Cairo diary: 13/17

One of the classes I'm taking at AUC is a development class.  It deals with economies. It talks about the big overarching theories of change and growth, decline and war. And it is as far away as possible from the sociology I usually study, to put it mildly. And yet, it's one of my favorite classes. I'm confused, my English tends to wither up and die during class and I'm always frowning and frantically trying to scribble down what my professor is attempting to teach me. Great, huh?

Well, today it got even better. Why? Well, we went on a field trip so visit a feminist NGO working with micro-financing and women's empowerment, in addition to visiting the offices of USAID. Due to security restrictions, were not allowed to visit the slums we had intended to, which was one of the things I'd been looking forward to, seeing as I also visited some micro-finance clients in Kenya and Sri Lanka when I was there. I was really eager to see how people in Egypt had approached that kind of assistance, but that'll just have to wait for now.

Visiting both the organizations in one day allowed us to see a lot of the contrasts that can be found within such institutions dealing with development. One invited us for tea and a chat with its micro-loan clients, while the other talked about American tax payers desire to see their money show visible results. One was located within a semi-worn concrete building in the middle of a noisy Cairo neighborhood, while the other rested like a fortress  outside of the core of the city itself. And while one dealt with development from the perspective of one woman here and one family there, the other talked about millions in financing of grand projects and visions.

Evaluating everything we talked about and learned during the day would be enough for an essay or two, so I think I'll let that rest for now, unless there's someone dying to know more. But I had a really educative day, I'll tell you that. I've seen the grass root level and I've seen the offices where the money's at. And the fact that they in theory both deal with the same thing - development - is strange, and awfully, awfully interesting.