Yes, only a week. Driving away from the farewell crowd at University Commons seems so long ago. After 20 hours of travel, half of which were spent in airports, we were greeted in the capital by our guide Samer (Sah-mair), who welcomed us with oranges, bananas, juice boxes, and flowers (for the ladies). Fortunately, it was nearly 9 PM Egypt time, so we were able to sleep soon after. Jet lag was hardly an issue.

Samer has since led us all over Cairo and Giza, holding his scepter topped with an ankh, the symbol for life, high in the air. In the morning, we saw the Great Pyramids, checking the only surviving Wonder of the Ancient World off of our list. These tombs held the global record for tallest man-made structure for nearly four thousand years, and the engineering plus sheer manpower it would have taken to achieve the stacking of rocks – each weighing multiple tons – is pretty flabbergasting. Our group took in their epochal presence, as well as that of the Sphinx, and moved on to visit a papyrus art gallery, a carpet making school, and a handful of other ruins that are rich in history, yet often overshadowed by the Pyramids.

The next couple of days were a similar flurry of motion, with bus rides and hotel evenings being our main opportunity for conversation and processing. We saw the Nile many times. Some in our group noted the stark contrast in the land that has access to its water and land that does not. Often, a road separates brown and grey urban desert from lush green paradise. We visited the Egyptian Museum, which contains thousands of artifacts from three defining periods, the Old, Middle, and New Kingdoms. We entered several holy buildings. The Ibn Tulun mosque was probably my favorite; the image of our group, having been given cloth sacks to put around our feet, pacing across its enormous, empty courts surrounded by massive, ornate walls is hard to forget, as is the feeling of tranquility that I felt within it. A close second was Cave Church, a gigantic amphitheater cut deeply into the side of a mountain and only reachable through some of fastest, most crowded, and overall most stressful city driving I’ve ever witnessed. It was absolutely worth the hymn-singing acoustics.

My best memory of Cairo is largely our final afternoon and evening there. A dust storm had just engulfed the city when we set out to explore its sprawling street bazaar. The hazy brown air and overwhelming stimulation of the market scene didn’t discourage us from wanting to hone our bartering skills. I got in a bit too deep over a chess set I knew I didn’t have the space for, which made for some valuable bargaining practice at the cost of an awkward exit. We spent at least three hours in this market, and I found some good prices for gifts but still didn’t see nearly all of the shops. Directly afterwards, we were lucky enough to attend a performance of the Whirling Dervishes. This Islamic sect views their show of sound and movement as both worship and evangelism, and it is quite fun to behold. Envision a drumline accompanied by native string and flute players, a singer, and men spinning with huge, removable fabric around their waist, and you get the gist. Of course, it’s nothing like being there in the audience.

Then we moved to Anaphora. When we arrived at this community surrounded by sand, we were greeted by Father Antonio and Sister Sara, who told us some of its history. Anaphora was a desert in 1999. Since then, it has become an area of retreat, ritual, and residence. Nineteen-year-old trees stand tall, livestock are being raised, and simple plaster-domed buildings now sprinkle the grounds. It’s all largely thanks to the peacebuilding efforts of Bishop Thomas, who is Coptic Orthodox. We met Thomas the following morning and heard some of his insights on religious conflict amongst Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. That evening, our group attended a 3-hour liturgy to celebrate Epiphany. The language was mostly Coptic (similar to Latin), and at one point, “Kyrie eleison” was repeated one hundred times in chant. It was quite an experience, filled with candlelight and incense. The rest of our time in Anaphora has been spent relaxing, singing, reading, writing, eating, and sleeping, often on rooftops. It’s been a wonderful change of pace.

By this point, a few budding themes are already evident. Firstly, the inescapability of being an American tourist. This is something that a few in our group listed as their greatest fear for this trip. Many of us are striving to be the ideal, adaptable traveler, constantly trying new things and respecting all cultures without missing a beat. The reality is that this is so difficult due to the sheer number of nuances of different global perspectives we are facing that a healthy amount of grace for ourselves is necessary. We look, sound, and act like Americans in some ways that we can recognize and control and in many that we cannot. The hardest part is discerning which to work on and which to embrace as part of our own cultural identity.

