Mission carried out: Much to remember, promises to keep

Editor's note: In a previous column, Dave Wood wrote of his upcoming trip to Egypt with a work crew from our area, led by the Rev. Delbert Permann of the Congregational United Church of Christ in River Falls. Here is the second in a series of Wood's Egyptian experience.

Extreme Destinations

I wake early from a sleep, troubled by visions of the smiling, hopeful looking kids I saw yesterday juxtaposed with nearby hogs wallowing in their own muck and mire.

Del Permann had told us we'd all learn something by coming to this cluttered village of 65,000 garbage collectors and their families. What I've learned so far is that being here makes for bad dreams.

We all bought our airline tickets to Cairo from Carol Lavasseur's new River Falls travel agency, which she calls "Extreme Destinations." If only she knew how extreme our destination is!

After Del leads us in devotions, the sisters, as always, provide us with a hearty breakfast -huge stacks of pita bread, cold omelets, macaroni in a sweetened milk. And then it's off to work we go.

Today is a refreshing day, the fetid smell of hog manure masked by the sharp smell of enamel paint and turpentine. Our first task is to disassemble an endless procession of ancient park benches, sand the parts, repaint and reassemble.

It's a wonderful antidote to yesterday, when the activities of the sisterhood inspired us, but where the surroundings made us wonder how these smiling women, many of whom come from wealthy families, could bear to do it.

Work, I figure, is what helps them go on. Work and the promise that it will result in something better, more pleasing, more beautiful, even if it's something as simple as a slivery old bench turned smooth and bright green. The sisters and their charges need some bright green in their lives.

And we've got new help in the person of Samy, a cute Egyptian kid, maybe 12, who insists on pitching in. The work is tedious, but he hangs with us through the day. We learn later that he's an apprentice welder at the sisters' little trade school.

Samy accompanies Del to the neighborhood paint store for more supplies to refurbish an office in the building where we live. They return with paint and rollers, but no paint tray to dip the rollers into.

No such thing in Egypt. How then? Simple, says Adel, the compound manager. Just take a big brush and slop a glob of paint on the wall, then spread it around with the roller.

Earlier, Adel had marveled at the simple pipe bender that Glenn Kees had fashioned and brought along in a suitcase from Hudson. Adel has never seen such a contraption and he is a mechanical engineer by profession. One wonders how these people ever got those pyramids built.

So Glenn and Ron find a cardboard box, wrap it in a plastic bag, encircle it with duct tape and, voila!, a paint tray. Adel scratches his well-groomed head. Paper towels are also hard to come by in this land that gave us papyrus.

Tonight we travel to downtown Cairo and celebrate Coptic Christmas Eve in a Roman Catholic convent recently bought by the Coptics. The service lasts for several hours, with men sitting on the left of the chapel, women on the right.

Later, we ask Sister Maria the reason for the segregation. This smiling woman on the verge of earning a Ph.D. in Environmental Education shrugs her shoulders, laughs, and says "This is Egypt."

We retreat from the services midway (people come and go) and sister shows us a tree in the courtyard which is reputed to have grown from a branch of 2000-year-old tree under which Joseph, Mary and Jesus hid during their flight into Egypt.

Christmas Comes but Twice a Year

It's Jan. 7, Christmas Day! Ramadan is also in full swing and we head out for a look at Greater Cairo. Nasser careens through the crowds in our old van, barely missing street vendors, smoky bonfires, splashing through the mudholes of the street, which is festooned with banners heralding the holidays.

By contrast, downtown Cairo looks pretty much like any European city on the Mediterranean - except it houses 17 million people, five times more people than a city like Barcelona.

There are gracious old buildings, throwbacks to British colonial days perched on imposing squares; wide palm tree-lined boulevards slice through the town's inner ring; huge office complexes punctuate the landscape. And messing this up considerably of course are the ubiquitous KFC shops, Pizza Huts, Golden Arches, a Big Mac selling for 6 pounds Egyptian (about $2).

Suddenly, the posh apartment buildings stop and we're at Giza. On our left is Cheops, over there is the Sphinx and a vast desert beyond.

I try hard to remember the risque limerick about the Sphinx's "inscrutable smile," but can't. That's probably for the best, as the Reverend Doctor Permann is sitting across from me.

