The desert of Egypt, or sahara, plays a big role in promoting peace education and cross-cultural friendship. Mohamed El-Hebeishy joined the Children's International Summer Village during their winter activity at Farafra "Mummy, will I have to fight as a soldier when I grow up?" was a simple question a boy asked his mother shortly after World War II was laid to rest. But for Doris T Allen, it was the sign she had always waited for. The prominent psychologist founded the Children's International Summer Village (CISV), an independent, non- political, non-profit, volunteer organisation promoting peace education and cross-cultural friendship. Several programmes and educational activities cater to different age groups, starting from age 11. Part of CISV's portfolio of programmes is the International People's Programme (IPP), a win- win programme where participants learn and diffuse cultural differences while actively contributing to the community. Each IPP has a specific theme, such as natural conservation or archaeological restoration. CISV Egypt, which started in Cairo in 1956 with the Ministry of Youth and later registered as an NGO with the Ministry of Social Affairs in 1993 and is generally sponsored by El-Gouna, came up with an IPP initiative called Hayat Al-Sahara (Desert Life). Partnered with the local NGO Hayat at the western oasis of Farafra and the Local City Council of Farafra and Badawiya Travel, Egypt's very first IPP kicked off this winter. Hayat Al-Sahara is composed of three independent and yet coherent components. The first and biggest is the restoration of the Qasr Al-Farafra fortress, under the technical supervision of Hayat and with logistic assistance from the Local City Council. Second, comes the art and design activities for local women; a dedicated workshop aimed at leveraging women's skills of marketing and management, in addition to a full documentation of their dying artefacts in an attempt to preserve and restore them. The last component is the children's mini-camp, where cross-culture concepts of understanding and acceptance are introduced to the children, tailored to integrate and amalgamate as part of their culture. Among Siwa, Bahariya, Dakhla and Kharga, Farafra is the smallest and oldest of the big five oases occupying the vast Western Desert between the Nile Valley and Libyan border. Ta-iht, or The Land of the Cow, is the name by which the Pharaohs called it. The ancient scripts of the Fifth Dynasty represent the very first historical appearance of Farafra; in addition to being mentioned in the Pharaonic classic The Eloquent Peasant, it is named the third oasis in the primordial text of The Seven Oases in the Temple of Edfu. Stranded in the middle of the Western Desert, accessibility is indeed a barrier. Farafra suffered periods when it sank into complete oblivion. One such period commenced after the Byzantine Period when Farafra -- along with the oases of Siwa and Kharga -- was a place of banishment for faithful Christians. Once again it emerged in the ninth century, this time in the pages of Al-Yaqubi's Kitab Al-Buldan (Book of Countries). Another period of oblivion commenced with the rise of Ottoman power, which lasted until 17 February, 1820. The day marks the very first visit by a European traveller in modern times, when French mineralogist Frédéric Cailliaud marched for 32 hours from Al-Hayez in Bahariya to reach Farafra. Upon his arrival, he found 180 people living in one single village -- Qasr Al-Farafra. The Farfaronis (as they call themselves) built themselves a fortress in the Middle Ages and named it Al-Qasr, later known as Qasr Al-Farfra. It contained 116 rooms, with each family inhabiting the oasis assigned a room. Their oasis is located close to both Libya and the Nile Valley, which gave it strategic importance, and in ancient times this drew much interest to the small peaceful oasis. Caravans to and from Bahariya, Dakhla, Siwa and Libya all passed through Farafra bringing much wealth and more than one desert ghazya (raid). The oral history, as narrated by sheikhs and elders, tells of dark-skinned attackers who looted the oasis, stole the crops and kidnapped women and children; nobody knows who they were or where they came from. For protection, inhabitants built the stronghold of Qasr Al-Farafra to shelter them from attackers, but an unusual violent rain in 1945 and 1958 caused major collapses to the fortress. Fast forward half a century. All participants in Hayat Al-Sahara, both local and foreign, volunteered for a week to help the oasis of Farafra with great enthusiasm. They pulled all their energy and focus together to make it work, and it did. Although I was slightly sceptical at the beginning about how the work would turn out, the end results were impressive to say the least. What is uniquely different about Hayat Al-Sahara is the ability to meltdown all cultural and identity differences into one pot and work as a team aiming to achieve one goal. CISV-Farafra is not only a role model of an NGO collaborating to help the community, but it also represents a genuine experience which we should all do our best to repeat. For details about volunteering with CISV Egypt contact [email protected] or Egypt@cisv.org
