CAIRO: Some 15 km along the CairoAlexandria Desert Road lies Al Mansouria district, one of the most luxurious residential areas in Egypt housing the mansions and villas of Egypt s elite. But not all that glitters is gold. Between these villas lives a hidden community of poor Bedouins and peasants surrounded by heaps of garbage and immersed in illness and poverty. Bedouins and peasants constitutes 80 percent of Al Mansouria s population, says Karin Fouda, vice president of Nahdat Al Mansouria, a development NGO dedicated to the area. Fouda, who has been living in Al Mansouria for about 22 years, invited The Daily Star Egypt to a tour of the area's very poor villages, as she describes them. A year ago she initiated the NGO with a group of other female residents determined to make a difference in their community. We started with the garbage problem and asked the local council to help us, Fouda said. Eventually the NGO managed to get a recycling company to collect the garbage and use it. The next problem they tackled was that of education. Despite the existence of public schools, Fouda believed there was a dearth of kindergartens that were essential to keep the children off the streets and prepare them for elementary education. The NGO has successfully opened three kindergartens and the next three are in the pipeline. Each of them caters to between 50 and 80 students divided into three fully-equipped classes which plenty of space for the children to play, study and draw. Uses books, uniforms and shoes collected donated by the public are offered to the children who also receive regular health check ups. A village housewife is paid to prepare a full breakfast for the children every day. Fouda trains the educated women in the villages to teach and pays them around LE 400 a month, three times the salary of government school teachers in the area, says Fouda. It cost an average of LE 70,000 to set up each kindergarten, says Fouda, raised through the personal efforts of the NGO members. To make full use of the facilities, the NGO holds evening classes to teach illiterates how to read and write, again by employing trained educated villagers. Randa Orah, an active member of the NGO in charge of one of the kindergartens, said stressed the importance of hygiene and how she pays attention to the students personal cleanness. Azza Afify, who owns one of the oldest farms in the area, heads one of the schools and allows the children to use the roof of a building on Afifi Farm as a playground. Catharina Shawky, another active member, started art classes for the kids. She rented a special place where children from all the surrounding villages are welcome to learn how to draw. I tell them to draw what they want and then give their drawings a name, Shawky said pointing to a drawing by a little girl titled "A breath . "She felt that this drawing [of scattered flowers moving in a one direction] reminds her of breathing, Shawky explained. "She even insisted on hanging the drawing with slant. Fouda adds that they don't accept children whose mothers refuse to come with them. "As we work with mothers too. They must take awareness courses, she said. Another social problem they face, says Fouda, is the ethnic composition of the community divided between Bedouins and peasants. The Bedouins and peasants do not interact, they are very different. The peasants are work hard and are ready to serve, while the Bedouins have pride and work less, Fouda said. Fouda also explained that the two cultures often clash and that the six Bedouin tribes also believe in tar, revenge killings, mostly practiced in Upper Egypt.
