CAIRO: Maybe the best KFC in Egypt is the one in Cairo's Dokki neighborhood where none of the employees can hear your order. The counter help is fast, accurate, engaging, works together like a well-oiled machine and seems proud to be wearing the KFC uniform. The fact that they can't talk or hear is a non-issue when an entire exchange about crispy strips and coleslaw can transpire through smiles, nods and gestures. A bright copy of the menu pasted on the counter helps. It is the only fast-food outlet in Egypt whose entire counter and kitchen staff of 35 is hearing impaired. (Delivery boys on motorcycles are the exception.) The place is full of laughter and noise as tables of hearing customers chatter among islands of silence where other customers converse with their hands. The non-deaf manager declines to discuss his unusual staff, stating that since last year's revolution, managers are forbidden to grant interviews per orders of KFC corporate management. Tahrir Square's KFC, or “Kentucky,” as these fast-food branches are called here, made the news during the revolution when officials from former President Hosni Mubarak's old regime claimed that foreign agents were paying and feeding protestors “Kentucky” to demonstrate. The jokes that followed included mock video interviews with demonstrators about their sumptuous “Kentucky” repasts. Since the revolution, disability activists have been lobbying to have rights for the disabled written into the country's new constitution, says Mustafa Kamal, disability coordinator for the National Council of Motherhood and Child. By an Egyptian law enacted in 1976, businesses with more than 50 employees are required to hire five percent with disabilities. “But social stigmas persist,” Kamal notes, “with many employers preferring to pay a fine or even salaries for people to stay home from work.” That, coupled family shame and a school system with few accommodations means many of those with mobility, visual and intellectual impairments are confined at home. Kamal ran for parliament this fall as an advocate for improved services for disabled adults and children, but lost. Blind since birth, he manages buses, trains, and taxis on his own around Cairo, a city with high curbs, broken sidewalks and few functioning stoplights. He now hopes to attend a PhD program in the West in social policy for the disabled. Statistics are scant on the number of people with disabilities in Egypt, but in 2002, Egypt's Central Agency for Public Mobilization (CAPMAS) reported only 3.5 percent of the population was disabled according to a census survey hampered by a population reluctant to answer the question. A 2004 report prepared for the World Bank, on the other hand, put the number as high as 9 percent. Poverty, malnutrition, lack of pre-natal care, and intermarriage within extended families—not uncommon in the Middle East—keep these numbers up. Kamal's blindness, for example, is due to a recessive gene, he says; his parents are first cousins. “Our focus at the moment is to improve educational opportunities for children,” he notes. “We talk about rights in terms of inclusion, of mainstreaming children in regular classrooms, of ramps and elevators, of requiring reasonable accommodation for students with disabilities,” he says. “There is much work to be done. We need more experts in the field.” ** Colleen Gillard and Georgia Wells blog at: EgyptUnplugged.com BM ShortURL: http://goo.gl/GvaiX Tags: Cairo, Deaf, Disabled, featured, Handicap, KFC Section: Culture, Egypt, Health, Latest News
