SEKEM - part 1: Introduction

[ Velvet Underground’s “Sunday morning” is setting the mood in the background; and the steam of a sweet-boiled Arabic coffee is rising from the cup beside me. OK – let’s begin.]

It’s Friday morning – the Islamic equivalent to Sunday morning. In about 45 minutes, Friday noon prayers will start and all the loudspeakers of the surrounding mosques are going to be rattling out the chanted prayers. When they begin, all other activity will come to a standstill – the paths between the fields will be empty, there will be no noise of cars or trucks in the distance and even the birds seem to pause in their song and listen for a while. – As the voices of the imams rival each other in volume and pace, all other sounds will be subdued, wrapped in a pious bliss of rhythmical recitation. At that time I’ll be lying on my roof, under the naked sun, smoking a Friday cigarette – with an extra portion of cloves – for good health. Smoking is forbidden on ‘the farm’, but after a while you realise that everybody has their little pack of L&Ms or Viceroys hidden away in the closet somewhere, or in the pocket of a ragged coat. But nobody smokes, of course – which adds to the charm.

So where am I?
Well, in Egypt. But other than that it’s quite hard to describe in just a few words, so I’m not going to bother making it short. Yet, I don’t want to begin the traditional way either… “It started in 1977, when Dr. Abouleish returned from Austria and bought a piece of desert land north-east of Cairo, to start realising his vision of SEKEM – a community of people cultivating the land on a bio-dynamic basis and transforming knowledge into value – on the agricultural, scientific, social and cultural level…. etc.”, but rather begin with where I am now and here – because that is really what I’ve been doing since I got here and why nobody has heard hardly anything from me since: I’ve completely lived in the present, and lost touch with all else. No regrets for the past, no fear of the future – the ‘here and now’ has taken over my conscious and guided me through the days.
The mild breeze coming through my window's mosquito-net is gently rocking the palm leaves just an arm’s reach away from the dust-covered window pane, framed in sandy and sun-bleached yellow. The palm’s leaves, sharp as a razor and neatly folded along the middle to create an acutely angled blade, shoot out and upwards from the end of a branch like the sun’s rays (or a little like the yellow sign of that famous petrol company), until they fall – to either side of the central leafs that still head sky-wards – and point down to the dusty ground. In the sharp sun of midday their shadow is crisp and straight below. Not like the soft and gloomy shadow the moon lends them in the clear Egyptian nights. Underneath the palms that frame the view from my window, is a circle of simple wooden benches and tree stumps, next to a little playground of low scaffolding, ladders and a seasaw. This is where the disabled children play and work – producing simple toy cars from tree bark, or helping the Camomile children (a group of around one hundred 10-16 year-olds that dropped out of school at some stage, who get food, clothing and elementary education in return for doing part-time work on the farm against a basic wage) weave scarves and carpets in the workshop underneath my room. The building lies at the back of a large, open semi-circular complex called the ‘Markez’, or ‘vocational training centre’, where youngsters receive teaching and practical training in 7 job-orientations – carpentry, mechanics, electrics, plumbing, agriculture, textile and trade. Every morning I walk along the inner arch of the building, right after the morning circle, at the time when all the trainees are standing around in groups, getting ready to go inside for classes. Sometimes the bravest from a group of boys will say “good moning” with a bold voice; the teenage girls usually just throw shy glances in my direction and giggle as I rush past in my suit – late as always.
Above the ironers’ room (in Egypt ironing is a strictly and professionally male occupation!!), on the far end of the arch, is a balcony belonging to a flat where my neighbour – the ‘Lady in White’ – lives with her two pale sons. Wearing only white clothing is one of the lesser of her many odd habits and obsessions – the most pitiful of which is probably her strict aversion to taking antibiotics or almost any kind of medication, which has caused a simple infectious wound on her left arm to turn into a hideous hole of flesh measuring 5cm across. Poor Lady in White; and poor Danielle-Dominique and Patrice-Pascal –
“Your children are not your children” I always want to read out loud to her,

“they are the sons and daughters of life’s longing for itself.
They come through you, but not from you
and though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love, but not your thoughts,
for they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies, but not their souls,
for their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.”

Straight across from her balcony (where she takes to sunbathing on the holy Friday of all days), like the focal point of the Markez’s arch, lies the mosque – with its blank, white walls and the complete lack of the usual decorations maybe the simplest and most spartanic mosque I have ever seen – and maybe more a house of God or just of meditation, than that of any specific denomination. To its left lies the school, where a good 200 children from surrounding villages enjoy a most remarkable kind of schooling, especially if compared with that of the rest of the country – their corridors, rooms, tables and chairs are clean, their windows unbroken, they sit and listen in class, they don’t get beaten, they do a lot of handcrafts like clay-modelling, painting and making paper and last but not lease – their teachers were trained in pedagogic methods. And not any kind of pedagogy, but an Egyptian adaptation of the early 20th century visionary Rudolf Steiner’s ideas on education – although the teachers themselves most likely have never even heard his name (this needs some explanation, but maybe not at this point in time). Between the school, the mosque and the Markez’s arch, there is a green open space planted with trees, under which the schoolchildren sit, talk and play in their break. And behind the school, facing the fields planted with wheat and canella flowers, sits the cute little kindergarten, which again looks after at least a hundred children – mostly younger brothers and sisters of those who go to the school or who are trained in the Markez. They wear little dresses, coloured according to their age groups, just as in the school’s lower years.

This complex of buildings houses and represents most of SEKEM’s social institutions – what SEKEM is maybe most famous for outside Egypt – as the example of a socially responsible and sustainable initiative for the 21st century. And next time [I feel like a story-teller, but then SEKEM does have an amazing story and I do feel like telling it… so watch out for parts 2 and 3] – we’ll walk down the stairs from the kindergarten, through the fields, with the wheat on our left and the orange canella flowers to our right, across to the building complex that houses all the companies.

Now I’ll have to jump into my ‘uncle’ Rafi’s Range Rover (it turned out that his mother’s maiden name is the same as my surname and that about 4 generations back, we have a common grandfather) and drive with 5 others into Cairo, where we’ll be practicing with the Cairo Celebration Choir for a big concert in Cairo’s Opera in April.