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Cairo, Egypt
Young volunteer experiences Egypt


On a January morning, 18-year-old Kim Precht joins 20 Egyptian preschoolers singing “Jesus lives in our hearts” in Arabic at the top of their lungs.

At that time last year, Precht was finishing up her final year of high school in Edmonton and debating whether to go to university.

Kim Precht working at the day care work assignment

Instead, she applied to a one-year Mennonite Central Committee program called Serving and Learning Together (SALT).

Five months later, Precht found herself exploring the streets and shops of Cairo, where she works in a daycare centre sponsored by an Egyptian Coptic Orthodox church. Through the volunteer assignment, Precht is building cross-cultural and cross-generational friendships.

Most mornings Precht leads a class of three- to five-year-olds in exercises and songs. She teaches them the English alphabet, while conversations with the children and teachers help her to learn Arabic.

After spending the day with boisterous children, Precht rides a crowded subway car, then walks ten minutes to the second-floor flat she shares with several other women. The flat serves as a church-run halfway home for Egyptian women, so Precht is never sure just how many people will be sleeping there each night.

“It makes for a much less organized life than I was used to,” she says with a laugh.

Precht found an unexpected friendship with Isis Hanna and Soddi Gamel, her landlords who live in the flat below. Precht began dropping by for visits with the couple shortly after moving to Cairo in August.

“We are living alone, so we love for Kim to come over,” says Hanna, a retired medical doctor in her mid-70s. She insists that Precht call her and her husband Teta and Gidu, Arabic for grandma and grandpa.

Soddi Gamel, Kim Precht and Isis Hanna

Two or three evenings each week they drink tea together and talk about the couple’s son who lives in Ohio, about Precht’s work at the daycare, and about how Egypt is changing. Although Hanna and Gamel’s first language is Arabic – they have lived in Cairo all their lives – they speak English with her, which both used professionally for many years. During her visits, Precht reads aloud stories by Dickens and Tolstoy, a meaningful gift for Hanna whose sight is failing.

Precht is a member of River West Christian Church in Edmonton.

 – Maria Linder-Hess, MCC

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Last modified April 17, 2002.

© 2002 Mennonite Brethren Herald.
Published by the Canadian Conference of MB Churches.
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