This is the story of my experience from my two months in Alexandria, Egypt. With the selection
for the Nour Project and sessions about the Middle East before the internship, it made the whole
experience bigger. My choice to go on a AIESEC internship to the Middle East was made rather impulsively; I just decided I wanted to go. Maybe the fact that I already studied in the United States for a semester made it somewhat easier. However, this would of course be a totally different experience; whereas studying in the United States is often not considered a very big challenge as it is a Western culture, this internship would take place in a completely different culture. Although the decision to go on an internship with the Nour Project was a bit impulsive, the Middle East has always drawn me; its religion and its people always fascinated me. As I only heard negative stories about the Islam and about the Middle East I wanted to see it for myself so I could judge for myself, instead of letting the media sculpt an image of the region for me.
When I found the internship at Rotaract in the AIESEC Database, I noticed that the
description was something different from other internships, although the job description was a bitvague. I spoke to an intern who had been there last year and he told me that he had a lot of freetime so it would come up to me to make it an experience worth it. Rotaract is an NGO for people
between the age of 18 and 30. When I learned that it was a youth department of a Rotary club I
was at first a little disappointed; I was worried I would only meet the upper class layer of Egypt.
However, because I would meet people my age through this internship and I considered that they could take me anywhere and show me Egypt, I made the decision to go for this internship.
I had no idea what to expect when I left for Egypt; what would the people be like? Would
they be very strict? I expected them to be very conservative and strict Muslims so I brought my
lightest-longest clothes with me. I arrived at 4 o’clock in the morning in Cairo.
Amr Koheil, the contact person from Rotaract, told me they would pick up me as a service from
them. Amr and another boy from Rotaract were indeed waiting on the airport. I remember very
well that I was very enthusiastic and they were not so much. We walked to the car, they lit their
cigarettes, the music was put on at maximum volume and we drove off to Alexandria (very fast). I
guessed they were tired from driving and waiting and their distant attitude was probably something Egyptian, I figured. Still, it was a remarkable welcome. I still had no idea where I was going to sleep but when we arrived in Alexandria it turned out I would be sleeping at Amr’s girlfriend and her family for a while. She was born in the Netherlands and lived there for 12 years. A very modern looking girl with Adidas clothes on welcomed me (in Dutch) and took me to her bedroom. The next day we went to a private beach where I met quite some people from Rotaract. It turned out that the first two days of my experience in Egypt were not so conservative as I thought they would be.
After a week, the other three interns also arrived in Alexandria. One from Belgium,
one from Romania, and one from the Netherlands (she was half Dutch, half Colombian but
she was supposed to represent Colombia; her birth country). We hang out a lot with the people
from Rotaract. The average age was 20 and we spent most of the time with the boys from the
organisation, who took us everywhere. After a week they found us a very nice and clean apartment,
where we would live with the four of us, one girl from Turkey would arrive two weeks later.
Rotaract was a very nice group of people who guided us and took us wherever we wanted to
go and through this way I and the other interns made quite some friends with them. Every night we
went to eat somewhere and to a café to just sit and talk. They also arranged several outings for us.
We went to a farm from one of the guys, a very nice region on the country where his family grew
orange apples and dates beside the Nile. We went to Sharm-El-Sheigh for a weekend by bus where
we snorkelled, rode on a buggy in the desert followed by dinner in the desert, went to the beach
as it was awfully hot and even went to a club one night where there were no Egyptians accept the
Rotaract’ers; everyone was from either Russia or the UK, a reversed culture shock right there in
Egypt. Another trip was to Siwa, an oasis in the Libyan desert very close to the Libyan border. It
was a very conservative village which was only put out of its isolation in the 1980s when a highway
was built. We also went to Cairo with a big group of people from Rotaract where they had arranged
a bus that took us everywhere during the whole day.
As I said in the beginning, I was scared I would only meet the upper-layer of Egypt. At the
beginning of my internship I was told that AIESEC was more the group of the
richer western-orientated people and Rotaract was more conservative (and not so
rich as AIESECers I got the impression). This was a relief as I wanted to see Egypt and not the
western side of Egypt. Of course, Egyptian students have to be a little richer than the average
Egyptian as they have to be able to afford university. So Rotaract’ers were richer than the average
population and, in consequence, also more western than the average population. They were all
Muslim but not very strict in practicing it. Also, around forty percent of the Egyptian population
is extremely poor to nearly poor but I hardly experienced this. Still, I was so happy I got the
opportunity to experience Egypt and the Muslim society. Hearing the prayer calls five times a
day, seeing the traditional background of the veiled women, experience the division between men
and women, the donkeys on the road, the chaos in traffic, feel the social control and see a very
unorganized country (in comparison with the Netherlands) made the experience worth it. Also the people I met, both the interns and the people from Rotaract who tried their best to help us and guide us made it a very good experience.
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