The last time I
posted to this blog, I was sitting in the dark
in Lima, Peru reflecting on the Bob Dylan song,
"Watching the River Flow." As I was just
mapping out on the cities I'll be visiting on
my trip to Egypt, I realized that I literally
will be watching the river flow as every single
city that I'll be visiting sits on the Nile
River. In preparing for my trip, I've learned a
few things about the Nile...
Ancient
Egyptians simply called it
iteru or the
river. Rainfall in east and central Africa
ensured that the Nile rose each summer. When
the surge of water that flooded the valley
retreated as the rains ceased, a layer of rich
silt was left behind. Egyptians planted seed on
this fertile land and the Nile became the main
source of life and growth for the region.
Interestingly enough, for quite some time even
the taxation rate rose and fell with the water
level of the river. The Nile is generally
regarded as the longest river in the world (I'm
not sure how a river can "generally" be the
longest - but hey, impressive nonetheless) and
it stretches 4,000 miles from East Africa to
the Mediterranean.
Along with posting journal entries
and pictures to this blog, I've also just made
an exciting purchase - the Flip Ultra - a video
camera (so compact it can fit in my back
pocket) so I'll be able to post videos,
too.
You may be wondering why PJT is
visiting Egypt since we seem to only carry
products from Peru. So here’s hopefully a short
answer to something that I could probably write
about for pages. PJT originated from the
Presbyterian
Hunger Program’s
Joining
Hands - a partnership between a Presbytery
and a country (there are nine of these
partnerships across the world). PJT was spawned
out of Joining Hands’ economic development work
in Peru (the Fair Trade project – Bridge of
Hope) and its partnership with the
Giddings-Lovejoy
Presbytery in the St. Louis area.
While PJT continues to fully support
and work with the artisans in Peru, we
recognize that many artisans and farmers around
the world are struggling to enter into the US
market. We’d like to reach these groups and
help open the door into the US market and are
exploring trade partnerships with various
different countries. A first place to turn for
finding producer groups is through other
Joining Hands partnerships that work with
artisans or farmers. The Joining Hands Network
in Egypt (partnered with the
Des
Moines Presbytery) is aligned with the
organization
Egyptian
Hands (formerly named Fair Trade Egypt
Foundation).
Egyptian Hands “was set-up
with the aim to serve as the umbrella
organization for Egyptian Fair Trade
initiatives. Its mission is "to work towards
Fair Trade with a social responsibility" by
providing agro and handicraft producers with
Fair Trade capacity-building support services,
by organizing awareness-building & advocacy
activities on Fair Trade, and via the creation
of a platform meant for marginalized producers
to articulate their concerns, and therefore
participate to the process.”
Egyptian
Hands works with dozens of artisan and farmer
groups in the region. Along with the
Presbyterian Hunger Action Enabler from Des
Moines, Nancy Lister-Settle, I will be visiting
about 10 different groups during my trip to
learn about their practices and pricing models,
work on product development, and record the
producers’ stories.
I'll post my
itinerary as soon as it's finalized. In the
Google map below, I've pegged the different
main cities I'll be visiting.
