Cairo landslide - how to make a donation - how can I help?

STOP PRESS (September 9th pm) - NO MORE FOOD REQUIRED AT THE MOMENT AS NO REFRIGERATION AVAILABLE - BIGGEST NEED IS FOR CLOTHES AND BLANKETS

I have been sent an email with the details of how you can help with money, stuff or personal help.

I have extracted it here:

"Dear friends,

I am touched by everyone's concern and offers to help survivors and families affected by the Manshiet Nasser rockslide.

The injured are in one of three hospitals: Sayed Galal, El Zaraa or El Hussein. There are about 21 people distributed over the three hospitals.

Other survivors have been offered tents in a nearby youth center. The capacity is for about 300 people, but as of early this afternoon only 72 people were actually sheltered there. For now we are preparing for 200 meals a day.

People from nearby buildings have been relocated to El Fustat.

The majority of survivors and their families remain on the street near the rockslide area in hope that they will hear any news of their loved ones. It is very difficult to estimate how many they are. The target is to distribute 1000 meals daily and 1000 bottles of water there daily to affected residents and relief workers.

How you can help:

1. El Bedaya is accepting in-kind donations at its premises in Ezbit Bekhit behind the Sheikh Kassem Mosque which is on the main road along the railway. We are at the Community Center (Markaz El Khadamat), 1 Kama'en St, last floor. You can call any of these numbers for assistance in delivery or pickup of donations

Sanaa 012 216 0332
Ashraf 011 2727789
Shefa 012 8684425
Mohamed 012 8401476

Needs include:

bottled water (0.5 liter and 1.5 liter),
200ml and 500ml containers/boxes of milk,
200ml containers of juice
clothing for children and adults (galabeyas for men and women)
floor mats (plastic or straw) 200 pcs needed
dry or canned food

El Bedaya has also started a relief fund for immediate needs, but also to refurbish new homes for those families who have lost absolutely everything they own. The account number is:
Bank Misr, Mouski Branch, El Bedaya Association for Education, account no: 103/1/28910.


2. ADEW (the Association for Development and Enhancement of Women) headed by Dr. Iman Bibars are accepting inkind and cash donations at their offices at 8/10 El Mathaf St., 5th floor, apt 12, El Manial

You can call Magda, Sanaa or Nermine on 016 551 8588 or Magda on 010 154 0486

The needs list for inkind contributions is the same as El Bedaya's (above)


3. Sama for Development (23 Sakr Koreish St., Masakin Sheraton across from Oriental Weavers; call Khaled 010 111 3461) are delivering prepared meals including beverages. You can deliver unprepared or prepared food. They also need manpower to help package and deliver food(i.e. use your own car or pay for a pickup) to the site. Also check out their group on facebook : Ramadan Mo خtalef

4. Resala Nour Ala Nour in Shabramant are also accepting food donations. You can call 012 860 2602

5. The Food Bank is also delivering prepared meals but they are covered for the next 10 days. They are accepting donations in all major banks account number 888777. You can also call 16060. In the short-term they will be delivering food to relocated families who have lost their homes and belongings.

I have to say, everyone, that the ineptness of the 'system' in the rescue effort is shameful and has caused a lot of anger in the community; but the tireless efforts of local youth and NGO members who have gathered to help gives me hope for this country yet. They are really quite impressive.

Thank you all,"

Also, if you live in Heliopolis, please feel free to use Buzzy Bee preschool as a drop off location.

---------------------------------------------
Other search phrases for search engines:

Cairo landslide how can I help
Cairo rockslide how can I help
Cairo disaster donations
Cairo disaster volunteers
Cairo landslide volunteers
Cairo landslip help
Cairo aid donations food volunteers
Cairo tragedy
Egypt tragedy
Egypt disaster
Egypt landslide
Egypt rock slide
Mokatam disaster

Cairo landslide - Mokatam

How can I help?

A few people have arrived on my blog from google searching for information about the landslide, so I have decided to make a post adding a few links to reports, photos etc which are now up on the web.

This tragedy occurred on Saturday 6th Sept and is in one of the very poor areas of Cairo - mainly Coptic area - where the Zebaleen people who manage much of Cairo's rubbish and are world famous for recycling live. This is also the area you have to pass through to reach St Simon Tanner which I blogged about earlier this year. The area is also known as El Doweiqa or Manshiet Nasser or Garbage City.

The government have taken a lot of criticism for not helping more especially in removing the blocks. But as Dave Petley - Geography Professor points out in his blog, it is likely that some of these blocks weigh many times more than 2300 tonnes and blasting maybe the only means of removing them (and obviously there will be no survivors - if any one is still alive down there - resulting from that).

