It's Happening.

Everything is crazy busy and so much is happening and who knows what will happen but I can post to this twitter website from my phone with updates on our group so check it out. I won't be able to see replies but you can find out what i'm up to: http://twitter.com/studentsforgaza I will be away from internet but I can be reached at my Egyptian phone number.

Be brave, Be bold

Finished with finals!!!! But barely any relief because Gaza organizing is still in full swing. Yesterday was a very rough day. First of all it was very busy, as the Canadian delegation and the New York delegation arrived. The Canadian delegation is heading to Rafah today, and the New York delegation one day after us. The government told our bus company that we would not be allowed to cross Sinai and if we do we will be stopped. So we all had a brainstorming session and we are forging ahead with fresh alternatives. The good news is that the Canadians made it through Sinai this morning, so wooooo!!! Yesterday I also had to speed over the doctor's syndicate because we had some miscommunication in our group and no one had gone to pick it up. So they called me and said.. we need you to come with 3000 dollars in an hour so I said okay I'll be there and I figured that out (thank you everyone for your donations!!) and I went with Miriam and we picked up a whole lot of medical equipment from this amazing man who'd been in Darfur and Lebanon and Gaza doing medical work and built a whole hospital in Kashmir after the earthquake so we gave him the money and he gave us the medical supplies along with a list of what everything was and where it should go to in Gaza and we spoke Arabic and heard his stories and dumped it all in a taxi and hurried back to the hotel to give the supplies to Sandra who is taking a third of the three thousand dollar's worth to Gaza. Long Sentence! But while all that was happening I hadn't barely taken a breath so I guess it's appropriate. In the early evening we met with the Canadian delegation as it was their send-off evening, and tried to talk some strategy. Sandra (Canadian delegation) got the head of the Egyptian Red Crescent on the phone, but not a lot of help from them. Felice (New York delegation) is going to try to meet with the US ambassador to Egypt on Sunday, and Rosa (from our team) will accompany her. The next few days will be super busy! So yesterday there were obstacles but it is so amazing and the international movement is seriously coming together so strong! Over the next week there will be almost 200 internationals coming to Rafah, calling for an end to the siege! Already there are Egyptian activists camping at the border, and a group of British doctors planning to set up a Cardiac surgery unit in a hospital in Gaza City, was denied entry into Gaza and has now been on hunger strike in Al Arish for four days. Iman in Gaza just sent us the schedule for us in Gaza should we gain entry, and it is amazing and I hope so much that we get through the border but I also know that if we don't we still have an amazing opportunity to call attention to the need to end the siege and end the occupation. My phone number has been given to a new york times reporter and we are sending press releases wherever we can think to send them, because there really is something going on here. Obama's visit could not come at a better time and it will not look good if the government is cracking down harder on Gaza just when Obama is coming to Cairo. In other news, I had a second round interview with Global Exchange NGO for a job that would pay me 2000 dollars to work part-time up until December, doing similar work as I'm doing now- organizing delegations, working for social justice, plus a little paper pushing. I also spoke with Medea Benjamin and Ann Wright in DC on the phone last night- they have an 80 person delegation leaving the 28th, and were very encouraging to us. So we are going forward and working all the contacts we can and as Medea and Ann say, we will be brave and bold. If anyone wants a copy of our press releases to send to any news outlet you can think of, please let me know!

AAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!

Well I'm half way through finals week and so much is ending but so much is just beginning as well. And everything is busy! I've had some amazing teachers this semester and I've become a lot more confident in my Arabic. For our media final we are just reading a couple newspaper articles and listening to the evening news and I understand most of it, which is awesome. I'm going to miss my teachers and having so few people in my class! As finals are finishing, people from around the world are flying into Cairo to be a part of the international movement to end the siege. If you look at the list there really are groups from so many different countries and places, and it makes me so happy to see the group I founded on that list. We're meeting with the doctors' syndicate on Wednesday to finalize the details regarding medical equipment. Thank you so much for all the donations! My friends and I have raised over one thousand dollars already, which will we be using to buy medical equipment and supplies from the syndicate at reduced cost. We're actually going to be transporting even more medical equipment- stuff that is desperately needed in Gaza that the syndicate is desperate to get across. I saw the list of things today.. all these fancy machines for making Xrays and laproscopic examinations and chemical analysis and other ones I didn't really know what they were for, but we're going to be transporting each specific machine to specific hospitals in Gaza that have requested them. So cool! I'm not sure yet if they'll let the truck over the border, in which case we'll have to get all the stuff into a Palestinian truck but I'm sure we'll figure it out. Nobody better drop anything though! And we're not even sure that we'll get over the border at all, but I really hope so. We have an invitation from United Nations and the NGO's that we're working with in Gaza and we're submitting all of our names to the Egyptian embassy in DC and Ottowa. Ann, one of the CodePink women in DC, checked in with the Egyptian government as to whether they'll open the border or not and their answer was god willing, inshallah!!! I think that's so funny because Egyptians really do say that for everything! I'm so excited for finals to finish and then I'll be spending the long weekend in Cairo buying food for everybody (we have 40 students coming!) and meeting with the CodePink ladies who are coming in and putting together all the final details, like thinking of activities to do if we do end up camping at the border. Any ideas? In addition to the medical equipment, we're going to bring in about 50 soccer balls and we talked with Adidas and they're giving us a deal on them. And I emailed John Ging's assistant and it is now on is schedule to meet with us in Gaza on the 29th!!! We'll also be working with the Sharek Youth Forum and Qattan Center for the Child and meeting with university students. And Iman (my host sister from Gaza) and her friend Hebaa just founded an organization called Solidarity Bridge and we're sort of their pilot project which I think is really cool. The goal of solidarity bridge is to provide opportunities for youth to break through political boundaries by encouraging cultural exchange. This is so important in Gaza especially since the opportunities for interaction with anywhere else are so limited. So all and all I'm just excited and nervous and amazed that this is all coming together and it's crazy how we don't really know what's going to happen but as it goes here in Egypt.. inshallah...

