Nile FM is Egypt’s premier English language station (www.nilefmonline.com). On Sunday evening there was a drive-time show with a DJ asking the following question: “If you could import anything from the West, what would it be?”

I wasn’t in the car for very long. Despite repeated,and increasing in desperation, requests from the DJ to submit answers of things that could be imported, the responses were: education, education, education, self-respect, education, a good public transport system, cleanliness, a good public health system, education, dignity, plus some that were obviously too political for him to read them out (the station has NO political reporting or comments of any form).

All these issues are fairly obvious once you start thinking. What is really worrying, however, is something I didn’t properly realise until a few weeks ago. I had asked her to clean the fridge. She took out the shelves in the door, cleaned them and put them back. In the top shelf, there are trays for eggs that sit neatly inside the shelf. When she put the shelf back, the egg trays had to go in diagonally because they would not fit. I am pretty convinced that she was not being lazy, she just doesn’t have the reasoning to think that perhaps another shelf that looks the same might actually be a slightly different size and might fit. If I showed her, she would remember, she is not stupid, the problem is that she has never been taught how to think.

The simple exercises we did in our first years at junior school, or even before, with building blocks as a toddler, have an impact that is so basic for us, we don’t even notice.

I have been asked to decide if her daughter’s various suitors so far are good men for her daughter to marry. One of them was a man who sells fruit from a donkey cart, smokes a lot of weed and could give her a lot of gold and a fair sized apartment as a dowry. This man does the same job as her son, who does not smoke, comes from the same background and could never afford any of that. It hadn’t crossed her mind that perhaps he does more than just smoke the drugs.

If this inability to think things out through lack of education is applied to a very conservative 25% of the population, it has rather worrying implications. If it is further applied to discussions about the main topics here, politics and religion, well, need I say more?

Although the fridge and the suitor incidents may seem like stupidity, they aren’t. This woman is not an idiot, by any stretch of the imagination. It’s purely lack of education in its widest sense.

What provoked this thought was that I asked her on Wednesday if she would like to learn to iron. Her face beamed.

“Oh! Yes, I would! Step by step. You know? I’m old, I will be 45 next month, but my brain is still young and I want to learn new things.”

I wanted to cry.

Last time I was in the UK was just before Red Nose Day. Pictures of dirty, hungry children from dusty poverty-stricken areas of the world were abundant on TV. It seemed a bit strange to me, rather like it would to people in the UK to have montages of chavs looking up to the camera from a street corner.

It is so normal to see hungry, extremely disadvantaged people here that it seems strange to have to have TV shows about them in the UK to remind us of their existence.

Illiteracy is a big problem in the third and developing worlds. As a developing country, Egypt has its fair share of illiteracy problems. It is incredibly difficult for any reader of this blog to imagine what illiteracy means. Firstly and most obviously because you are reading the blog and secondly because you are able to have access to a computer, probably one you bought with money from a job in which you have to read and write.

That is just the beginning of it however. I have a cleaner (an issue for later, but basically not having one when you can afford to is seen as not giving a job, and therefore money, to someone who desperately needs it), Um Osama, who is a hardworking and lovely lady. She has worked with me for nearly four years now. She told me from the very beginning that she is illiterate.

So, turning on the washing machine was a problem for Um Osama for a little while, remembering which squiggle she was supposed to turn the dial to. Phone numbers she has to memorise although she has little book in which she gets people to write their number down and someone else can read it out to her if she forgets. Her daughter’s birth certificate had the wrong name on it, and Um Osama didn’t know until she went to enroll her daughter at school and was told that said daughter did not exist and therefore could not go to school (she eventually went for a few years later).

Pink and purple pastel caps glide. Breathing three, five, seven. White rhythmic splashes appear on the surface. Long lean tanned bodies cut through the water. Breaststroke, crawl, butterfly, backstroke. Pacing up and down. Drills and training. Bodies working hard.

Mothers sitting on the side of the pool. Eyes darting back and forth. Chatting. Eyes following their children. Back and forth. Pastel heads on dry land. Sometimes all black.

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Girls come to the pool to train just as boys do. How must it be though to have your mother unable to be in the water with you and to know that ultimately, through societal, familial or plain old peer pressure, this sport that you train four times a week at, you will not be able pursue?

Pink and purple pastel caps glide. Breathing three, five, seven. White rhythmic splashes appear on the surface. Long lean tanned bodies cut through the water. Breaststroke, crawl, butterfly, backstroke. Pacing up and down. Drills and training. Bodies working hard.

Mothers sitting on the side of the pool. Eyes darting back and forth. Chatting. Eyes following their children. Back and forth. Pastel heads on dry land. Sometimes all black.

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Girls come to the pool to train just as boys do. How must it be though to have your mother unable to be in the water with you and to know that ultimately, through societal, familial or plain old peer pressure, this sport that you train four times a week at, you will not be able pursue?

Bright, sparkling eyes peer out from underneath matted gazelle lashes. Dusty hair swept back, gathered with a rubber band. Stained pink dress, worn out at the seams makes her looks pretty when she smiles, white teeth glistening. Plump feet, dirty nails, toes dancing in the dirt.