Here is a map indicating the approx location of the tragedy within Cairo. The map is my walking route from Citadel (marker on the left) to St Simon (marker on the right) but I have added the top marker in the urban sprawl to give an indication of the location of the tragedy (it is by no means precise but it occurred in this part of Cairo).


View Larger Map

Here are various links:

Egyptian Red Crescent bulletin on the tragedy (pdf file)

photos on Flickr showing the rock slide

Egyptian government portal with story about assistance

One of the many news reports on the tragedy

link to You Tube videos of it

Google search query for news reports about it

How you can help with money and stuff: How can I help?

Here is how you can make a donation to the Red Crescent - I guess you may be able to ask them to earmark your funds for this purpose:

Make a donation to the International Red Cross Red Crescent

Other links:

Egyptian Red Crescent contact details (their website is not working for English at present)

More about the Zabbaleen people

Visit to Citadel and St Simon the Tanner etc - 24th January 2008

Edited 9/10/2008 - if you are looking for info about the Mokkatam landslide then this is my blog about it: 6th September Mokkatam landslide info

Edited 11/2/2008 to include map of walking route from Citadel to St Simon

On 24th January I visited the Citadel, St Simon the Tanner Church (part of The Cave Churches), Zebuleen town, Museum of Modern Art with a friend from the olden days of Fortis Green - who I hadn't seen for 18 years and who fetched up in Egypt this week! This is our day:

I’ll include the taxi fares and entrances etc we did so people can have an idea of what is/isn’t reasonable to pay.

Met my friend and her friend near the Egyptian Museum – wondering if I would recognize her after 18 YEARS!! (she looks exactly the same LOL) and we took a taxi up to the Citadel. The power of my taxi-fare negotiating skills was such that it cost the 3 of us (2 dressed exactly like regular tourists) 15LE. Could probably have argued for 10LE but we were keen to get going and between 3 of us, that was ok.



More photos I took around the Citadel:
Citadel

It was 40LE each to get in. We did the usual grockle stuff (but without going into some of the museum parts which would have required extra entrance fees), only succumbing to 1 x 5LE icecream each.

Word to the wise – wear black or meaningless socks... The inside of the Mohammed Aly mosque is gorgeous – though my friend’s guide book said it was gaudy and dreadful :) We didn’t pay a guide at all – someone tried to attach himself to us and when I said ‘bekam’ he said ‘you can guess’. I said ‘hamsa’ – he said ‘you mean hamseen – hamsa sifra’ I said ‘er no I don’t’.

We allowed the young man who was dishing out menus for the Citadel Cafe to get a bit pally with us (I will marry all 3 – I am very strong – you don’t know what I mean – I said I’m from 6 October, I know exactly what you mean!) and he gave us some useful free info on the Guest Palace – where Mohammed Aly used to invite guests and then kill them – or something like that anyway! We went in the Guest Palace and there was obviously some really important dude in there visiting because there were lots of men in black types around.

Its quite fun actually for the millions of ‘where you froms’ to answer ‘sitta Aktoober’. They go away quite quickly then – might be worth saying it even if you’re not!

We saw some school girls eating koshary and asked them where they got it, and they said they got it from a cafe outside somewhere and tried to explain but I got a bit confused with the al atools, shemels etc.

Anyway, then we saw the very strong (!) young man again and he showed us how to get out of the Citadel and gave us the directions to the koshary place again.

We walked down from the Citadel to the right and saw a bus station and fruit market. I accosted a very old man on a crutch and said ‘aiza amil koshary’ so he did eating gestures and said koshary back, and then proceeded to lead the three of us to the koshary shop! It was a traditional Egyptian eating house. One of us didn’t eat due to not feeling too well, but the other 2 of us had a big koshari, a small koshari and 2 cans of Seven Up for 9LE between us.

I then got a taxi for the friend who wasn’t feeling well as she really didn’t want to come to garbage town and said she’d rather go to the Egyptian Museum. 10LE from Citadel to Egyptian Museum. My other friend and I then tried to get a taxi to the St Simon place. Now I had printed pictures off the internet, said it was near the Zebaleen place, and the guy swore he knew where it was.... never believe a taxi driver :( and we agreed 15LE because we didn’t know where it was either – we ended up paying 20LE for the magical mystery tour and were gutted to discover that we could have walked it from the Citadel if we had known where we were going!!!!

