Happy (Islamic) New Year!

The Islamic year is based on a lunar calendar, so the start of the new year differs from the start of the western calendar year and happens to be today. Happy New Year!

Top ten humanitarian crises

As I've been reading more about the current situation in the Gaza Strip, I couldn't help but think about some of the other places I've visited in the past six months, namely Zimbabwe and the Democratic Republic of Congo, that have fallen into unbelievable humanitarian crises shortly after my visit. I was curious about which places would be considered the worst humanitarian crises and found out that MSF (Médecins Sans Frontières, Doctors Without Borders) publishes a list of the top ten worst humanitarian crises each year. This year's list includes Somalia, Myanmar, Zimbabwe, Democratic Republic of Congo, childhood malnutrition, Ethiopia, Pakistan, Sudan, Iraq and co-infection with HIV and tuberculosis. Stories, photos, maps and videos on each of these crises can be found here.

Israeli attacks on Gaza

It makes my head spin that just days after I published post after post about my trip to Israel - how beautiful the country is, how nice the people are, how delicious the food is, how peaceful the place feels - that same country would attack a neighboring territory. Israel released a wave of missile attacks on the Gaza Strip beginning Saturday morning and attacks continued on Sunday. Recent reports say that more than 270 Palestinians have died in the attacks (one Israeli has been killed by a rocket fired from Gaza into Israel). Already, though, this is the one of the bloodiest incidents in the sixty year conflict between Israel and Palestine, and Israel says it is only the beginning. The Israeli military has assembled troops along the border of the Gaza Strip for a possible ground invasion, even as the U.N. Security Council calls for a halt to the violence.

The following is a video from Al Jazeera News, an English-language news station in the Middle East. Be forewarned, some of the images in this video are quite graphic.

Merry Christmas!

A group of us got together today to celebrate Christmas. We spent all afternoon cooking up our favorite Christmas dishes - a ham (thanks to the U.S. commissary!), macaroni and cheese, dressing, sweet potatoes, zucchini, carrots, couscous, salad and bread - and then enjoyed the delicious meal. Afterwards, we went to the Cairo Opera House to see 'The Nutcracker', which, while pretty terrible technically, was a wonderfully Christmas thing to do. After the show we returned for dessert - cookies, red velvet cake, carrot cake and chocolate cake.

It was a really wonderful Christmas. We all agreed that it was a much better day than we had expected, considering that we were halfway around the world from our families and friends in a country where Christmas isn't really celebrated.

I hope you were all able to enjoy the holiday and spend time together with loved ones, wherever you may be. Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

My office

During the Christmas celebrations, I was able to take a few pictures of the office where I work. It basically looks just like any American office; it just happens to be located in Cairo.

NAMRU-3 Christmas party

Today we celebrated Christmas at work, which was one of the most hilarious and odd, yet touching, Christmas celebrations I've ever had. We started with a small lunch celebration with only our division (there are four divisions within NAMRU-3). The office had been decorated and food provided by a group of our Egyptian colleagues, most of whom are Muslim, which made the efforts that much more touching. They all wanted it to feel like it was Christmas for those of us Americans who were unable to go home for the holidays.We had plenty of dessert, with American candy provided by the captain, chocolates provided by one of my coworkers and my own Christmas baking.
Afterwards, we had a command-wide celebration outside. Everyone gathered around while a small group sang Christmas carols and Santa distributed candy. Some people even brought their families to join the celebration.
We, of course, didn't have any snow, but we did have a sandstorm, called a 'hamseen' in the middle of the celebration.

And, if you've never heard 'Feliz Navidad' performed in Arabic (which I don't think anyone has), here's a video sample...

Carvings

The carvings within St. Mark's Church are only a few of the many carvings on Mokattam Mountain. A Polish artist named Mario has been living at the churches and carving biblical scenes into the rocks for years. The mountain is covered with his artwork.

St. Mark's Church

Near the St. Simon the Tanner Cathedral is another church called St. Mark's Church. This church is located within an enormous cave in the mountain. The cave was discovered in 1979 but had only one entrance and was difficult to pass through. In 1991, during the celebrations in Cairo for one of the Islamic festivals, during which it was common to celebrate with firecrackers, explosions were used to expand the entrance and space of the cave (timed conveniently with the firecrackers from the Islamic festival to disguise what was being done). The wall around the back of the church is covered with carvings. The first depicts the moving of Mokattam Mountain but the others depict biblical scenes.

St. Simon the Tanner Cathedral

Mokattam is also famous as a historical site for the Christians of Cairo. During the tenth century, an order was given that the Christians would have to move outside Cairo, past Mokattam Mountain. For three days before the date by which they were supposed to have moved, Christians throughout Egypt prayed and fasted. On the day on which they were to move, an earthquake struck and the mountain was literally moved. The Christians recalled the verse from the Bible that states "If you have faith as a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you." (Matthew 17:20) The Christians were allowed to stay in Cairo, and to this day most of the inhabitants of Mokattam are Christians.

An outdoor cathedral was later built in this spot to commemorate the moving of the mountain. It is called St. Simon the Tanner Cathedral after the man who led the initiative to move Mokattam Mountain.

Mokattam

This morning I went out to a section of town called Mokattam with two of my coworkers. Mokattam is known as 'Garbage City' and it's easy to see why. The streets are lined with garbage and the buildings are filled with it. Mokattam is a section of town very few tourists ever see; it's Cairo's main garbate dump, but it's also home to the people who collect Cairo's trash. Over 40,000 people live here, less than half of which are garbage collectors; the rest are their families. These people actually make a living from sorting through the trash from a city of 20 million people and recycling what they can.
From the top of 'Mokattam Mountain', the view is horrifyingly incredible. There are piles of trash everywhere, in the streets, in the houses, on the roof, and both humans and animals are living right in the midst of it.