 |
| Jimmy
with a few students from the classes he taught. Classes included
not only children participating in Not Alone, but also children
from the local community. |
First
Person with Jimmy Bebawy of Chicago, Fresh from Serve to Learn in
Egypt
“The
best part of the trip was visiting the children in the evening. When
I saw them the next day in class, they were so proud that I had come
and visited them.”
Are
the kids really orphans? Do they really need our help?
At
first, I wondered, “Why is it called ‘Coptic Orphans?’ The children
aren’t really orphans.” But on the very first day I arrived in the
village and visited nine families that evening, I understood. I saw
that because of issues about gender in Egypt, the woman can’t work
and doesn’t have any skills. Without a father, there’s no provision
at all. The boys of the family, even if they are young, have to go
to work. They really are orphans. That first visit quickly cleared
things up for me.
My
friends at home asked me the same thing, “They have parents. Why bother?”
But this is Tahta, where 50% of the girls won’t enter the work force
at all. One girl told me, “why should I stay in school? We aren’t
going to work, anyway.” I see now how the accident of being born boy
or girl determines how they are treated by everyone, even by their
own family. Because all of the families had lost their father, almost
all of them faced the same dilemma at one point. Should they keep
their children in school and make the whole family suffer today for
the possibility of a better future tomorrow, or pull the oldest ones
out of school so that the family can eat?
It’s
different for girls in Egypt
For
girls, this is a special problem since families often focus only on
churning out the next breadwinner. I met one man, Romany, who was
once a part of the program. Once Romany’s family had the same dilemma:
keep him in school, or pull him out to support the family? They decided
to keep him in school. He kept going, and today he is a veterinary
doctor. If they chose to pull him out, he would probably still have
to scrape by sweeping hair at a barber shop or something.
But
it’s different for girls in Egypt, because girls are not breadwinners,
so they get ignored, neglected, and pulled out of school.
I
visited one family with a sponsor, who told the mother of a Not
Alone boy, “you’re going to send the girls to school, too, right?”
The mother just kind of laughed nervously… she wasn’t sure if the
sponsor was joking or was serious because she was used to everyone
around her in the village assuming that girls need to be at home and
then married off early. But when Rep, the sponsor, and I all talked
very seriously about how important it is for both girls and boys to
become educated, she realized that it’s an acceptable and normal thing.
By the end of the visit, she said, “yes… of course! I will make sure
all of my children to complete school, the girls included.”
It
sounds drastic, but I found Coptic Orphans’ approach in making children
stay in school a condition of support tough in the most loving and
encouraging way possible. It’s not, “we’ll get you anything you want
because you’re poor and we’re not.” These families don’t want pity,
but what they really need is someone to show them the way out and
help them can take the first steps. After all, there are so many people
in need in Egypt. It just wouldn’t be fair to support a family if
they don’t also try to stand on their own two feet. As I heard a Rep
tell a Not Alone family, “there are so many other families
that need your help now.
I
saw how, especially with girls, when they understand that people around
the world care for them it makes a big impact. All it takes to break
the cycle of poverty is renewed hope, and they will to do it.
 |
| Students
from one of Jimmy's classes solve a problem together. |
By
the end, she was raising her hand
In
the classroom, I saw the injustices against girls, too. These injustices
were subtle and unspoken, and that made them even worse. Girls sat
all together in the far corner, eyes glued downward. The boys laughed,
joked, raised hands, scrambled to be the one to answer questions.
The girls said nothing. When asked, they looked at the floor and shook
their heads… even when it was obvious that they knew the answer.
Once
after class, we asked the girls why they didn’t participate. One girl
started crying and said that the boys might make fun of them if they
got the answer wrong. Over the next three weeks, we tried to draw
her out. Finally, by the end of it she was raising her hand, standing
up and speaking in front of the class, and explaining the material
to other students. We saw someone change. That was cool.
Turning
happiness on its head
You
go in thinking, “these kids look so happy… but they’re poor, so how
could they really be happy?’ By the end of it, the tables turn. You
know that they are truly happy and you wonder, ‘am I really
happy?’ I had to totally re-evaluate my idea of happiness. I realized
that my idea of happiness was only a 55” Flat Screen TV and an X-Box
360. But they have a heavenly happiness that I could not wrap my mind
around.
It
sounds cliché, but I really mean this: I served at about a D- level.
But I received at an A+ level from the children. I could not have
paid any sum of money for what they gave me.
