Learning In and Out of Class

Faithful Reader –

There is a cruel irony of keeping a blog about time spent abroad: on one hand, the passing weeks in a foreign country yield storytime fodder at an exponential rate; on the other, they slowly funnel time away from publishing those stories on an open source forum, due to an ever-increasing awareness of how much you have yet to discover and how little time in which to explore your world.

But long-winded apologies for shorter blog entries aside, this week marked the actual start of classes (the Swine Flu Threat has been deterred). I’m settling into a groove with homework assignments and the healthy pressure of being in class for four hours a day. I have two classes, one in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), the consolidated, modernized version of Qur’anic Arabic developed by scholars in the late nineteenth century and used in any formal setting, e.g. newscasts, newspapers, speeches and presentations, and so on. My other class is in Egyptian colloquial Arabic, which is the dialect people actually speak at home and which you find in movies, talk shows, and other less formal media. Without going into a rant on the phenomenon of “diglossia,” or the vast gap between formal and colloquial Arabic (the word literally means “two tongues”), suffice it to say that the fact that I have to take a separate class to learn how to talk to people in everyday settings should give you an idea of how difficult Arabic is.

I also found myself revisiting thoughts which I had internalized since living in Brazil from 2002-2004 as a missionary for the LDS Church, involving the terrible state of things for most people living in the developing world. Not that I don’t think about this on a regular basis anyway, but being back in the “third world” (the term is an outdated, Cold War phenomenon) has a way of shoving it in one’s face. In my colloquial Egyptian Arabic class, we discussed the situation of minimum wage-earners, who further research confirmed bring home 280 LE per month (it was raised from 148 LE only last year). That’s less than $50, and does not cover living expenses (average monthly costs at the poverty level are estimated to be at around 660 LE/month). So most people either work multiple jobs, find employment under the table, or live away from family in the Gulf States or Europe, from whence they send their much better wages home.

There’s debate over this, though. The other day I spoke with a young guy about my age, who was telling me that complaints about not being able to find work are unfounded, and that there’s plenty of work for those who want to look for it. I do consider the source, though: he studies law at Ain Shams University, one of the most prestigious institutions in Egypt and in all the Middle East. He is also industrious and resourceful, working during the day and studying at night, and perhaps his point is that more people would benefit from a similar regimen if they had the energy and resourcefulness. One way or the other, though, I have begun to feel that motivation which comes from a healthy sense of guilt over the amazing opportunities given me, and which most other people will never see. As a student on the CASA program, my monthly stipend is six times as much as what the professors who teach me make at their jobs.

Food for my thoughts and yours, at least until next week. Salaam,

K