We make a brief tour on a beautifully bright day that makes us feel we're inhabitants of a postcard. We buy souvenirs from a kid by the Sphinx.

Eric warns us to be careful, but even if we do get taken to the cleaners, the prices are so far below what we'd pay at any historic site in Europe, it feels like we're doing the stealing.

Then it's on to an ancient burial ground where we duck-waddle through tunnels into burial sites festooned with incredibly sophisticated 4,000-year-old murals that make France's much younger Bayeux Tapestry look like a kindergartner's scrawl.

Eric, our guide, departs from us to lope through the desert for an hour in search of pottery shards. We wonder if he might be a reincarnation of T.E. Lawrence.

On the way back to Cairo, we travel along a canal that's incredibly fertile and green. But the farmer peasants live in mud huts and we see only one tractor in several miles. John Deeres don't synchronize well with the ancient irrigation systems in place.

We stop at the Nile Hilton in the heart of downtown. Some of us sneak away from the Reverend into a snazzy cocktail lounge and order a beer.

The wrath of God thunders down upon us almost immediately when the waiter presents us the bill. More than $5 per bottle, more than enough to get us into the famed Cairo Museum or a train ticket to Alexandria, or enough delicious kofte sandwiches to feed a baseball team.

Don Richards goes to an Internet station to message home because he's lost a contact lens. He returns with a prescription and the exciting news that in basketball River Falls beat Stout, Platteville beat Eau Claire.

A huge supper awaits us back at the compound and I rue my decision to scarf down that Big Mac only an hour earlier.

Reverend, Spare that Tree!

A chainsaw whines through the morning as the Reverend tears into a huge pile of logs that had been tossed helter-skelter into a pile in the middle of the compound. Ray Anderson stacks them neatly by the new building. No wiener roast in sight.

This is simply clean-up day in the compound. Egyptians tend to toss things on the spot when it's discovered they're no longer usable. But us neatnik Midwesterners want things spic and span.

Funny thing is, when the locals see the Reverend picking up stones and plastic bottles in the pathway, they follow suit. (At the end of the day, Reverend Doctor Daddy Warbucks rewards Samy and his little pal with salaries of two pounds each, about what an Egyptian soldier earns per day.)

Ron and I busy ourselves redecorating an office that looks like the Oklahoma Dustbowl had invaded Fibber McGee's closet. There are stacks and stacks of framed photos of priests and many more of one young guy in street clothes.

We ask Magid, a very nice flashily-dressed young man, who that might be. "Mubarek" (the prime minister), says Magid, who gives us his best Bronx cheer, smiles, lights a cigarette and is gone, only to return with a pencil drawing of his car, an old Polonez, a Polish-made Fiat. "Nice?" he asks. You bet, Magid.

It has been a great day. Hard work. Good talk. I'm beginning to get into the swing. And the things that need to be done begin to take shape.

There's a row of bright green benches lined up ready for use, an old car motor has been skidded away from the garden in front of our building. Glen Kees has used his electronic expertise to rig up a "telecommunications system" for the Center from phones that look as if Alexander Graham Bell had sent his first message over them.

Best of all, the hot water heater has been repaired in our apartment and we get our first hot shower since leaving home. Larry Nelson, who has spent the day reassembling benches, comes out after his turn under the dribble and says, "I didn't realize I smelled so bad until just now when I started smelling good again."

Could that be why the Egyptian school children can smile through the stench?

Don Richards is fighting an attack of what might be the flu. Or could it be an attack of King Farouk's Revenge? We don't know.

Sister Demiana's Breakfast Club

Delbert (that's what the sisters all call him) comes into my room early, tells me that Don Richards is really ill, that the plan is to go and visit Coptic monasteries, but he doesn't want to leave Don.

I volunteer to stay with Don, having seen my fill of monasteries to which my wife has dragged me. Delbert says that Sister Maria will be concerned if I work because it's Sunday.

The guys and Sister Maria take off with a picnic lunch and Don lies shivering under three blankets, groaning. It's been cold throughout the week and we have not brought proper clothes.

Poor me, home alone with a sick friend? Not on your life! I wouldn't miss this for the world.

I go to the convent for a breakfast date with school principal Sister Demiana. She's pretty, she's bright, she's cheerful. How can that be?

She can only afford to pay her teachers 150 pounds ($50) per month, while public schools pay five times that much. That smell will never go away. More and more kids keeping pounding on her door every year for admission to the same amount of space.

