November 30. Caritas Egypt.

In the morning, after a good Egyptian breakfast, we visit Caritas Egypt as planned, and I ask a few questions about a center they are running in a more modest neighbourhood of the city. It sounds like they are doing real good work there so I decide to focus more on it and shortly after, we're on our way to the  caritas center in Mataraya. The director of the center is willing to guide us around, and shows us the different activities and services. Today is the last day of the festival so there aren't many people around. The atmosphere is good though and we get a nice insight in the role of caritas in this community.
First, we see a group of women sewing and smiling. They are making patchworked Christmas tableclothes. It's one of the programs the center is offering in the field of adult education. In a second room we are introduced to two mothers who are here with  their mentally disabled children. The children learn how to write and handle daily tasks in a coordinated manner, and their parents learn how to deal with their kids when they are at home with them.

We are also shown the clinic, that offers all basic healthcare services for free to the very poor, and for only seven pounds for others. Social workers assess the level of poverty by home visits. The clinic has won a prize for its level of hygiene.
We continue to see the workplace where professional craftsmen manifacture artificial limbs. They are glad to show us their work.

After work, Mohammed kindly brings me to the airport where I work on my writings while waiting for my 23.25 plane to Nairobi. There are long hours to kill, but I manage to do that successfully and update my internet presence from an overpriced coffee place after security.

November 27. Pharaonic village.

The pharaonic village is definitely worth a visit. Obviously, it is a tourism getaway of the purest kind, but if you want to refresh your knowledge about ancient Egypt, this is your place. I enter the village in the early afternoon and take a smooth boatride passing a dozen divine statues listening to the synchronized clamourous explanation through the loudspeakers of the slow tugboat. I will have a personal guide to show me around the village, which is much like an open air museum, showing the life in ancient Egypt. There are also museums about Nasser, Sadat, pyramid building, ship building, and automobiles. I joke that this place serves Martians on their first visit to earth.

I meet a Pakistani software guy and we enjoy the time musing and strolling around the island. He has to leave before dinner though, so I end up eating alone, which is, as I am aware of, not of much interest here. The boatride on the Nile is nice and releases a substantial amount of endorphines in me. A small boat with a careless youth mistreating the steering wheel rams us and gave me a unique opportunity to hear some serious Egyptian cursing from our captain.
In the light of the ferry accident a week later, this makes me realize my luck once again.

November 24. Pondering possibilities in Cairo

An easy day in the café, updating and promoting my internet presence. It seems to take off now. Looking for Charity and Travel on google gets you to my website. I have to spend long hours behind the machine now in order to be seen. Shouting like a rough salesman on a fish market buy my trout buy my eels go ahead and spin my wheels.

November 23. Gaza.

Mohammed wakes me up at six, and I go to the bus with a disconcerting feeling of insecurity. Will I get into Gaza? Will I be searched? Questioned? Will I get stuck in Gaza? Hit by an Israeli bomb or bullet? I cannot risk too much since the success of my journey is strictly dependent on my surviving it - I want to make it to that tv show where I can tell other potential travelers about this.
Thus pondering the bus crosses the Sinai once again and takes me to Ariche, where I convince wondering taxi drivers that I really want to go to Rafah, and on to the border crossing with the Gaza strip.

So I arrive at the gate and a tactless officer eloquently elaborates the state of this border crossing: "closet closet". Of course, what did I expect? Do I want to be persistent and wait a few days here, possibly without result, or to I chose getting back to Cairo and take on my causes there? I decide to do the latter, and turn my back on the border guards. I meet a young family from the US, that want to enter the Gaza strip for a family visit. It has been seven years since I saw them the last time, the father tells me. His father died in that period and he couldn't go to the funeral. Now they have paid a lot of money and made an arrangement. I ask them to take pictures for Charity Travel and give them my card so they can send them to me by email. That way, I might be able to publish some footage from Gaza on my website. I take a photograph of a traditional Palestinian couple waiting at the gate, walk to the gate myself and put my hand on it, just like I had done at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. "I am sorry" I say, "but I will be back. I will not forget the people of Gaza and will do what lies within my power to support you." I feel very sincere and all ritualizing my failed attempt to enter Gaza.

I am shocked by the inhumane situation here. When I think about the January 2009 war, the bulldozers, the settlements, the restrictions, the torture, the human tragedy, all inflicted on harmless Palestinian people who just want to live, I feel tempted to say something I perhaps should not say. "Who are those pigs that cause all this suffering?"

On the way back the taxi driver [on-site ad: buy a taxi-driver DVD now starring Robert the Niro] offers me a cigarette and I accept, I reckon its lethality is nowhere near that of Israeli shrapnel or teargas grenades. I feel gooood even though I didn't complete my mission in Gaza. I hope other travelers will be bolder and braver and venture into the strip, opening it to the world community whose task it is to pour critique into the holy land stronger than the Israeli lead [disambiguate 'lead'].

Back in Cairo I dream of that young woman from Gaza who had to pay 1000$ to crawl to Egypt through the dangerous tunnel in order to buy her wedding dress. She had to pay another 1000$ to get back to the Gaza strip to make it to her wedding. What is the name of the motherfucker leading this abhorrently inhumane nation again?

November 21.

I get back to downtown Cairo today, have a good breakfast, and work in a nice café. In the evening, some very nice guys take me out and tell me about the soccer tragedy that is going on between Algeria and Egypt. We have some tea together before they take me to a youth hostel where I spend yet another comfortable night under a heavy blanket.

November 20. All our presidents are underground.

The jagged contours of the mountainous Egyptian coastline reflect the bright sunlight that is waking me up. I am one of the many passengers that lie scattered on the carpet floor of the bar in hull of the vessel. There is no passport in my pocket, just a piece of paper that says I have passport number one. Of course I am worried. This is the last thing that can go wrong and there is bartalk law that says it will go wrong. But it doesn't. I get off the ship and have a friendly smile stamped in my memory by the immigration official. Then I walk off and get a ride in a red jeep to the center of Nueba. There is a roadside restaurant with Korean letters on it and I am curious enough to enter it. It turns out there is no Korean there, they live in Cairo. In broken English, I order a hamburger which I eat on the terrace, listening to powerful Islamic evocations that play very loud on the tv. It takes me only about ten minutes to catch a ride, or technically a minibus for which I pay a good price, that takes me 500 kilometer up the road to Cairo. I sleep most of the way, but on the stretches where I am awake I gaze at the sandy desert and the electricity poles that stand parallel to the highway. The sun sets beautifully when we arrive in the province of Cairo. We drive like madmen, passing cars left and right, claxoning constantly to find the smallest possible gap between two big fuel trucks. Arrival in Cairo, a crowded bus station, just like what I'm used to.

The reliable Cairo metro system takes me to "Mubarak". I see there are also stations called "Sadat" and "Nasser".
"Yes", says a passenger, "all our presidents are underground".
So I hop off at Mubarak and explore a side street that turns out to be a huge street market. I indulge in a delicious Egyptian drink made of chick peas, something very spicy, and a twist of lemon. Gradually, it becomes clear to me what I have to do: orientation. A tourist map from the train station, some helpful passers-by, a metroride, and a short walk later I sit inside a café and read my email messages. There are fewer than expected, not so many have replied my newsletter. I call a couchsurfer and there is a place to crash available. Happy that the money can go to the children's cancer hospital and not to the condo, lawyer-bill, facelift, tailored suit, Mercedes-Benz, or gooseliver paté of some rich hotel owner.