Abir Saha

“Through the dust of a handful of sand, I could see a sun rising beneath a stable mountain- brighter than ever before!”

Egypt, the place where history resides, the place of exotic landscapes and people, imbibes the aesthetics of the celebration of life. This is the place where life resides in the wildest form of fantasy. Destination and people are two important factors behind any charismatic experience. Throughout the cultural exchange of my internship programme I came across a lot of nationalities, their common traits, lifestyle, way of thinking, preconceived literacy as well as experiences and so on.Sometimes the circumstances were hard, even more hard at times, but the hard times had its own aesthetics as it was a growth period, a period to fall, to collapse and again to stand and learn. For me, my life and everything was so unsettling back two months ago, I did not have a single precaution that I would ever have such great opportunity to make my internship a global one. My internship period just turned the tables by a sudden awkward shift of the clock which turned a 23 year boy to a more professional and responsible being.

I applied for my internship in Egypt through “AIESEC”, the most renowned global youth platform that provides young people with leadership development, cross-cultural internships, and volunteer exchange globalist experiences for six weeks in different Continents. The organization focuses on empowering young people to make a progressive social impact which includes approximately 44,280 members in 127 countries. Although the internship was self-funded, I was offered to take two workshops on global goals in two renowned NGOs on a paid basis which I participated in actively. However, the story begins like, at the time I passed through the strict security zone of Cairo airport I could actually feel myself lost in some bizarre margin of time of “four hours”- imagining back and forth about my fear of losing my passport to highly contextualized cosmic issues. I wished for the immigration officer to be mummified for at least two minutes as he was so sarcastically scary. It seemed as if all the clocks in Egypt had unintentionally unwelcomed me by rotating four hours back and an awkward feeling came across my mind as if I had violated the stereotyped concept of “Egyptian time”, which is “you should always be late”. However, the ritual of being welcomed to the Pharaoh’s territory soon came to an end. I was quite sure the ancient Egyptian God of Sun “Ra” was not so pleased to see me. Whenever I saw the army-protected valleys or check posts I could only visualize the “Eye of Horus” which is similar to the mortals upholding the country’s dignity in a very careful manner. Trust me, the Pyramids had an extraordinary aesthetics that you cannot resist but jump back into the ancient times, that area revolves around the times that consists diggers, archaeological artifacts, lust for knowledge, verdicts of Gods, mummified creatures, some very traditional beliefs and trends and within a blink I was mummified and sent back to 2630-2610 BC.

My workplace was not a trendy one but a most conservative one. My internship project was “Teaching English to the Refugee Kids & Reduce Inequalities”. Dealing with the traumatic refugee kids with a huge language barrier was the biggest challenge ever. My day started with an unwelcoming face of the African Refugees, at times the governing body often did not talk to me properly, indulged themselves in my lessons in every 30 minutes, and soon it became a psychological torture for me. At times, when I was in the hostel my mind revolved around the concept of “racism”, and I felt it would be better if I were black for the time being, although I did not want to be. The Africans even never had my contact number, nor did I have theirs, sarcastically it was the part of the contract as if I was a secret agent to hunt them down. However, sometimes I had to push myself to such a boundary to be extra nice to them so that they would at least show some manner of leniency to me. But it was the period to learn under the organizational pressure, their decorum, unfriendly environment, under some bossy attitude and gradually, I was accustomed to this manner- taking it as an opportunity to be more professional. However, days passed and I got busy in managing the kids. I had to use my gestures, multimodality and other spoken-written techniques to make the kids understand a concept. Also, I had to learn a few basic Arabic words which was clearly the act of language imperialism in a multicultural setting. However,I could actually compare this whole situation to my own life to some extent and to reflect and connect more with this incident, my defense mechanism worked, which is:

“To have a big smile and face whatever it is according to situation and intellect”.

The most enchanting feeling was sharing views about life, global issues,literature, with a bunch of Turks, Brazilians, Indians, Moroccans, Chinese in a calm and more innocent desert under the honey dipped sky with millions of stars and a hot cup of Beuduin tea, where the moon had bestowed all her blessings in the form of light, undoubtedly more brighter than any civilized countries nights. Another fascinating fact about sub-cultures is the lifestyle of the “Beuduins”, their ancient language “Swahili” and their treatment of guests was mesmerizing. People can actually realize their sense of belonging, level of understanding, intellectual positioning and cognitive capability, while engaging and comparing with some developed nationalities. The most fascinating thing about language is that although the Egyptians spoke Arabic, there was a subtle difference between the Arabic of other subcontinents which could only be measured by the accent. I suddenly discovered myself as an alien in the Egyptian nights when I found the Egyptian locals roaming around, shops opened, having coffee and chit-chats all night with a lousy question revolving around my mind- when do they sleep then? One must mentioning fact about the Egyptians is that they are so very friendly and comfort lovers. People should at least bring their own salt and spices if you have decided to survive on the Egyptian delicacies. Apart from this, the cuisines were so mouthwatering and very cheap. Surviving in Egypt is much easier apart from the language and transportation issues.

Psychology says, if you repeat an action for one month it has got an acute possibility to show up as a lifelong habit, a habit that one wishes to imbibe, nurture and nourish by time. Whenever you are going to an exchange programme there is an obvious possibility to face the cultural shock or reverse cultural, both phases carry some symbolic representation of two of the cultural waves blended subtly with the host culture and the root one. I could actually smell the burning desire inside me to grasp a complete cultural and anthropological literacy. We ourselves are the appropriate change-makers for our own situations driven by some colorful instincts or merely situational intellect. I could actually sense the difference within the third world through the treatment of people, their verdicts and opinionated minds which might make a lunatic laugh. Those very opinionated minds are obviously some representative intents of a stubborn “political discourses”, which is so not so dominated by driven judgmental minds. The catchiest discourse about “human interaction” was that there were some dramatic rise and falls revolving around global economy, global politics and so on. People with fashionable concepts had very unceremonious inputs and vice-versa.

Throughout my internship period I made several trips to five different cities to have the ancient authentic taste of Egypt. Every city was carefully furnished with some very carefully chosen natural ingredients, starting from the bluish mirror like water to the ancient “Karnak temple”, which was under the river Nile to the glimpse of the milky way in an innocent dessert. Moreover, I focused on my personal goal fulfilling which was to empower a community and act like a global citizen with the tagline “Be the change that inspires people”. The days are really unforgotten, every day I felt like a rebirth cultivating the virtues of positivism, patience and inner strength. The journey was the path towards reaching my full potential, now I feel like an enriched person from all possible ways.

Lastly, for me, Egypt is like a thick novel that I intend to read each chapter a day for my lifetime.