I've been tutoring at a mission here that teaches English to Sudanese refugees the past few weeks. I go after my last class Mondays and Wednesday and tutor one-on-one for the adults. Sometimes they bring me their homework assignment, which we work through - though one fellow I've stopped being too helpful with on that since I realized that he was basically trying to get me to do his homework for him. Sometimes they have vocabulary that they want me to check their pronunciation on or explain the definitions of. In most cases, my Arabic isn't good enough to be of any use, so I have to explain the word using English. Some are easy enough: factory, manager, or battery (though that one required disassembling my cell phone). Some seem like odd choices for beginning vocabulary for Sudanese refugees - one assignment required listing all of the possibly uses of the internet, fax machines, pagers, and CDroms, without explaining what any of those were. Some were such common words that I couldn't even think of a way to explain them using other English words: “requirement” took several minutes, and I'm not sure that he ever understood it. It's really made me think about definitions of words that we take for granted.
Sometimes we just chat to let them practice, which lets me get to know them a little better. My first few weeks I was confused as to why they wanted to learn English - they all said that they wanted to do it for the job opportunities, but I didn't really understand how English would help them that much in the Cairo job market - the only place where that would be that helpful would be in some sort of office job (which they probably are not qualified for) or in one of the stores or restaurants in Zamalek (the island where I live with all the other ex-pats) which they would never be hired for since they are Sudanese. Last week I learned from one of my students that most of them were either planning on returning to the Sudan or immigrating to the US, Canada, or Israel. Unfortunately, that brought up the subject of getting a visa to any of those countries, which it seems none of them are able to do.
There's one student that I've had 2 or 3 times. The first time, we were just chatting, when he said “I am born again.” With his accent, I wasn't entirely sure of what he said, thinking that he had instead said “I am bored again.” I was trying to think of a way to liven up the conversation when he repeated it and I realized what he meant. He then went on talking about how important God was and how he had been saved. Then he asked if I was Christian. I said yes since, regardless of whatever your religious beliefs might actually be, it's usually easiest to just say that you're Christian when people in Egypt ask even though my version of Christianity probably doesn't overlap with his that much (at least from what I've seen of people who identify themselves as “born-again.”). He then asked what I did every Sunday. I admitted that I did not go to church. He started to tell me how bad that was. I explained that, I have class every Sunday, the churches here are different than what I'm used to, and I haven't been able to find a church yet in Cairo - there's one across the street from my building, but he doesn't know that. He went on to list all of the churches in Cairo that I could choose from, making sure to mention which ones were English speaking. I promised to visit one and then our session ended.
The next week, I had the same fellow. After we went through his new vocabulary, we had a few minutes left for conversation. The first thing that he asked was what I had done Sunday. I had to admit that I had not gone to church. I got a 15-minute lecture on why I should go to church. On the bright side, he got to practice his English a lot that day.