SEKEM (1)

It was an exceptionally foggy day. We came up to the final stretch of our ride to Bilbeis. Palm trees framed the winding paved road that cut through between different farms in the rural township.  We passed the stretch with the pretty orange tree farms peeking out from behind a white brick wall. Then the stinky stretch that must be a manure farm or something. Then there’s the part with all the birds. So many birds in that particular spot. Finally, we reach a T and take a left to reach the gate, defying the GPS’ insistence that a right is where we wanted to head.  

We were greeted as always by the green-eyed bawab in his loose-fitting galabeyya and thick warm kufiyah wrapped around his neck. Nagy’s sunny disposition and big, big smile were infectious. He brought such warmth and earnestness to his simple job of manning the SEKEM gates that made us all feel instantly welcome. I rolled down my window beaming as I raised my hand to my head to mirror his salute and we enthusiastically exchanged good mornings: Sabah el asal (صباح العسل). Sabah el foll (صباح الفل).

A minute later we all hopped out of the car and Cole and I walked Amina and Sina to their respective classes. It was the last day of our two-week experiment at the Sekem school.

SEKEM is a sustainable development initiative that started back in 1977 by Dr Ibrahim Abouleish. He had a vision of turning some 70 hectares of desert in Belbeis into arable land that would be cultivated in a way that was nurturing to both land and people.  And so it was that that plot of land around 60 KM northeast of Cairo was turned into a sustainable agro-industrial business that went on to be a recognized brand not just within the small rural community within which it was conceived but across all of Egypt and beyond. Today they have cultivated almost 2000 hectares in different parts of Egypt and their herbal teas, natural medicinal products, and organic textiles are sold globally.

But none of that was really why we were there.  We were there for the school.

To understand why this was kind of a big moment in our family’s trajectory, I need to tell you a little bit more about our family mechanics.

Anyone who knows me knows how obsessive I get about my kids learning and retaining their Arabic. I have always fretted about it because Cole, my husband, is not Egyptian. Although he understands Arabic and speaks enough to get by, in our household English is definitely the dominant tongue. My fears intensified when we moved to smalltown Wisconsin a few years ago and they were completely immersed in English. When applying for Sina to join Pleasant Ridge’s kindergarten, I remember needing to clarify that even though his dominant spoken language was Arabic, he understood and spoke English too. To my dismay, it didn’t take long for that disclaimer to flip.

I still speak to them exclusively in Arabic and have experimented with various carrot-and-stick cocktails in how I approach it. Depending on the day, I can be super fun and airy about my language switch nudge and can strike just the right tone. The “right” tone means my nudge is subtle and nonconfrontational and as such doesn’t trigger intentional defiance on their end. I think of that as my Bene Gesserit mode.  It’s a really nice mode. Rare though.

Sometimes, I try more fun coaxing. For example, I looked up child-friendly poetry that we would recite before our dinner verse. That worked really well for a time then for whatever reason (probably because I relaxed and wasn’t as forceful in our Arabic regime) we slipped out of the habit of doing it. Inevitably, I would go back to noticing the overabundance of English, panic and overcompensate. For example, there was a period where I started blurting the poetry at random times during the day (like when someone says good morning) hoping to turn the verses into earworms that the kids can’t help but repeat. A different time, I offered to pay Amina if she spoke to Sina in Arabic more consistently and encouraged him to speak it back. Like a job. Or a bribe. Depending on how you look at it. Jury’s still out on the effectiveness of that one.

More often than not though, I am frustrated and impatient and that triggers a more militant response that is sometimes productive in the short run but I wonder if it will trigger a massive backlash when they’re in their teens. It also sometimes makes them cry in frustration and that’s never a good look for a parenting technique. Like today, Sina in our car ride to school when I paused the story we were listening to – Rats of Nimh – because I heard him tell Amina something in English. I did not actually want them listening to an English story from the beginning so our agreement was if I hear them talking to each other in English that will indicate to me that they’re surrounded by too much English and will prompt me to renege on our current story-listening arrangement. At least until they would repeat whatever was said in Arabic. I could hear Amina whispering to Sina in the back what he needed to say in Arabic for the story to come back on. But of course, Sina being Sina, he was not wanting to cooperate. He ultimately burst out in tears yelling the words in Arabic. I did not count that as a success.

All of that is compounded by another fact that occasionally brings me comfort but more often brings feelings of doom and despair. The fact is, even our relatives and friends’ kids in Egypt are defaulting to English as their language of choice. My anxieties about language originally stem from the fact that I want them to be able to access Egyptian culture, humor, music, history, thought, the whole shebang, like natives - not foreigners. Most of my friends and family know English and know it well. That’s true. So, my kids could theoretically get by without a word of Arabic in those middle /middle-upper class circles where essentially all our social networks in Egypt lie. But even if they could get by with just English, there’s a whole world that comes with being able to comfortably surf conversations in Arabic that they would be completely shut out off. They wouldn’t necessarily get a joke that references some scene in an Egyptian movie or get a play on words. When they’re older, they wouldn’t be able to access the ocean of literature and knowledge that is available only in Arabic and will be restricted by, and dependent on, English’s notably skewed view of the world.  What’s worse is that, without Arabic, they wouldn’t be able to comfortably interact with Egyptians beyond those more limited English-fluent circles and would forever be pigeonholed as khawagas – foreigners. Outsiders.

Anyways, I digress. The point is I care about my kids learning Arabic. I put a lot of energy into it. But it’s not enough. So a new idea started forming last winter, inspired by Sumi and the Korean students she brings to Pleasant Ridge Waldorf School – the school my kids go to in Viroqua. The Korean students come for a month or two every winter and temporarily enroll with the school.

Why not see if I could do a similar type of unofficial exchange program for my kids with a school in Egypt?

There were obstacles. The public education system in Egypt is overburdened and dysfunctional. So that was not really an option. The private education system is expensive and westernized. As part of our colonial legacy, private schools are either French, German, or – of course - English. It is also restricted to people with money. Both factors translate into privileged kids speaking to each other in foreign languages (mostly English), which for my purposes was a deal-breaker.

Enter SEKEM.

This is is the first of a two-part series. Here is part two.