January 2, 2002 — Mudeif Productions

We got an email from one of Marthame's students that the Israeli army entered Qabatiya on New Year's Eve - we're never very far from the situation.

*Part of the Care with Love training program.*

We connected up with a good friend to see her Care with Love program. We visited their central training facility in downtown Cairo, where students (targeted at Egypt's many dropouts and unemployed youth) are trained to be in-home caregivers for the disabled and elderly (another growing population in Cairo). In a few years, the Center should be self-sufficient, but right now it's taking up most of our friend's time to set it up on its own two legs. So far, they've trained an impressive number of graduates through their program. Using dummies, they train students proper ways to feed, change, wash, give enemas, etc.

We then headed out to Wadi Natroun, the Salt Valley, on the road between Cairo and Alexandria. Our friend donated land there for a rehabilitation program for drug addicts, which is just getting started. Its isolated location seems good for such a program, but it won't be isolated for long - bedroom communities for Cairo are expanding further and further towards Alexandria.

The Wadi itself is famous for its salt-processing, and also for its monasteries. There are four here, all of them for the Coptic Orthodox church, and were built in a time when the Wadi really was isolated. The Coptic Pope, Shenudah I, spends three days a week at one of the monasteries in reflection and prayer. We visited two of them, the first dedicated to Mar Bishoy. Bishoy was a Coptic saint who lived in the desert in a cave in the 6th century and dedicated his life to prayer, meditation, and hardship - we visited the cave where he used to tie the ends of his long hair to the ceiling so that it would pull and wake him up if he fell asleep. Our guide was Brother Bishoy, an Egyptian who had spent time in desert monasteries in California and Australia in addition to Egypt. He got a kick out of using his English with us - so did we.

*Our guide at the Monastery of the Virgin Mary.*

We then went to the Monastery of the Virgin Mary, also known as al-Suriani, since it was once populated by Syrian priests (but is now owned by the Copts). It is here that Mar Bishoy's hermitage and hair-tying location was. The monk who was our guide spoke little English, but welcomed us warmly and prayed over us, giving us a bit of blessed oil. There is something striking about visiting these places where the Desert Fathers used to come to meditate, especially when we can arrive there in car, snap a few pictures, and post them on the web.

We headed back to Cairo, hoping to catch the Sufi dancers, but we didn't realize showtime had changed, and we were about two hours late - that and Snow City next time.