Evacuation Day

Things have quickly escalated since I last wrote. Two nights of loud gunshots and civil unrest. The military came into our neighborhood yesterday even as our neighbors were protecting the streets with large sticks and machetes. Thankfully they kept looters from stealing anything; however, just a few blocks away in the guys’ neighborhood, the military had to set off fire grenades and the boy students were locked in their apartments scared as the building security locked down their building using mattresses and Molotov cocktails. At our apartment we could only sit and wait as we heard pops of gunfire in the distance. We went to sleep more at ease than the night before with our program director staying the night with us. Today we were woken up—evacuation day. It was a surprise because it happened so suddenly; however, at the same time we knew that it was a possibility. We were told to start packing, we would be evacuated shortly. There was no time to worry about anything except fitting all of our things into the suitcases we stuffed in order to get into Egypt. We packed hastily and waited for the boys to hurry. If someone were to watch our group together waiting to evacuate, they would have laughed as we posed for photos on our “magic carpet” and rapped in the lobby of our building. Stress levels escalated when the “evacuation vehicles” arrived. Well, I should really say it was one vehicle, not the plural. One microbus, as in a van, for how many people? For 14 people—didn’t happen. However, they did manage to stack 14 suitcases on the roof of the van and after negotiations and Egyptians chatting back and forth for about one hour. We rolled through the city, roadblock by roadblock; we finally made it to the main road just to be stopped by military roadblocks. The roads were filled with garbage. We finally made it to the airport. Just when we were about to be done with our crazy ride, I was mistaken for an Egyptian woman and asked to open the bus window. Thankfully our resident director assured the military that I was just an American student. Hopefully that was the last time I will be mistaken for an Egyptian. I am sitting in the airport now. We bought the rest of the food here, galaxy chocolate bars and mars candy bars. Happy evacuation day!