Editor's Note: While we jeered at freshmen circling the bonfire, Alex Schindler '10 was sweating it in Cairo. Confirming what spa owners have long claimed more or less convincingly, she assures us that a little heat is cathartic, if not downright necessary. A passionate Alex cleanses us of our Middle Eastern misconceptions with a refreshing alternative to the usual New Year's platitudes.
So first off, what were you doing in Cairo?
I was an English teacher with a program called STAR. An '09 here named Ibrahim had gone to AUC, which is a University in Cairo, and he had taught with the STAR. He saw that there was a real need for people to oversee the organization as opposed to just volunteering and teaching. So, I went with two other Dartmouth students. We were each teaching refugees in Cairo four nights a week, so they were mostly Sudanese and Iraqi, but there were also some West African refugees as well.
Is this the first time you've taught?
I do ESL tutoring here, and that was my only experience with that before I went. It's funny because people ask me how did I train to be a teacher, and I just didn't. I literally googled "how to teach 'past perfect'" and found worksheets online, that sort of thing. It was low budget so they didn't have really high standards, so they relied more on intuition than knowledge.
You mentioned before feeling a sense of communal responsibility in Cairo. Could you tell me how that differed from an American city of comparable size?
Yes, I'd say there's more of a community. It's hard to describe, but it's just when you're in the city -- for example, I took the metro every day and there are all-female cars, and you're with all these women, and some of them would stare at you, because, obviously, I look different, but they would also treat you really, really nicely.
How do you mean?
There's not the same idea of personal space as there is here. People would hold your shoulder if they didn't have somewhere to hold. They won't even ask, they'd just put their hand on your shoulder. Very different from the New York Subway.
In your spare time, did you find yourself choosing to interact more with expatriates or locals?
There's a huge expat population, but I was actually living downtown in a neighborhood more populated by Egyptians, which I really liked. I was working in an area where most expats wouldn't go, and some Egyptians wouldn't go too. So, it was cool to see a really different side of Cairo, because there are neighborhoods where you see most things you'd see in the U.S., nice things, you know. My neighborhood was near the American Embassy, but my roommate had an Egyptian connection so we ended up hanging out with all of her Egyptian friends, which ended up making the experience. Why go to Cairo to hang out with Americans?
When you were with the locals, did you feel like the lone Westerner in a non-Western setting, or was your Americanness more the separating factor? Many of us don't realize how American we are until we go abroad. I definitely felt the American thing. I was there when Obama was elected, which was actually a really good thing in terms of my relationship with Cairo people in general. They were really into his skin color, and I was like okay, that's not why he won ... but I was being congratulated for two weeks because of my "win." But I definitely felt that I had to defend -- well, not defend it -- but open a dialogue about my American-ness.
Any specific experiences?
We always made the joke, "that's so Cairo." Americans expect everything to happen on time, the way you're told it would, and in Egypt the things people say most are "no problem" and "God willing" so it's like, if something doesn't happen that you wanted to happen one day, it's like God willing it will happen tomorrow. Imagine, then, trying to organize a center ... the head of the center would say something like, "No problem, tomorrow it will be okay," and your first impulse is to think, "Really?"
Outside the U.S., an unpaid internship is practically unheard-of. Did that difference in privilege color your interactions with the Egyptians, trying to explain things like "No, I'm doing this for the experience..."?
It's totally true. When my students found out I was volunteering my time they were really appreciative. I'm still getting thank-you e-mails for teaching them. With my Egyptian friends it was like, "Someone gave you $4000 to come here and teach? Who would do that?" It really is an American luxury.
Would you consider teaching again?
I'm doing Middle Eastern studies and I've never been interested in teaching, but I had previously done some work with domestic violence victims in NYC, and they were Arabic women ... but I definitely enjoyed the challenge of teaching. The textbooks were awful, so you had to be creative, the classrooms were too small. I couldn't even get to all of my students because the rows were so cramped.
Do you still keep in touch with anyone?
I do, via the brilliance of Facebook. Yesterday I almost had a crisis because my Arabic tutor started Facebook chatting with me in Arabic and --
You need one of those keyboard covers for that, right?
Yes! And I was like "Uhhh, I do not have one of these right now..." So I was trying to do English transliterations and it was really stressful. I've never Facebook-chatted in Arabic before. I had one student e-mail me yesterday to ask me what a 'hooligan' was.
Anything you're looking forward to about being back?
I really liked it there and this is really clich, but Dartmouth is a really wonderful bubble. It's good to get out of it, but when you come back it's nice -- it's too cold here, obviously, but... it's nice to come back and especially, to be a student again. It's hard to be a teacher!
They say working in the real world is hard.
No, seriously, I don't want to graduate.
I'm sure that can be arranged.
All I can say is I'm glad to be back, and I'm happy to be in either place.