Secondly, the joy of language discovery. Several of us took Elementary Arabic in the fall, but the immersion is a new experience for everyone. Arabic is not an easy language, partly because it has an entirely different alphabetic script system from English. It’s been a lot of fun reading signs as we drive by and piecing together the words that we actually know. Additionally, and a bit unexpectedly, American sign language has become a significant part of this experience thanks to my friend Graham, who is deaf, and his interpreter, Tristan. They’ve taught us a lot, and it really is satisfying to feel progress. It’s sparking a lot of great conversions about linguistic patterns and some of the paradigm shifts that speaking, even thinking, in a new language can create.

Thirdly, the complexity of the conflict that we are studying. In his recent talk, Bishop Thomas highlighted some interesting perspective on liberal and conservative attitudes in religion. Particularly, he focused on how stances of being open or rigid in views can affect both ends of the spectrum and how uncertain the ideal balance can seem. Our experience thus far, including orientation, has trained us to expect the issues of religious and ethnic intolerance to become more and more tangible as we get closer to Jerusalem.

It really has been a blast so far, with or without culture shock, and our group seems to be in good spirits. We wish our friends and families back home an enriching spring of their own as we set out for week 2 and onward of our journey.

-Silas Clymer

Our time in the Middle East has already been a whirl wind of new places, faces, and food. As one member said, if we went home today we would think back on the week and a half in Egypt as a really great and transforming cross-cultural. It is incredible to realize we still have three more months of discoveries to make and friendships to build!

I spent the day thinking about empires. The world has always been divided into two groups – citizens of the Empire and those left on the outside. The Empire changes over the years – Egypt, Persia, Rome, the Ottomans, the British, and now America. I find myself a citizen of the Empire trying desperately to understand what life is like on the outside. American citizens regularly fail to understand and appreciate the power and privilege and opportunity they have simply by belonging to the Empire.

I wonder if today’s Egyptian citizens dwell on the past a lot. I wonder if they long for the days when the world belonged to Egypt. It saddens me that everyone is so poor in a country with the richest history of them all. I couldn’t miss the irony of a street salesman stuck in a dead-end job pushing their wares onto tourists, the wares themselves depicting their very ancestors ruling the world in great glory. Egyptians today find themselves outside the Empire looking in, while Americans today usually miss the bigger picture of the human condition – the privilege of the Empire allows this impossibility. I wonder of the Egyptian citizens of the Old Kingdom at the height of its power were similarly absorbed in their own lives, while roaming bands in outlying provinces yearned only to be Egyptian and to belong to the Empire.

I look forward to developing this theme on the trip. In Christianity, God intentionally chose the world over the Empire. Jesus went to the conflicted and dangerous place, not the place of power and stability. Jesus chose the outside, not the center. If Jesus returned to Earth today, there’s no doubt he’d go to Syria or Congo or Honduras or a hundred other places before America – we are the Empire.

Christianity was never intended for the Empire. Constantine adopted it after a war and it became the official religion of the Roman Empire – the greatest one of them all at that point. The religion was changed beyond recognition and groups wouldn’t be able to attempt to reclaim the original message of Christianity for over a thousand years. This project is clearly ongoing. As citizens of the Empire, we are particularly ill-equipped to try and access Christianity in its original form. Our idols are security and materialism, our sins are fear, racism, sexism, and xenophobia. I wonder if the citizens of Egypt and Rome were equally prone to the same missteps in the face of the message of a God who proclaimed peace and goodwill toward all men – not just within the Empire.

Empire is a thread that runs start to finish on our trip. Like the Bible, we start in Egypt and end in Rome, with a lot of the real world in between. I hope we find human moments of peace and goodwill in the middle, hindered though we are by our citizenship in the Empire.