Thank you!

Thank you everyone for your donations. I've raised 60 dollars so far.

More importantly, Happy Mothers Day.
Grandma Glenesk, your optimism and warmth forever bring light into my life.
Grandma Anderson, there are no words to express how much I have learned from you, how much I love you, and how much I miss you. You are always with me.
Mom, I am forever grateful for your enduring support for me and all the crazy things that I do. I could not ask for more.

I cannot wait to see you all this summer. I'll be landing in California exactly a month from today!

Some Foucault for the Evening

"There are more ideas on earth than intellectuals imagine. And these ideas are more active, stronger, more resistant, more passionate than "politicians" think. We have to be there at the birth of ideas, the bursting outward of their force: not in books expressing them, but in events manifesting this force, in struggles carried on around ideas, for or against them. Ideas do not rule the world. But it is because the world has ideas (and because it constantly produces them) that it is not passively ruled by those who are its leaders or those who would like to teach it, once and for all, what it must think."

Fundraising for Medical Supplies

To my readers,

When my friends and I returned from Gaza in March, we began thinking of what we could to continue working for social justice and positive change. After brainstorming, we Ali Glenesk (UC Berkeley), Rosa Navarro (American University in Cairo), Sarah Marois (University of Tel Aviv), Maryam Khan (UC Davis), and Miriam Zouzounis (UC Santa Barbara), decided to found the Students in Solidarity with Gaza Group, and organize a delegation to Gaza. We will be part of a bigger movement taking place this summer, in which delegations from around the world will be coming to Rafah, as a way to bring international attention to Gaza and the need to lift the siege. We are organizing everything in cooperation with our friends Iman Almaquosi and Heba Jumaa in Gaza, who are working just as hard, if not harder, than us to put this together.

The Students in Solidarity with Gaza delegation is now set to travel May 25-May 31 with just over 30 student participants from around the world. We aim to show our support for the people of Gaza by: meeting and building community with other students, working with grassroots organizations, delivering aid, and representing the face of the international community that does want to help and actively participate in lifting the siege. We are committed to enhancing our own perspectives about the reality of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and to bringing real, human stories back to our communities.

One crucial part of these objectives is delivering aid. We are working in cooperation with the Egyptian Doctors Syndicate to deliver Medical Aid. Not only will the syndicate provide us the medical supplies at reduced cost, they also are well connected within Palestine so they know what types of supplies are needed and where they should go in Gaza. People in Gaza have also reiterated to us that medical supplies are still very much needed, and we have a unique opportunity to deliver them personally.

This is where you come in. For the next two weeks I will be undertaking an intensive fundraising campaign with the goal of raising funds to buy medical supplies. Please consider making a donation, using the sidebar button on my blog. If you have any questions or would like a copy of this letter, please don’t hesitate to contact me. Spread the word!

Thanks,
Ali

Only a few more weekends left!

Having recovered some of my voice today, I decided to take advantage of the day. I stopped by Miriam and Maryams downtown and we discussed our need to get in shape quickly before going home! They had some girls over to clean their house, and I sort of wished they would come to my house, but then I always feel weird when other people are cleaning my house and I'm not, so I guess my house is going to stay dirty. At least until I take the initiative to clean it myself that is. After I left Miriam and Maryam's I took a taxi to Al Hussein, the gate of Khan El Khalili Market. Khan El Khalili is touristy, yet it's still one of the oldest markets in the city and needless to say still economically important. The parts closest to the entrance cater shamelessly to Western perceptions of the East and what shopkeepers think and know tourists want to see... Keffiyehs and cheaply made belly dancing hip scarves and hookahs and those circular leather seat cushions you might see in a Moroccan restaurant.. things like that. I went a bit deeper into the market today and discovered a few niches around corners i handed ventured to turn on before. I bought two simple and cheap scarves and then started walking away from khan towards the park and happened upon a shop with lots of cool bags. There was another lady in there too and the shopkeeper was really nice. After we had been talking about the different bags for about ten minutes he asked me if I was from Palestine (I was wearing my keffiyeh) or maybe from Tunisia. He was surprised when I said California and complimented my Arabic!! Yay!! So I ended up buying a bag there for Bonnie (I hope you like it!!!). My next mission is to find a belly dancing outfit for my friend Maresa! I couldn't really find the park so I started walking back towards downtown. It was a long walk but I was just taking in all the sights... men yelling hella fast, standing on their carts trying to sell cheap nylon tshirts probably from china... white galabeya clad men with huge juice jugs strapped to their bellies, peddling iced cold tamr el-hind juice... talk of women drifting from behind niqabs, people stuffing their new packages into taxis and buses... it's impossible to walk fast because the foot traffic is always stopping for something or other.. perhaps a cart trying to pass the people but held up by the taxi in front of it, a little child dropping their plastic bag of to-go juice... something or other. When I got to downtown I got in a taxi back to Zamalek and called it a successful outing. Tonight I might go back to the park with Miriam and Maryam or hang out with my roommates. I'm ready to go home, but Egypt is definitely an awesome place.

Thanks!

Thank you to everyone who voted on Energize your community. Magnolia Project won the 10,000 dollars!! In other news I lost my voice yesterday and so last night I slept for 12 hours and I got it back!! Yay!!! I've also recently started to meet up with a girl named Belet from Iraq. A friend of mine who also works with refugees contacted me to see if I wanted to meet her. It's cool because she's my same age, and she doesn't know any english, so I get to practice Arabic a lot, and she gets to learn English from me. I just wish I would have met her before my last month in Cairo!