About Dancing

Tonight was the Gala party of the AFF, we went to a very nice restaurant with a pool and a garden and it was lovely, the food, the music and the best element was the company .

The Senegalese dancing is phenomenal, I was really inspired and I decided to write about dancing, yesterday I was arguing with my Egyptian friends in the AFF, that the Egyptian dancing is for seduction and not just for having fun . and I still think it is seductive, it is always focused on women and how to show the beauty of her body and always men or older and more powerful women are the audience , I hate also that the attention is focused only on one person, the dancer and it is not community dancing or group dancing like the Nubian dancing , where all the community, males and females dance collectively, so the attention is not focused on one person.

I hate being under the lights, I hate the feeling that people are looking at me, I know that I am suffering from low self esteem problem in addition to huge body issues , that’s why I do not like dancing in public, although I do know how to dance , like many other young Egyptian women, but the attention bothers me .

I really liked the dancing in the AFF, the women are just powerful, celebrating themselves, their beauty and enjoying their pride and self esteem, and creating with their smiles and colorful outfits a very beautiful photo.

From Dakar ... with love

I am passing a difficult phase of my life, where I question everything, especially the labels I am carrying and my multiple identity, I hate being in a box and can not be out of it, I hate when people do not bother to explore me and prejudge me. Sometimes I ask myself why I am labeled with certain affiliations , do I choose all the relations I enter in, why are people assuming ideas about me.

These are the questions that come again and again to my mind in the first day of the 3rd African feminist forum, AFF is gathering women from all over the continent . we are four from Egypt and very few from North Africa.

In this AFF I felt the power of connections and the importance of sharing knowledge and building capacities, however although all the positive vibes and the good points I am seeing in the AFF, I was sorry for the weak participation from the Arabs or the North African region, although I felt cherish by the people I already  know before the AFF and others know I just know many showed a very welcoming attitude

What stroked me is the North African and how they are exerting effort to assert their African identity, in Egypt the population defined itself as Arabs and Muslims and the African identity is only just shown in the Nubian minority or when we engage African in sports and cultural activities.

Seriously I can be African, Muslim, North African, Egyptian and before all of this is I am Nubian, and I am happy with that and my labels are not in conflict with each other.

I am so happy in Dakar, I feel the peace and solidarity and I will carry all the positive vibes back with me to Beloved Cairo .

Memories of a very ordinary day

Yesterday was one of the good days in my life, although some difficulties took place.

I will start with telling you a cute story, I was having my morning tea in café downtown with Mozn, my shoes were dusty like all of Cairenes who are surrounded by desert. So there was the man who polishes the shoes and I asked him to polish my shoes and this is not ordinary at all, a man will never polish women's shoes and women do not do this, I did not think of it, I just did it, Mozn was surprised and she is not easily superised

then we  started very early in a work meeting with Mozn and a resource person about one of our researches, and we spent good time arguing about the patriarchal society and its system of women oppression, I have to admit that it is hard to talk to start such dialogue with a conservative man that see women in their roles and not as individuals.

Then we had a great day organizing the office and enjoying the team spirit, we held an event and it went really good

The bad things were the news of the arrest of the Gambian women rights defenders Isatou Touray and Amie Bojang-Sissoho , although it was really sad to hear such news abut I enjoyed the solidarity of our network, Women Live Under Muslim Laws. Tens of emails were exchanged between all the countries of the African continent to share love and support.

This is the main events that happened in my day, Is not it a great day?

On Mental Illness in Egypt

I was invited to attend a raising awareness event " Biking Depression Away" by my ex coworker and friend Dr Fahmy Bahget, fahmy is a Psychiatrist and he is doing great work , like participating in training refugees to be sico – social workers, he is part of the ministry of health initiative to enhance the human rights status of the mentally disabled persons and he is involved in  an association of the rights of the mentally and psychological disabled persons.

Fahmy invited me to the event, I over slept and I am too fat to ride a bike, so I decided to write about the status of mentally and psychologically disabled persons.

In a nut shell, they are invisible, they are socially stigmatized, they die slowly because of lack of adequate and accessible  services, I remember my family member who was bipolar and he was in denial and he refused to take his medication and he committed suicide in a low mode episode, I blamed my family which negated that we are suffering from mental illness, I blamed myself that I never noticed or made any action , I blamed him that he stayed silent and died alone in pain and I blame the society and the government for being too inhuman to mentally ill persons

I lost a family member and many are detained in bad conditions facilities and they are denied their rights as human beings , I wish one day the mentally and psychologically ill persons will not be called crazy and they get the needed help, may that day come to save many innocent souls   

Nazra For Feminist Studies : when work place is a dream

Writing about my dreams which came true is not easy, I want to talk about our Nazra for feminist studies, it strated with Mozn Hassan- our executive director- attempted to claim her place in the Egyptian feminist movement, then we knew each other in 2002, and since then we are trying to negate the fallacy that a secular feminist never work with Islamic feminist and vise versa .

We were tried from years of being neglected and not appreciated or even being invisible as young feminists , not belonging to the leftist  and pan Arab feminist movement.

Nazra started to be a reality in 2006 , when Mozn and I decided to start lobbying to create a legal platform for young  women and men to discuss gender issues and promote gender equality in Egypt . in 2007 we started the long process to create Non governmental organization.

Nazra is aiming to end the age of invisibility of the young feminists in Egypt and produce and disseminate knowledge and artistic products that promote gender equality in Egypt .

Our office, the small save cave is full on young women and men trying to fight patriarchy and to enhance women status in Egypt, the team is composed from scholars, activists and film makers.

I am very passionate that we are in action, we are implementing more than 5 projects this year, with a team of four full timers and five part timers, we are trying to build a safe place to articulate the interests of young people of Egypt regarding women issues.

Nazra for feminist studies is not an office or a team, it is a spirit and a safe cave

Follow Nazra for Feminist Studies on Twitter @nazraegypt account

Politics of ethincity and color

In my trip in the USA, I was overwhelmed by the politics of ethnicity and identity politics , I feel very sensitive to such issue as a person of color belonging to ethnic minority . I noticed that in some places the services workers are predominately non White Caucasians, they were either African Americans or Latinos or Asians and that differs from place to another, that gave impression that still some ethnicities  have  better societal status and that true, I just saw the simplest manifestation of this phenomena.

Add to that the ethnic factor is shaping the dynamics or relations and imposing challenges of persons of color in various realms, I remember a female judge saying that she was from the first patch of female judges in Mississippi and the gender and ethnicity were challenges in her career life. Also Ashley Jackson, youth queer advocate told me that life is difficult for LGBT, but way more difficult for LGBT person of color.

The ethnicity politics did not have only negative aspect, it has a bright side which is the solidarity of between the persons of each ethnicity, I felt the very special attention and care from the African American with me, that I am an African dissident person , I felt a strong link with their ongoing struggle for the African Americans to claim their civil rights and that sense of belonging was limited to the African American struggle, it went further, I did not feel happy and keen to take photos of Martin Luther King only also I was delighted to find some good photos of the Great Nelson Mandela . I just felt that I  belong to the Pan African Nation and that we are struggling for equality and justice and that is not limited to certain country m however it unite all the Africans all over the world. i felt although the context may differ, but the Nubian cause is deemed to be an African cause against centuries of discrimination.

Sorry I could not upload my photos , the connection is failing me  

Viva Africa