More dancing toes skip across the dusty road, pretty worn out dresses billowing as they join their friend. Six glistening smiles contrasted against six dirty faces. Their bodies jostling to be in the picture.

Fitted white linen top gleaming in the mid afternoon sun, crouching over the dust behind the jostling girls. Blonde hair protected under a wide-brimmed hat. Seven glistening smiles. The moment is immortalized.

Smoke swirling around his head, out of his mouth. Sweet smelling. Life etched into his sunken cheeks. Eyes lethargically observing. Next to him a game of backgammon. Sweet smoke swirls over the board. Paint peels behind. Scars of time etched into the wall. A photograph at an art gallery: the moment is immortalized.

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Night time. Glistening smiles asleep with other dusty bodies on the small bed. A brother arrives back with the donkey. The cart crammed with the city’s dregs. The brother as filthy as the cart. This is the summer, but these children are not on holiday. They are not at school to be on holiday from. They work in the family business, the business of their neighbourhood: sorting rubbish. Her bright, sparkling eyes of innocence will soon disappear. Her life will not.

On his way home from the café after a day of boredom he will eat what his wife has prepared from the meager allowance she has for food. Maybe he will lash out at her when she mentions for the third day in a row that the children need new shoes. Not out of hatred, but frustration at not being able to find work to support the people he loves the most. He does not sit smoking out of laziness. There are no jobs.

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At a dinner party in a pristine downtown apartment in another land, a guest asks about the picture on the wall with some beautiful dusty girls. The host remembers the moment. Children excited about having their picture taken, wanting her to be in it with them and really yes, so beautiful. And despite the stench of their neighbourhood, and the rats running around, they are really very happy. Imagine.

Traveling the world stared at by many; the beauty of the moment is admired by far away faces. Knarled wood-like features complement the paint peeling off the wall. Superb. Mysterious swirling smoke from the magical Middle Eastern hubbly bubbly. Dramatic. Life is so different there.

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Seeing how other people live is fantastic. In perspective. Would the host and photographer of the magical Middle East visit a housing estate, or equivalent, in own country and look for the beauty? Poverty in their own country and culture is usually something looked down on and steered clear of. There is nothing glamorous or mysterious about a picture with a dirty child or depressed man in our own city.

What does it say about us when we feel good about taking these pictures from other places? When we listen to the voices of the poor everywhere but in our own country?

Bright, sparkling eyes peer out from underneath matted gazelle lashes. Dusty hair swept back, gathered with a rubber band. Stained pink dress, worn out at the seams makes her looks pretty when she smiles, white teeth glistening. Plump feet, dirty nails, toes dancing in the dirt.

More dancing toes skip across the dusty road, pretty worn out dresses billowing as they join their friend. Six glistening smiles contrasted against six dirty faces. Their bodies jostling to be in the picture.

Fitted white linen top gleaming in the mid afternoon sun, crouching over the dust behind the jostling girls. Blonde hair protected under a wide-brimmed hat. Seven glistening smiles. The moment is immortalized.

Smoke swirling around his head, out of his mouth. Sweet smelling. Life etched into his sunken cheeks. Eyes lethargically observing. Next to him a game of backgammon. Sweet smoke swirls over the board. Paint peels behind. Scars of time etched into the wall. A photograph at an art gallery: the moment is immortalized.

---

Night time. Glistening smiles asleep with other dusty bodies on the small bed. A brother arrives back with the donkey. The cart crammed with the city’s dregs. The brother as filthy as the cart. This is the summer, but these children are not on holiday. They are not at school to be on holiday from. They work in the family business, the business of their neighbourhood: sorting rubbish. Her bright, sparkling eyes of innocence will soon disappear. Her life will not.

On his way home from the café after a day of boredom he will eat what his wife has prepared from the meager allowance she has for food. Maybe he will lash out at her when she mentions for the third day in a row that the children need new shoes. Not out of hatred, but frustration at not being able to find work to support the people he loves the most. He does not sit smoking out of laziness. There are no jobs.

---

At a dinner party in a pristine downtown apartment in another land, a guest asks about the picture on the wall with some beautiful dusty girls. The host remembers the moment. Children excited about having their picture taken, wanting her to be in it with them and really yes, so beautiful. And despite the stench of their neighbourhood, and the rats running around, they are really very happy. Imagine.

Traveling the world stared at by many; the beauty of the moment is admired by far away faces. Knarled wood-like features complement the paint peeling off the wall. Superb. Mysterious swirling smoke from the magical Middle Eastern hubbly bubbly. Dramatic. Life is so different there.

---

Seeing how other people live is fantastic. In perspective. Would the host and photographer of the magical Middle East visit a housing estate, or equivalent, in own country and look for the beauty? Poverty in their own country and culture is usually something looked down on and steered clear of. There is nothing glamorous or mysterious about a picture with a dirty child or depressed man in our own city.

What does it say about us when we feel good about taking these pictures from other places? When we listen to the voices of the poor everywhere but in our own country?