about evangelism, at least in the terms with which I usually describe my evangelistic encounters in other reports. That’s because that type of evangelism (i.e. proclamation evangelism) simply was not the intent of this experience, and there was not much of it. Rather, the focus was on service. This neither surprised me nor bothered me because I knew it going into the Trek. But it’s certainly different from the kind of ministry that Anchor is usually about. For me, service is often a more mundane activity and a more difficult thing to practice. But I expected this and I asked for your prayers in this regard. Thank you. Jesus was faithful to answer your prayers and give me a servant’s heart within the first few days. After that I felt a growing joy in the simplicity of serving with the team at places in the community such as the Boys Recycling Center and the Association for the Protection of the Environment (both types of schools where some of the students and I were assigned). Other students said they experienced similar things. Now, the more I reflect on all this the more I value my stint with the IV students in Garbage City.
History/Overview of GUT
The Global Urban Trek was founded by InterVarsity’s Scott Bessenecker in the early 2000s whose story can be found in his book, The New Friars (IVP, 2006). Participating students are asked to read both this and a subsequent book that Scott edited called Quest for Hope in the Urban Slum (IVP, 2008). Students are recruited for the Global Urban Trek (GUT) from across the United States and possibly from other countries, primarily from InterVarsity circles. The Mokattam Trek is one of a number of other Treks positioned in urban centers around the world, including another one in Cairo whose focus is to work with Sudanese refugees in various parts of the city. Some others include Mexico City, Bangkok, Manila, and Bangladesh. If I understand the main goal of GUT correctly it is to embed the student into a context of urban poverty through which he/she can experience poverty first-hand. After a 5-day orientation somewhere (Mexico City in this case) and about 4.5 weeks in their chosen country, the students return to the orientation site to rest and debrief the experience. During that time the students are challenged to make a 2-year commitment to live and minister in a context of urban poverty. They are told this from the beginning so they can anticipate and pray about it throughout the time in-country. In my personal conversations with some of the students on the Mokattam Trek, one had firmly decided to make that commitment, a few others had decided not to make it, and still others were as yet undecided.
How I learned about GUT
I first learned about the Mokattam project in May of 2008 during InterVarsity GLE's Chapter Focus Week (the yearly student training camp in northern Michigan). Because of my ongoing ministry with Muslims in the Detroit area, I was intrigued right away. Previous to that I was not aware that IV had any projects in Arab countries, nor did I have any knowledge of GUT in specific. This greatly surprised me since I had been involved in IV for 4 years, and I wondered how something of this nature this could have escaped my attention. Even after this discovery, it wasn’t until I read The New Friars that I understood the global scope of GUT with its presence in multiple cities. That year at Chapter Focus Week I also met a student who would be joining the project in Mokattam that summer, so I tracked with him before and after it; he had a powerful experience. Still later I learned that the two young staffers who be assigned to WSU this fall also went on the GUT project last summer. Things like this always make me wonder what the Lord is trying to show me. I have never had a strong desire to go to Egypt in particular, but I eventually began to feel that the Lord was leading me to sign up for this trip.
Why I Participated in GUT
The Global Urban Trek, Mokattam represented for me a unique intersection between my community-based ministry to Arab Muslims with Anchor Ministries and my campus ministry with InterVarsity where my niche is focused toward Muslim students (as well as the broader goals of the chapter and the Metro-Detroit area). GUT Mokattam involves mainly American IV students for 6 weeks (including orientation and debriefing out-of-country) in Cairo where they minister to the urban poor who make their living by recycling the refuse of others. By prior consent of the leaders, my stint was for only 2 weeks, July 8-24. As “support staff” my goals were the same as those of GUT but included another layer (bold):
-To experience and learn more about the Global Urban Trek itself, its philosophy and history.
-As with the students, to learn about and identify with urban poverty through a “Kingdom lens”.
-Help explore opportunities for ministry to Muslims (GUT has been working primarily with Egyptian Christians, though the leadership desires to become more inclusive of Muslims).
- To support, encourage and mentor participating students who may wrestle with the conditions of the community, for reasons related to poverty and for other reasons.
- To interact with local Egyptian people for the purpose of sharing the gospel with them. This will build an even stronger rapport between my family and our Egyptians friends here.
- To learn more about another one of the mother countries of our Arab-American community.
- To form a stronger affinity with Arab people with whom we live and work in East Dearborn.
- To stimulate opportunities to speak about God's heart for Arab/Egyptian people in IV circles.
