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Family Adventure in Egypt Crosses Culture Gap
by Sally Carswell
Jennifer Drago
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"Are you Muslim or Christian?" asks the man in the sweet shop. Jennifer Drago, unsure of her Arabic, for she and her family have only been in Egypt for two months, tries to reply. She gets a strange look from the shopkeeper. She thinks she said the word in Arabic for Christian, but could she have pronounced it wrong?
Jennifer and her family pay the shopkeeper for their sweets and leave. It is not until later that Jennifer realizes that in her poor Arabic she told the shopkeeper that she was a "theater," not a Christian.
This is just one example of challenges the Drago family faced while living in Egypt.
Drago spoke at Mars Hill College on March 4 during a Crossroads session. She, her husband, and their three children left their home in Comer, Georgia in 2003 to live in Egypt for three years.
The Drago family was sponsored by the Mennonite Central Committee and agreed to teach English.
Friends and family, she said, responded to their plans with fear -- "Fear for us going into the Middle East just about a year and a half after September 11, and about 8 months after the U.S. had invaded Iraq."
Her family, she said, had to think hard: "As Christians how do we respond to a world that is hurting? Do we stay where it is safe and secure, or do we take the chance and go out and meet…some of the rest of God's people, and get to know them and come to love them and appreciate their lives?"
Drago opened with a Bible verse from 1 John 4:19-21:
"We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, 'I love God,' yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. And he has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother."
In Egypt, as the Drago family got to know people and find friends, they learned many things about Egyptian culture and daily life. They attended a family friend's wedding and were surprised to see that men and women do not dance together.
Education is provided free. However, families still have to pay for books and uniforms. It is not uncommon for a class to have fifty children and one teacher --- and just one book.
Their housekeeper Suad, came from a poor family that had married her off at the age of 19 to a 65-year-old man. He had died after 15 years, leaving her to raise her two children alone. She was training her 10-year-old son to understand his role as a major provider for the family. He would be expected to help provide for his older sister until she is married and for his mother until she dies. The boy attended school and was unable to work most of the time, but he picked cotton during his school vacations for fifty cents a day.
Though the American culture and Egyptian culture seem so different, Drago was able to see some surprising similarities.
For example, her friend Um Amzat was born into a poor rural family. She had nine siblings. When Um Amzat was just 13, her father married her off to a man who was 25. Jennifer explained that this may seem strange to Americans, but it was very normal in poor Egyptian families.
Years later Um Amzat had a daughter of her own, Mirian. The Drago family had the privilege of attending Mirian's wedding. Unlike her mother, Mirian was married at the age of 20. She had graduated from high school and had taken classes to become a nursing assistant. Because of the advances in women's rights, Mirian has opportunities her mother Um Amzat could never have dreamed of.
Jennifer compared the lives of Um Amzat and Miriam to her own grandmother's life and her own life now. Jennifer's grandfather was a sugarcane farmer in rural Louisiana. He was left to raise five children after his wife died. He knew that he could not tend to his crops and raise a family without a wife, so he went to the plantation next door and asked some people there if he could marry their daughter. They agreed. The daughter was 19 when she married Jennifer's grandfather. Her grandfather and his new wife gave birth to Jennifer's father. The mother of Jennifer's father was illiterate. In fact, whenever she signed a check she would write an "X" and Jennifer's father would sign his name next to it as a witness.
"That was the life of my grandmother, here in the U.S.!" said Drago. "It's not that far removed from these women that I knew in Egypt! And look at her granddaughter today!" Unlike her grandmother, Jennifer was able to go to school, finish high school, and attend college at Louisiana State University, where she earned a master's degree in social work.
Drago closed with a verse from the Koran. She said many people believe that Islam says very little about women. However, this particular verse shows that men and women are equal in the eyes of Allah.:
For Muslim men and women,
for believing men and women,
for devout men and women,
for true men and women,
for men and women who are patient and constant,
for men and women who humble themselves,
for men and women who give in charity,
for men and women who fast,
for men and women who guard their chastity,
and for men and women who engage much in Allah's praise,
for them has Allah prepared forgiveness and great reward."
(33:35)
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