clarification

Hello everyone.

I want to apologize. It has come to my attention that number of you arent entirely sure what i am doing in Egypt. As in who i am working for, what i am doing, what my responsibilities and obligations are and etc. So this post will be dedicated to what exactly i do and how this organization works.

Before i get into that i will share a new experience that i went through this morning. So usually i take a taxi back and forth from my room to the office and each way costs 10 pounds. This is actually a lot of money to pay especially if i am going to be doing it for a year. So i inquired about other means and was told about the micro bus. The micro bus is like a van that carries roughly 14 people however i have seen plenty of times where it can be up to 20...yeah so the way it works is usually underneath a bridge is the bus terminal where dozens of these micro buses are. As a first timer i have no idea where the micro bus to my office is and of course non are labeled. So i go there and just say "inta araf fein sabah emaraat?" (do you know where sa-bah em-ar-aat is?") I asked about 9 people and they all said go here no go across, no go there, yadda yadda yadda it didnt get me anywhere. Oh yeah, i got there at 7:45am and i need to be at work at 8:30. I spent about 15 minutes looking for this bus so eventually i hear one of the buses screaming "musrigedida! musrigedida!" (mus-reh-gah-dee-da) and i throw up my hand because thats pretty close to the office and i can just walk from where ever they drop me off. So he starts saying "igree igree!" which means "run run!" so i am thinking "you've got to be kidding..." but i dont have time because the bus is already driving off. So i book it and as i get close to the bus i jump. yep i hurled my self for the bus door with my arm stretched out and the guy who was screaming the destination grabbed my arm and pulled me into the bus. Haha it was really a lot of fun it was like a movie. I told my co-workers and they said yep now you are really egyptian. So yeah the beauty of the micro bus is that it takes me essentially to the same place but for only 75 piasters (thats less than one pound, think like 75 cents instead of 10 dollars) So yeah God willing i do better tomorrow and find it sooner because i was 10minutes late for work today :'(

Ok so time to talk a little Habitat for Humanity. The basic history of it started when this big shot guy named Millard Fuller. He had like all sorts of worldly possessions but was never satisfied it took his wife almost leaving him to finally give literally all of it away and start Habitat for Humanity. He partnered with his friend eventually in South Africa to make it more international and other things really made it bloom like the participation of Retired President of the United States Jimmy Carter. So the way Egypt worked was by a group called CEOSS "Coptic Evangelical Organization for Social Services" They partnered with Habitat and started building houses in villages south of Cairo. The way it works is Habitat is like a loan company and they loan out the necessary amounts of money to individuals who want to build a new house. The amazing thing is that there is such a personal relationship between Habitat and the villages that the payback return rate thingy is 97%. That means 97% of the time the loan is paid back in full and on time. So thats how they work and they build houses. The way i came into the picture is that the head honcho boss here in Habitat Egypt is a guy named Yousry Makar. He is a wonderful man and he grew up with my parents from when they were in High School and they all went to the same church. So I go to these Arabic Evangelical Conferences over the summer and one time i saw habitat and thought it was amazing. I have always been a guy who liked helping and physically serving in anyway possible and all that kept coming into my head was Habitat. I contacted Yousry and asked if there was any way i can possibly help out. We set something up where he was like do you want to work 3 months, 6 months, or a year? i chose a year because i didnt think i could accomplish enough in such a short amount of time like 3 or 6 months. So yadda yadda i get to egypt and we decide what my job will be. I am something called "Global Village Coordinator" we build in Global Villages and the people who build currently are volunteer teams from American and Europe. Like church, universities, and other groups. My job is to talk with them and plan out their trip. I create an itinerary which includes build days along with sightseeing trips which we then book with a travel agency here. So after we plan they eventually come. Where i meet them at the hotel they stay at. I provide an orientation and i travel with them to the build site with our engineer. There the team and i build a house, or part of a house, or something and then they go off to sightsee and i go to the office and prepare or plan out the next volunteer group. There is no building during the summer months because Egypt is way to hot for Americans and Europeans to come and build. We were supposed to start in September but its Ramadan which means no building this month either :/. So As soon as Ramadan is over we will begin building. I look very much forward to it and I cant wait.

Thats basically how it works right now if anyone has any more questions please feel free to ask me and i'll do my best to explain it best i can. Thank you everyone and have a good day.

I hope Joe got to read this