-Eli Wenger

The leadership at Anafora are working to create a place where people can come to seek retreat and new life. They have started to build biblical structures, the Amanmesia, which means remembering, to help explain some of their beliefs. So far they
have built a replica of the tabernacle, the Sea of Galilee, the Mount
of Olives, a small version of the ark of Noah, and a model of
Jerusalem. They are currently working on painting the walls of a
church building showing different Bible stories and of the 12
apostles. Overall, Anafora is doing well at creating a relaxing
environment where all feel welcome despite the differences in color,
culture, and religious practices.

We got to take part in the Epiphany service which was in a mix of
Coptic and Arabic. The Coptic and Greek Orthodox churches celebrate the baptism of Jesus as part of Epiphany. The service starts with two hours of prayers, then an hour and a half mass, and finishing with a ceremony of placing a cross into water. The mass was a new experience for many of us who come from the Mennonite tradition, which doesn’t feature as much liturgy and sacraments. The mass had us using all of our senses. When entering the chapel, we were overwhelmed by the smoke and smell of incense. We listened to the sound of songs, spoken liturgies, and cymbals. We saw the different icons of crosses and apostles, took part in passing the peace by touching hands, and observed the taking of communion.

After the mass we received candles and processed to an
amphitheater which included an island surrounded by a pool of water. Following some singing and liturgy, Bishop Thomas placed three baskets on fire, an anc (an Egyptian cymbal used to represent the cross), and a cross into the pool. Upon the completion of the service, everyone enjoyed a meal together as the Coptic Christians had been fasting for Epiphany.

It’s fascinating to witness how Christians in all different traditions
and cultures used different practices and traditions to listen to God.
In the Mennonite tradition we use four part hymns and in the Coptic
tradition they use incense and liturgy. After processing this, it made
me realize that the way Christians pull in parts of their culture to
encounter God is an example of how God can not be bound by
traditions. He moves and speaks in all places and through many ways.

A section of the liturgy used in the Epiphany service:
O King of peace, grand us Your peace, establish for us Your peace, and forgive us our sins.
Disperse the enemies of the church, and strengthen her so it will never shake.
Emmanuel, our God, in His Father’s Glory with the Holy Spirit, is now in our midst.
That He blesses us all, purifies our hearts, and heals the sickness of
our souls and bodies.
We worship You, O Christ, with Your good Father and the Holy Spirit for You were baptized and saved us.

-Janaya Sachs and Rachel Holderman

So, we are finally in Cairo and I am jet lagged, but am so excited to
see the Pyramids and the Sphinx. Cairo has a distinct smell to it, a
mixture of smoke and incense. The streets are chaotic and bustling
with life and everyone is trying to get you to buy something. The
streets get busier in the evening when the shops open up and there’s
traffic and cars everywhere. The people don’t follow typical traffic
laws and walk in between cars when and where they like. The drivers themselves aren’t law abiding citizens either. The constant honking is something that you learn to ignore.

When we came to the pyramids, we were all excited to see one of the Seven Wonders of the World. Was I really here? I felt adrenaline rush through me as we walked around and listened to the tour guide tell us the history of these amazing architectures. I honestly was expecting the pyramids to be further out into the desert, but they weren’t. They were right outside the city, and you could actually see part of the pyramid while driving up. When we came up to the third biggest pyramid, we all got tickets to get to go inside. It was a great
experience. It wasn’t anything out of this world, but just being able
to say “I was inside the pyramid”, is just the best feeling. Kind of
like bragging After we saw the pyramids, we went down to see the
Sphinx. There were so many tourists there and like everywhere else, the locals tried to sell us souvenirs. Later we went to a papyrus shop and saw how papyrus was made. We could also purchase some papyrus paintings there, and mostly everyone decided to get at least one. I am looking forward to seeing and experiencing new things.

-Jessica Longenecker