Update from BHW Egypt Partnership Facilitator 

Recent Events

COVID-19

The COVID-19 situation in Egypt is improving. At one stage there was around 1,500 new cases per day but now it is down to around 100 per day. The country only stopped for a few days. Schools have closed and P has been very busy. She works for the Department of Education in the online education sector so this has meant she has been very busy working from home. 

The children have been doing online studies at home as well, all children’s activities have stopped. In October the new year will begin but schedules will be different. They will probably only go to school with half the numbers for two days per week to limit exposure to others and keep the bubbles as small as possible.  

Rubbish Mountain

Since the devastating flood that swept through in April, all the people from the “Mountain” have been shifted out and are living in rental accommodation in Helwan or 5th May cities. Because of COVID, no meetings have been allowed for anyone including churches and mosques. The Coptic church at the mountain has been punished for allowing people to gather. S and P stopped going to the mountain for a while but are now going back to operate the clinic. The people still have their rubbish shorting businesses based out there. 

The government plans to shift the people to another place they are still developing. The place is about 2 km from the original site. They will, or are, building accommodation there for them and people will have to pay rent. There will be separate places for them to sort their trash. 

S has had to spend a lot of time talking to government officials to obtain land in the new location for a new community centre. The officials are wanting bribes and their processes are very obtuse and confusing. They are making it as difficult as possible for everyone. They have been “given” a 600 m2 piece of land but are still not sure what that actually means, if they will have to pay for it yet and if so, how much. They intend to shift the clinic container to that new site and develop a community centre but it is still very unclear what that will look like. Government officials have spent a lot of time at their old site measuring and talking with people about what S and P were doing before the flood. But even though the reports are good, it is still very difficult. 

The work with the people continues, there are still many, if not more, needs among them. They are having to constantly visit and deal with situations. In the last few days they have had to help a couple whose baby was born with some complications to the birth which required funds. In another case they had to help with a seriously ill person. 

They are not able to gather the people together at the moment but from next Friday they are allowed to start that again and they hope that people will still want to come after such a long time. Those they talk to are keen but for most it now means having to travel some distance across the town to gather where before they could walk a few hundred metres. They intend to return to meeting in their old building until they have a new location. The building was not damaged too much although it needed cleaning as there were many dead animal bodies in it after the flood subsided.

They hope to be gone from this site by about February next year.  

Personal

P’s health has improved since our last call and she has been doing well. However, S was injured on the first day of the flood back in April with a gash to his hand. It became infected and very painful. No drugs would improve it so he has had to have an operation and since then it has improved. He has been very unwell for two months. 

P’s parents are doing okay although are much busier since the flood as people have been coming to their place because S and P have been so busy working.