Half past two in the morning. My t-shirt has just dried, but the stain from the last coffee I shared with my friends is still rather apparent. My stomach is on strike, refusing to communicate anything other than severe discontent. Next to my laptop stands a bottle of water. The water surface is shaking from my shivering hands resting on the keyboard.

I am exhausted.

From 6 months in Egypt,
from about a week of frantic stress combined with close to no sleep
and from the usual procedure before flying or leaving anywhere: running around giving goodbyes and packing right up to the last minute, deciding a hundred times over the life and death – or rather the privilege of being in my possession or the unfortunate fate of facing an unforeseeable future – of all the things that have accumulated in my room over the last half a year – curious stones, books, gifts, letters, random object kept for memory’s sake (I’m rather good at that!), trousers, DVDs, un-used condoms, wrapping paper and two tailored suits.

They were an odd six months.
I lived in Egypt, yet I didn’t. Apart from one trip to the pyramids and one to the desert, I saw none of the famous sites here.
I lived an hour from Cairo, yet I only went there about once or twice a month. I love exploring old Arabian cities – of which Cairo is undoubtedly one of the most spectacular (but also filthiest) ones. Yet I only actually got to explore its many tiny, littered lanes and thousands of dukkans and workshops three or four times.

Two things were what I spent the majority of my days and nights with: An exciting, challenging yet ultimately consuming job and a beautiful, spontaneous and somewhat secret love.

So I Iived and worked in Egypt, which is always a better way of getting to know a place, rather than being a traveller or tourist. Yet on the night before Ieft, I decided that after all, I was maybe a traveller still.

I went to pray to our spectacularly simple mosque on the farm, with two Iraqi professors, who had come all the way from Liverpool in England, where they teach and research at John Moores University, to negotiate a cooperation with our University, which we're setting up at the moment. I was responsible for their visit and had planned it all out. They stayed in the guesthouse on the farm and after a day of many visits and detailed technical negotiations, they asked where the mosque was. I said: I'll show you, let's pray together.
We walked there along the tree-lined paths through the fields under the darkening sky. Outside the mosque we quickly performed the ablution washings and went inside. It was a funny feeling to go and pray - something so personal and intimate - with two people that so far had been more like business associates, who we were about to strike a deal with. Yet I realised that in Islam this is common - and part of its beauty - to join in prayer with people you never meet, or only ever in limited surroundings or situations. Yet here in the mosque you share that very sacred moment with them, which makes both of you part of a spiritual unity that you would never have otherwise.
We performed the prayer cycle twice, as I was used to, but then a third time - I almost got up after the second round and was suddenly very self-concious for having outed myself as someone who doesn't know the rules. After the third time, Rafid who had taken the role of the Imam, since there was noone but us three in the mosque, turned around and asked if I was also a musaafir - a traveller, which would mean that I would join them in doing another three cycles, as a combination of evening and after-sunrise prayers. My confusion must have been rather obvious: I had no idea what they were talking about and decided to sit in the back and wait for them to finish. Again I felt awkward and feared they might think me a pretender. As I watched them bow their foreheads down till they touched the ground, with the words "allahu akbar" on their lips, I thought to myself: 'Are you a pretender?'
On the way back they explained to me: God has given those, who travel, a present: because they are busy and tired and on the move, they can combine two of the five daily prayers into one, making it easier for them to perform their tasks in the foreign town, before they return. There is some disagreement among the believers, whether you are still a traveller for 3, 6 or 10 days after you arrive to a place or even for 3 months. Although that night - for fear of doing the wrong thing - I had left it at 3 prayers, I decided that actually, I am always a traveller.

Now I'm flying home to Germany for a day. And then, on Wednesday: further than I have ever flown before: to Tokyo.

Summertime (continued)

I was saying that summer had begun... and that that means I've been here for 4 months. Well, now it's almost 6 months and not far ahead - less than two weeks, in fact - I can already see the end of my time here.

So --- what have I done in the last 5 1/2 months?
Some people seem to think I'm growing vegetables on an organic farm or something like that - well, it's not quite true. SEKEM does grow organic almost everything: vegetables, cotton, all kinds of fruit including grapes (for juice only!), herbs, nuts and of course cows and chickens, too - but the newest idea is my favourite: Snails - ORGANIC snails, for export to France!!!
But apart from all that, it is establishing a university, that I am involved in.

So - back to what I was actually going to ask (more rhetorically, than actually):

What have I actually done here?

I've written a good few hundred eMails to places all around the world, made a few dozen phonecalls and received a good dozen international guests, mostly professors from prospective parter universities, talked to them about cooperation opportunities between their and our University. I gave a bunch of tours of our farm to guests like those, which always impresses everybody (it's an amazing place, if that hasn't become clear yet from my previous entries). I made a few attempts at writing brochures or other publication materials for the university, some more successful than others. Finally, I have just finished writing/assembling a 92-page document about out university, with all the financial, legal and HR details, for a collaborative partnership with Liverpool John Moores University.

Apart from that, I have spent many hours after work worrying and thinking about this university, how the hell it could/will work, why it's so complicated, how I can deal with the hierarchical structres in it or cope with the lack of clarity and transparency in that structure.

Who am I in that structure?

I am a Coordinator of International Affairs.
Nice title, eh?
I chose it myself.
My boss is the Vice-President of Heliopolis University, the name of my official employer, although till this day, the University does not exist, since the president Husni Mubarak himself has as yet refused/not had time to sign the registration documents. Anyway - let's not get depressed about this very central issue to the whole thing - I was speaking about my boss - Hani. He is responsible for 'International Affairs and External Programs' and a really fantastic chap. Yesterday him and I sat in his car in the University's car park for a while before he left. The motor was running and the air condition blasting freezing cool into our faces, we were talking about energy efficiency and renewable energies (the irony seemed to condense on the windows). Then we resumed what we'd achieved in the last 5 months, because he had pretty much just started before I came, too. And we realised: nothing.
It was a bit frustrating... all the eMails and phone calls and guest receptions had not yet lead to anything tangible, apart from meaningless Memorandums of Understanding. The collaboration CONTRACTS we are hoping to sign in the next 3 months are still a long way away and I might long be gone by then.
But I realised a week ago that, although I'll be gone in 12 days time, I will still be the Coordinator of International Relations, because there is nobody to take my position at the moment and we are in a bit of a screwed-up situation...

For me, though, a new window has opened up... I am going to become an expert in Water Management. I got a place in a great 3-semester M.Sc. program called "Integrated Water Resource Management" and which is co-funded by the "German Ministry for Development and Technical Cooperation". This means that I will be in Amman, Jordan, from late July 2007 till early 2008, then in Koeln (Cologne), Germany, for the second semester and then back in the MENA region somewhere to write my Master's thesis.

So much for now.