Orientation to Garbage City/Mokattam
Mokattam is an area of Cairo comprised of several hundred thousand Egyptian inhabitants, including both Muslims and Christians, but mostly Muslims. It is part of an even larger area called Manshiyet Nasser. I learned very little about the larger areas outside of the part of Mokattam where we stayed. This relatively small area is only about 5 sq. km. surrounding one side of a mountain where a Coptic monastery and church were built about halfway up. This part of Mokattam is known as “Garbage City” because of the garbage they recycle as their primary industry. It took awhile to understand the relative geography of each area, but by asking questions it eventually became clearer. Garbage City is essentially an urban village with "invisible boundaries" around it. It has become a Christian ghetto, or enclave, that developed around the immigrants from Upper Egypt who began to settle there some 30 years ago or more. I was told that the population is around 50,000. The people live in a very dense arrangement of poured concrete buildings with narrow streets in which the evidence of their primary trade is abundant. The people within the invisible boundaries of this village are mostly Orthodox or Coptic Christian. I think they are actually Coptic—not Orthodox—though they seem to use these terms interchangeably due to the very close historical and doctrinal ties between the two. The presence of the Coptic monastery and church above Garbage City has had a profound impact on the community. There is also evidence of a very small percentage of Muslims in the village as well (one person said it’s as high as 5%, but others said it’s much less than that); there are two mosques in the village and it’s not uncommon to see women wearing Islamic head coverings. Some of the Christian women wear head coverings as well, but they wear them in a different fashion. (Some of the Christians seemed reluctant to acknowledge that there are Muslims in the community—I’m not sure why—though there is a mosque on what is equivalent to “Main Street” so I was pretty skeptical about that. I found that many of the Christians passively resisted my attempts to learn more about the Muslims in and around the Christian community. ) Outside the invisible boundaries of Garbage City the demographic is just the opposite. I was told that by following almost any street in any direction away from the monastery would shortly lead (no more than 15 minutes on foot) over the boundary into the Muslim sections of Mokattam. One day I initiated a little walking tour with four students to test this myself, which nobody on our team had done before. With only modest observational skills the Muslim presence became obvious. It was also cleaner in the these areas than in the Christian area, and that there were many more women wearing head coverings in the Islamic fashion. (The reason the the Muslim areas are cleaner is that the Muslims are not involved in the garbage recycling industry as the Christians are. More will be said about this later.)
Where we stayed: the Coptic Monastery
Our GUT team stayed in a motel-like apartment building at the Coptic monastery complex. As I have already mentioned, this complex is at the top of the village overlooking it. It is therefore prominent in both real and symbolic terms because of its location, its development and function. It is literally the nexus of the Christian community. There is a full-orbed history of almost legendary nature surrounding its founding and its founder, Father Samaan. I learned some of this history via “oral tradition” but I will not attempt to recall it here. Suffice it to say that Father Samaan received a call from God to start a ministry in Garbage City. The grounds of the complex have a large parking lot for tour buses and those who drive through the village to get there (though most people simply walk up the hill from the lower parts of the village), and the equivalent to park benches sufficient for hundreds of people who simply want to enjoy the evening atmosphere. They are comparatively cleaner, more spacious, and have more ambience than anywhere else in the village. Thus they are very attractive as a common social gathering place at any given time, but especially in the evenings. (The community nightlife in general is exceptionally active compared to anything we normally see in the states. There it seems that almost everyone comes out to enjoy the cooler temperatures and the abundant yet simple social opportunities.)
The monastery complex also includes several marvels for which it is has become quite famous around the world (thus, it is no small tourist attraction): at least a half-dozen caves that have been converted to places of worship. The two largest of these are 1) a huge bowl-shaped amphitheater that serves as the main church carved right into the side of the mountain with an enormous overhang (but still semi-exposed to the sky) that seats somewhere between 15 to 20,000 people. This is where they have mass. It is the largest church in Egypt, if not in all the Middle East; 2) a smaller but still very large space (capacity = 5000) completely enclosed inside a cave that serves as an auditorium. This is used for healing and exorcism activities. If this were not strange enough, I was also told that Muslims commonly attend these meetings to receive prayer for healing and deliverance, and I personally saw a few Muslim women with head coverings receiving prayer at the altar—in front of thousands of onlookers—on the first night of my stay there. I was very impressed by this. (In my brief exposure to the overall ministry of this Coptic Church I have to say that I was not impressed with the teaching I heard since it seemed to focus more on saints than Scripture. But to see Muslims attending these gatherings, and imagining/hoping that the teaching must at least sometimes be more gospel-centered, was very encouraging to behold. I was also told that some of the Muslims attending these meetings experience conversion, and are then secretly instructed in the Christian faith.) For all of these reasons and others there is almost constant activity on the grounds of the monastery, especially on Thursday nights. There are several other Coptic (or Orthodox) churches present in Garbage City as well, but they are much smaller and do not offer the range of worship and leisure-time benefits that the monastery does.
