The Face of the New Egypt

This is a copy of an email I received yesterday from a friend and fellow American, Lynel Long,  who lived in Cairo and worked there.  She is an amazing woman who has celebrated many successes in her career working on behalf of women and girls. I first met her in DC in the early 90s [...]

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Egypt: A Message from Rana

I have no idea what it must be like to be so young and feel such responsibility for the future of my country.  I think as Americans many of us are ambivalent about our country, our politics and certainly the plight of all those around us.  From the moment Rana first spoke to me about [...]

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Random Thoughts on Ramadan

I arrived in Egypt nearly a year ago right smack in the middle of Ramada. Although I had experienced it in west African countries before it really was a cultural experience being here at that time. It’s a very dynamic time in the yearly cycle of those who follow this very spiritual time of cleansing [...]

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Brought To You By The American People

In the past two weeks I’ve been making visits to our field offices to visit training workshops taking place.  For the most part I’m not really a rah rah rah American but I have to admit I was proud to be able to attend these workshops and be able to tell folks it was my [...]

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Living in Islam

Since moving to Egypt I’ve been asked by many people what it’s like to live in a predominantly Islamic country? Although I can understand why people ask me this question on one level—to be honest the question perplexes me on multiple levels. The other day I began to deconstruct the question in an effort to [...]

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Birthday Celebrations

I am so lucky to have such a wonderful group of people to work with.  My birthday is Friday and since the work week ends today and Sunday is a key holiday in Egypt my team took me on a birthday outing last night.  And the GILO staff had a birthday celebration complete with three [...]

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A Shopping We Will Go…

In preparation for my unexpected trip back to the States mom and grandma needs to get some gifts to take back to the US.  I have the most incredible selection of beautiful Egyptian handicrafts….there are incredible Bedouin rugs (my apartment is full of them), hammered brass trays and brass embedded picture frames, wall hangings…you name [...]

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Some shots from Cairo

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The Woes of TV and Arabic

I was watching friends the other day.  In Arabic.  That was totally weird!  I really had no intention of watching Friends and I certainly didn’t intend to watch it in Arabic.  But it’s like you get “caught” in some web and can’t get out of it…it just captures you and you sit and listen to [...]

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Bill and Moses

I’ve been married twice in my life.  My first husband had the misfortune (well some would argue he was fortunate given the outcome) of being bitten by a hippo.  It’s a long story and maybe I’ll tell it some time but the point is it’s a pretty unusual thing to have your husband attacked by [...]

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