Erm.... at the top of Moqattam Hills – when he tried to drop us outside a random church, I decided that actually, he didn’t know where he was so I rang another friend's Egyptian husband who talked to him. He didn’t know where it was either but he was able to explain in arabic where we were trying to go.

Here it is in Arabic so you can show a taxi driver:

Eventually he found the entrance to the Zebaleen town, and drove us through some of the grungiest streets imaginable up to the entrance to the monastery and church.

There’s no entrance fee, but I bought a small guide book for 10LE, and we paid 2LE in backsheesh to get a look into the part behind the wooden screens.



More photos I took around St Simon the Tanner:
St Simon the Tanner



Well, it was fabulous. The church is cut out into the rocks in honour of a miracle where St Simon (Samaan) moved the Moqatam Mountain (haven’t read up on it yet so not sure what was involved exactly!) and was built in the 1970s (haven’t read my guide book yet!). There’s carvings in the rocks and paintings etc. and its an amphitheatre. Also there are some clean toilets (1LE backsheesh each) and a cafe area. We only saw 4 other tourists while we were there including 2 Canadians of obvious Egyptian extraction, plus a few small groups of Egyptian young adults.

After having a good look round (but there was more we could have seen if we weren't tired out) we decided to go back to the Citadel as we wanted to see some old city walls where you can climb up inside etc which I found by accident over a year ago near the Citadel and for the life of me can find no reference in any guide books.

We walked back through Zabaleen town (if you do this – wear ‘stout boots’ – this is no place for ship-ships (flip flops) or sandals.). Loads of people said hello to us, all the women seem to be called Marie, Kristina or Katherina. Some of the kids said ‘hello – money’ and we said ‘no’. I guess if you do this trip then take sweets or pens or something so you can give them out. But everyone was very friendly. We didn’t notice the smell after a while.

Its a shame we couldn’t get to see any of the recycling projects they have there, I have emailed the APE place but no answer yet. I will continue trying to find out about any official visits they might do.

We got back to the Citadel and were deciding what to do – both somewhat weary – and a taxi driver persuaded us that he knew where the old city walls were – and I specified the climbing up and he said ‘yes yes’ but he obviously didn’t know (again!) – but here’s the interesting bit. The taxis wait at the bottom of the Citadel for tourists coming from the Citadel and are supposed to take it in turns (a queue! in Egypt! of taxi drivers!!!!) LOL. But, we hadn’t come from the Citadel so we had seen the chap at the back first. Anyway, my little bit of Arabic came in very handy again. He agreed he would take us for 10LE, then a dust up started between the drivers, and one of them was saying to me ‘where you go where you go’ I told him and he said 40LE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! My driver started going ‘yetekallim arabi yetekallim arabi – ashra gine’ (she speaks arabic, she speaks arabic, 10LE) anyway, we stuck with him. Now, he drove us to the city walls but not the bit I had intended. Then he drove us over to Old Cairo and he said ‘don’t pay me now, I will wait for you FREE for 1 hour!!!!!!!!!!’. Ok we said. But we found that all the Old Cairo places had just closed for the day and we spotted a Metro station (Mar Girgiz) so we went back, paid the driver and said we thought we would be a long time not that we’d found a metro station. Anyway, if anyone wants his number, let me know!!

Then we took the Metro back to Sadat, walked down to the Opera House and had a mooch round. Then went to the Museum of Modern Art which is there – 10LE each to get in (by the way there's a fabulous picture in there called 'Port Said Battle' - see on link below - the colours of the fires make it so real) and finished up with cups of tea, juice and cakes and a good old natter to catch up on 18 years. We walked back over the river to Sadat and then made our separate ways home.

Total cost for 2 of us (have removed the costs of the girl who left half way through) including all entrance fees, guide book, backsheesh etc etc was 200LE – of which 100LE was Citadel and Museum of Modern Art, 40LE was icecream, koshari, Seven Up, tea, lemon juice, 10LE guide book, 6LE backsheesh (toilets/church etc) and the rest was taxi fares. Not bad we thought. If we had known where the Zebulan place was and had been prepared to walk up there, we could have saved another 20LE and if we had taken sandwiches and flasks we could have saved even more :D :D

My friend is not British (though she has lived there a long time) and is from a country much poorer than Egypt, and had some interesting perspectives of some aspects of Egypt which I will see if I can get her to write up when she returns home.


More info about:

Citadel

St Simon the Tanner

NEW (Sept 2009): The cave churches at Mokattam - videos, photos, ministry

Zabbaleen

Museum of Modern Art