I wonder what she'd think if she knew River Falls is springing for more than 500 student parking spaces at the new high school.

I tell her that Sister Maria should not worry about me working this day, that it is not a sin in my sect. What sect?, she asks. "Lutheran," I say. "Oh," she says, "I studied the work of Martin Luther for 3 years in theological school."

Oh-oh. Remember the sabbath day to keep it holy. I quickly change the subject to getting more books for her school library from an outfit called Books for Africa, founded by Tom Warth, the Osceola publisher who also founded Motorbooks International. Sister can't believe that it might be possible to get her so many books.

"America must be so wonderful," she says. "I think everything there is perfect, people have everything they need."

I tell her such is not the case, and explain about all the homeless, how Delbert and his church help staff the big homeless shelter at Simpson Methodist in Minneapolis. (And I decide not to tell her about all those parking spaces.)

Her face clouds over, but soon she's laughing again and urging me to take broth over to Don. Don is miserable; he slurps a few spoonfuls, then falls back into bed.

And I attack Fibber McGee's office and finish it. My dad made hay one Sunday and worried all summer that his barn would burn down. Now I'm worrying about the office.

Sister Demiana's brother Rany drops by and offers to help me reconfirm my flight back to Minneapolis. We fail in the task, but Rany turns out to be a chip off the same block as his sister. He's just graduated from college with a degree in German. Now he wants a degree in Econ, "so I can get a good-paying job. Not money for myself, you understand, but so I can soon be free to help needy people."

If I were needy, I'd want Rany in my corner. In the evening, he drops by our apartment after the fellows return. He wants to talk about Seward's Folly. I wonder how many UW-RF grads know what that is.

I tell him how Thomas Jefferson bought half of the U.S. for 3 million dollars. Rany says, "That's an even better deal than Alaska."

The Reverend and Ron drag a reluctant Don to the Center's hospital next door. He returns with the doctor's prescription and diagnosis: Gastroenteritis. So much for King Farouk.

Painting Convent Green and the Town Red

Don is better. Egyptian hospitals work. And all of our own work seems to be paying off.

Now that the motor has been dragged away and the trash has been raked from the front of our building, the sisters have planted shrubs and we've got a little oasis within the oasis that is the Salam Center. Sister Maria seems pleased.

The cement contractor comes to confer with Glenn and Ron about the proposed gazebo. For most of us it's paint, paint, paint, including a classroom with 20-foot high ceilings.

Egyptian paint is wonderful, gooey stuff and if it sticks to the walls as well as it sticks to my hands, which have turned a permanent pale green, the Reverend won't have to return for a generation.

Later, Eric guides us down to dinner at a swanky restaurant called Felafela, where we wolf down five different appetizers, huge kebabs and the local beer, called Stella. Despite our gluttony and the caf‚'s chic reputation, the bill is $12 per person.

Jimmy Carter's signature is on the wall, so I guess Habitat for Humanity must have beat our modest crew to this extreme destination.

We go to the bazaar, so vast that Mall of America looks like Taxidermy and Cheese. Then it's back to the Metro, which returns us to the garbage community.

We're late. Sister Maria is worried, so she has sent the van to haul us from the station through the village to the center. What a peach!

Flight from Egypt

Some of the guys go into town to visit the Cairo Museum. Some of us stay "home" and paint. It's Larry's and my last day; the others will stay another week.

Larry will return to his store to sell snowblowers.

I'll return to Walnut Street to write new English brochures for Mahabba School and the Salam Center and get to work raising money to send Sister Demiana those books I told her about, so if you see me standing at your storm door with my palm outstretched.

I'm certain people will ask me why I spent so much money to go over there to paint when I could have sent a few bucks to Sister Maria who could have hired an Egyptian worker to wield the brush for a few cents a day. It's a good question. How will I answer it?

I guess I'll say it was worth the time and expense because it helped me realize how good my wife and I have it here in River Falls - despite the city's refusal to fix our sidewalk -and how if something should happen that would make it less good I have those wonderful Egyptian sisters - and the good-spirited people they help - to look back on for guidance and inspiration.

Salam!

Corrections (to last week's episode): The name of the church is Egyptian Coptic Orthodox Church; the name of the garbage village is Ezbet el Nachtel.