Helwan orphanage

Ana akum kalilan bfard al kifaya bdar al aitam

Last Friday was the orphan´s day; to "celebrate" it, i volunteered (in a cafe promise to early man) to attend Dar Roshdy Orphanage for girls in Helwan (South Cairo) to take pictures of the party they were throwing and to serve food for few hundred women (the latter didn´t finally happen for some technical problem, but the intention is the important). In there i met the director of the centre, Miss. Nora El Shikh. This woman has a presence and energy that i felt it since the moment i got in the room. Everybody listens to her and the children absolutely love her to bits. I heard the story that one guy that was visiting was massacred by the children because somebody told them, as a joke, that he did not like the director. Water, food, chairs and every imaginable object was thrown to him and then all the girls did a human pile with him on the bottom for punishing him :D this tells a lot about this wonderful woman and about the character of the children :) The orphanage is for girls that have lost their parents, or with parents that cannot take care of them. The door of the place is shown in the picture:

I was a bit uncomfortable at the beginning to take pictures, as i didnt know what kind of reaction i was going to get. But it turned out to be so much fun, children were jumping in front of the camera every time i was taking a picture. They learned my name oh so fast, they were shouting at me to ask me for a picture, bringing me their friends, posing for me, fooling around in front of the camera. They spoiled me with sweets too, everyone of them thanked me for taking their pictures and gave me a cake or a lillypop or anything else, i had to eat them all :D I really loved every moment in there, some of the group pictures:

And in this particular day some boys were there for the party too.


And some of the portraits:


I tried to include as many children as i could in this post, but i am afraid that i still missed some...my apologies to them x x x Do not to forget some of the volunteers:

And finally: the subtitle of the post is a transcription from classic Arabic (Al arabeia al Fusha):

Ana (i) akum (do) kalilan (little/bit) bfard al-kifaya (in social obligation) badar (in tha house) al-aitam (of the orphans) = I do a bit of my social obligations in the orphanage...irrespectively of cultures, we all have social obligations; in the particular case of Islam the concept of fard al-kifaya embodies it. The people and the young volunteers working there are fulfilling that, they are trying to help people that are in worse situation than them...and they are not precisely well off. In this globalisation age these are the kind of concepts that should travel through cultures, these are the kind of actions that should not know about national borders, transnational fard al kifaya. It is my social obligation to use my camera to take the pics, to post them in my blog and to try to help them by asking you to donate money for this place that take care of the of the ones in more need. I will include the web address of the orphanage in this post in the future (the web is being updated), contact me in my email for further information of how to send money. Even a few english pounds would make a big difference for them. Thanks very much. Rabbena Yijalik.

The new Opera house in Cairo and the Nipon connection

One of my favourite places in Cairo is the new Opera House of the Egyptian National Cultural Center. It is a complex inaugurated in 1988, seventeen years after the Royal Opera House was completely destroyed by fire. The complex is a series of nicely designed and constructed buildings comprising halls, amphitheaters, theaters, galleries and the music library. It is a reduct of peace in the middle of the jungle where to relax, have a coffee and attend some of the many events (we found by chance a Nubian concert):

Beautiful metal sculptures are scattered around; the violinist:

The stone totem:

The metal worker:

And my favourite, the human brain being driven by an angel and a devil that have gone to the head from the lower part of the body walking upstairs :

And here is me sitting with the sculpture of the great Mohammed Al Wahhab:

This whole complex was built in cooperation with the JICA, the Japan International Co-operation Agency. I did not know that the friendship between Japan and Masr was so deeply rooted...i found this Japanese garden close to the orphanage with a lake surrounded by fifty something massive pink sculptures of Buda...

...with a classic high rise building in the background. In the middle of Helwan, being so far away from the city center, is odd that there is this garden where a pagoda with the minaret of the mosque in the background makes an unexpected sign of communion between such two distant cultures:


Furthermore, just opposite to this last photo (around 171º rotation angle for the picky ones) this classic looking building is found:


what to say? wiriwiked! wiked! Helwan is massive...around 2 million people to be exact ;)


zayy el amar awi...