Ramadan is here and a new school year approaches. Amany Abdel-Moneim complains of the strain on the family budget It is 4pm. Salma Ali, 41, rushes through the last of her office tasks and hurries to pick up her children from swimming class. Forging through the streets is a long battle with the traffic. By the time they return home, everyone is exhausted. Neither Ramadan nor the new school year have started, and already the streets are that crowded! Ali can sense Ramadan -- a happy thought -- but with steadily rising prices and the fact that the summer vacations have just ended, she has not been able to make any special arrangements for the holy month. "School fees have made life impossible," she told Al-Ahram Weekly. With Ramadan having started just two days before the first day at school -- fees, stationary and uniform all cost -- and right after an inevitably expensive summer break, organising the budget has been a juggling act. Faten Qoura, 54, also failed to set aside a special Ramadan budget. Her son, in the first phase of thanawiya amma this year, has been taking private lessons since August. Even a single week on the beach proved financially exhausting. School fees and private tuition leave nothing for Ramadan. While some families prioritise schooling costs over the festive season, others preferred to dip into their savings to cover both expenses. One prudent housewife, Maha Abdallah, says, "I save some money every month throughout the year for occasions like Ramadan and Eid." Another housewife, Laila Ammar, 60, still follows in her mother's footsteps: three months before the start of Ramadan, she starts to add one or two extra items to her monthly shopping list; then, when the time comes, she is ready. "My grandchildren come and eat my special Iftar, and it makes me very happy to feed them everything they like. It's only a month every year." Cairo University lecturer Hatem Rabie says inflation is continual and on the rise, and he blames the government for failing to control the market, especially the food market, a fact that the statistics cited by Abu Bakr El-Guindi, president of the Central Agency for Mobilisation and Statistics: 23.6 per cent increase in rice price, 24.9 in flour, 22.4 in pasta, 4.7 in baladi bread, 8.6 in meat, 10.1 in fish, 6.2 in milk, 7.6 in cheese, 4.6 in oil, 7.3 in baladi butter, 10.1 in fish, 12.4 in fruits and 37.6 in vegetable prices -- an overall annual increase of 12.4 per cent. According to El-Guindy, there is an increase of 1.1 per cent in the inflation rate from July to August in 2007. The price of meat has gone up even more, partly because of the increased demand Ramadan always triggers. For instance, the prices of chicken and beef have gone up from LE5 to LE14 and LE30 to LE50, respectively. According to Um Mahmoud, an elderly widow from Imbaba and the mother of three, "I used to buy chicken for my children since beef has become too expensive. Now we have to go without meat altogether," something that cannot go on during Ramadan. For Nehal Saleh, working mother of three, the situation is both incompatible with incomes and unfair; especially the essential morning meal for children: milk, cheese and bread. By World Bank standards, living on less than $2 a day means you are technically below the poverty line. A family of four therefore requires $240 a month; this is significantly more than the average family of four will earn. Even the government's "Ramadan surprise" -- a pay rise in the public sector -- will not come close. Limited-income families are particularly hard pressed to produce the Iftar mainstays -- yameesh (nuts and dried fruits, often dipped in milk), qamareddin (apricot sweet made into a drink or a pudding), Oriental sweets like konafa and qatayef -- which they are traditionally used to. It is a truly saddening fact that so many families have had to wipe such items off their shopping lists. And this is not to mention the fact that for Iftar, additional amounts of meat and poultry to accommodate guests and make for festive feasts are normally required. Gaber El-Sayed, a worker whose salary is LE600, says his family expenses in Ramadan are higher than in any other month. He would like to invite relations but can't, and he has had to borrow to satisfy his own household needs.