For all of these reasons and those related to tourism, it is probably not possible to overstate the numerous benefits and pervasive influence of the Coptic ministry in the village. It also affords a very hospitable environment to visiting protestant Christian groups that come regularly to the village to serve throughout the year, like ours (which are many). On the other hand, some of the dynamics about the relationship of the GUT team to the monastery are possibly less than ideal with respect to the intent of GUT. I will present more on this concern later in the report.
A Little More on the History
As I said, I am told that the inhabitants of Garbage City originally came from a particular region of Upper Egypt, in the South near the large city of Assiout. They were traditionally Coptic or Orthodox and were persecuted by the Muslims. If I understand correctly what I was told, the persecution caused them to flee their ancient homelands and steadily immigrate to Cairo over a period of time beginning more than 30 years ago. For whatever reasons, they chose the Mokattam area surrounding Mokattam Mountain. What very quickly immerged was an urban slum, with characteristics of many other urban slums around the world. One evening Rebecca Attallah, Expositor at Urbana 2006, came to speak to our combined GUT teams (ours and the other team working with the Sudanese refugees) at the monastery and give testimony of the remarkable progress of development that God has wrought in the Garbage City over the years. She explained to us the history of the village and showed us photos from 1983 in which the people lived in typical slum-like shanties. They had dirt streets that turned to mud in the rain, open raw sewage, no running water, and stolen electricity. They had no doctors, no hospitals, no services for caring for the handicapped, and very low literacy rates. Although the people were culturally Christian, their religion was only skin-deep, so vice was rampant. Many men were alcoholics who wasted their money on drinking; they often came home drunk and beat their wives. But they had a will to survive, and they continually expanded the profitability of garbage collecting and recycling. Thus they developed the industry for which they are now well-known. (Though there are many other garbage cities like this in Cairo, this one is clearly the most famous example of transformation).
How does the garbage industry work? The people go out to the outside areas of Cairo to collect raw garbage, which is not collected by any municipal services. Then they haul it back with trucks and donkey carts to the village to begin sorting it. First they sort out all of the organic material and feed it to their animals. (Note: Until recently all of the garbage cities with their Christian inhabitants kept pigs which were the primary consumers of the organic materials. But very recently the government exterminated all the pigs in the country out of a fear of a Swine Flu epidemic. Thus there was a big conflict over this with the pig owners in Mokattam but the government won. Now they only have goats and dogs to eat the organic materials.) Then they sort out all the non-organic materials such as cardboard, metal, rubber, and plastic. For recycling purposes, these are the valuable items. They sort each type of plastic bottle, for example, into its own pile and grind them up, producing a dense plastic “pulp” which they can sell for a profit. Today, Garbage City, is no longer a slum, thanks to the monastery and many outside NGOs, but garbage collecting/recycling is still the main business of many people in the community. It is still a poor community by some standards, but many people are now enjoying the benefits of urban development such as better health and education.
About Our Trek Team
For me the most meaningful part of my experience in this Trek was interacting with the students who made up the team and its leaders. I was pleased and thankful that, although I only joined them for 2 of their 6 weeks, the Lord gave me ample opportunities for deep conversation with them. He enabled me to learn who they are as young Christian men and women and speak into their lives from an “older and wiser” perspective. This was also one of the things for which I asked you to pray.
This year’s GUT team consisted of 16 single American students and its two (married) leaders, Steve and Monica Mehaffey. I was told that this number was somewhat lower than in previous years. (My short-term presence on the team spiked the number up one for the men, of course, and for those two weeks I was the most senior GUT member there.) There were 13 women and 3 men, not including me—some from California, some from Massachusetts, some from Indiana, some from Pennsylvania, one from Michigan, one from Iowa, one from Toronto, Canada, one from New Mexico, one from Wisconsin, and some from other states I can’t remember right now. InterVarsity highly values multi-ethnicity, so it’s very significant to note that besides the Egyptians there was also one Navajo student (she was the one grad support staff), one Chinese student, one Korean student, and one Filipina student. (The other Cairo Trek team had even more ethnic diversity.)
Also, close beside us were two very delightful Egyptian Coptic students, Saad (19) and Christina (21), who were native to Garbage City and who spent most of their days and some nights with us in the monastery “motel”. For the most part, they went wherever we went. They seemed to function as team guides of a sort, and I suspect they were asked to “attach” themselves to our team by our project overseer who is also their uncle. They each had good English proficiency and an excellent sense of humor, and I adopted them both as my Egyptian children before I left. There were a number of other Egyptian students who had a short-term presence as well, most of which seemed to come and go unpredictably but were a great pleasure to have around when they were with us. These students were evangelical, though two were from a Coptic background.
*More on the GUT team and some of my unique experiences in part 2.
