South of Sohag
Can the release of statistics guide development policy and upgrade the lives of the poor? Amira El-Noshokaty investigates the human side of underdevelopment in Dar Al-Salam
"She is called Miret Amoun and her feet are as big as my face," a little girl told her mother as she described a Pharaonic statue found in Akhmim while they rode the 6.30am train towards the Upper Egyptian governorate of Sohag.
This reporter was on the same train, heading for Dar Al-Salam, or Awlad Towq as the residents refer to it, a 66-km drive from Sohag on the Sohag-Qena Eastern Desert Road. For two years in a row, Dar Al-Salam has been identified by the United Nations Development Programme's (UNDP) Egypt Human Development Report (EHDR) as one of Egypt's five poorest districts on the Human Development Index.
The dismal statistics uncovered in the report are only one part of the picture of underdevelopment painted of these parts of Egypt. Dar Al-Salam includes the villages of Kosheh and Beit Alam, home to two crimes that shook the nation a few years ago. In Kosheh, Muslim and Coptic clashes erupted after an argument between a Muslim woman and a Coptic shopkeeper. The conflict resulted in the deaths of 20 Copts and one Muslim. In the town of Beit Alam, a vendetta feud between two clans left 22 members of one family dead, including a nine- year-old child.
"There is a great deal of ignorance and lack of awareness in this part of Sohag," explained Hamada Abdel-Qader, taxi driver. Abdel-Qader said that this is because of the fact that much of Sohag is a closed community whose members can be mistrustful of each other. Abdel-Qader, a native of the city of Sohag, was once faced with the blind fury of Dar Al-Salam residents when he drove one of his passengers to his destination and decided to try his luck waiting for his next passenger at the taxi station instead of returning to Sohag City with an empty cab. The minibus drivers were about to beat him for trespassing on their grounds, recounted Abdel-Qader.
"I think that the reason behind the Kosheh event is very trivial. It started with a fight between a Muslim woman who wanted to buy something from a Christian vendor. But people here are unemployed and often idle, and when you've got nothing else to do, you play the judge," he said.
According to the 2003 EHDR released this week (see related article), the literacy rate in the Dar Al-Salam markaz (district) and city among those aged 15 and above was only 29.5 per cent in 2001, while it continues to lag behind in the provision of most basic services.
Dar Al-Salam is a small markaz with one main street and a couple of smaller roads. Aside from the small health unit that was transformed through private initiatives into a hospital only five years ago, there are a series of small houses stitched together by a short, narrow road, which is also the marketplace.
The inhabitants are not enthusiastic about strangers. The marketplace is full of fruits, vegetables, plastic ornaments and all sorts of low- priced goods. In the male-dominated market, there is only one woman vendor, who sells garments out of her parents' shop.
The only pharmacy on the corner of the marketplace is run by Dr Ahmed Abdel-Aziz, who says that Dar Al-Salam's real problem is unemployment. "There are no industries here to hire young graduates. There is not even a radio signal reaching this part of Sohag."
According to Mamdouh El-Kadwani, the governor of Sohag, "We are an agrarian society and we are trying to industrialise so that we can create job opportunities. Al-Kawthar district has 84 working factories, out of which 11 are for export goods only. However, due to the global economic recession after 11 September, unemployment is on the rise. To cope with the situation, a governmental decree was issued stating that all governmental institutes are obliged to buy the products from [industries in the district]."
Despite the decree, and the fact that the EHDR 2003 claims that Dar Al-Salam has a mere five per cent unemployment rate, Walid Abu-Dabaa, a street vendor who sells plastic hair accessories, complained that unemployment remains a problem. "The rate of unemployment here is very high," explained Abu-Dabaa, who also lamented the rise in prices of essential goods. "A sack of flour used to cost LE15. Now it costs LE22. The price of a tin of margarine has risen from LE8 to LE11. All the prices have gone up and they say it is because of the war -- what does war have to do with it?"
Inhabitants will tell you that women are allowed to work either as school teachers or in the hospital and that it is simply inappropriate for women to work in pharmacies or factories. They will also say that they consider themselves to be city people. Yet, according to one vendor, the women in the small villages, such as Awlad Yehia, which is part of the Dar Al- Salam markaz, are not allowed to walk on the streets without a chaperone.
While inhabitants will identify unemployment as one of the major problems they face, there are other basic needs that are not being met.
A middle-aged woman stood shyly by a stand for fake gold accessories, glittering in the sun next to oranges and bananas. On her forehead was a green tattoo. She was smiling from beneath a black veil that matched her black galabeya. In her hand was another small palm strongly attached to her own. It's her nephew, she explained. "I have no electricity in my house, and I don't have water or plumbing," said Maisa Younis, a widow who lives in the markaz of Dar Al-Salam. The family lives off of the money earned by her uneducated daughter and cannot afford access to clean drinking water and sewage facilities.
In Dar Al-Salam, many of the homes are made of brick and, of the houses that have water and sewage facilities, many have leaks that threaten the health and safety of the tenants.
Sewage is a main issue; all of the men interviewed in the marketplace seemed to agree on this, for there is currently no sanitation network in this part of the country. Many residents dig their own sanitation wells, or underground ditches under homes where waste is disposed of.
Commenting on the sewage problem, the governor of Sohag said, "The sanitation wells in Upper Egypt are not as problematic as they are in Lower Egypt because here villages were built on high mastabas [or platforms] to avoid the flood. So, there are approximately two and a half to three metres of space between the sanitation wells and the houses."
Drinking water is either piped or pumped in. Through both means, the water comes out dark and smelly and has a foul taste. Many of Dar Al-Salam's inhabitants believe that the water is the number-one cause of kidney failure, a very common disease in this district. At least half of the people interviewed by the Weekly said they had a relative suffering from kidney failure. In fact, at the end of the day, the police officer who had been shadowing the Weekly reporter's activities in the markaz could hold his silence no longer: "You know, the drinking water here is really terrible."
Yet according to Governor Mamdouh El- Kadwani, the drinking water in Dar Al-Salam is just fine. It comes either from water stations that pump water from the Nile or from canals pumping water to a conductor where it is distilled, purified and prepared for consumption. Many of the villages also have underground wells. If water comes from such wells, samples are tested for salts and minerals.
Health is another worry for the people of Dar Al-Salam. Dr Mohamed El-Masri, the head of the Dar Al-Salam Central Hospital, has tried to address the situation. "Five years ago, the hospital was just another health unit that served three to four patients daily. The problem was that the health unit did not have the right equipment and the closest hospital was 60 km away, at Naga Hammadi. All health facilities were at least 60 km away, and that meant that if I had a patient who had been hurt in a car accident, by the time we reached the nearest hospital he could have died," explained El-Masri
El-Masri established a collaborative effort with the Dar Al-Salam Hospital and the Faculty Of Medicine in Sohag, from which doctors were provided to help train Dar Al-Salam physicians. Six doctors have now been trained for the surgery room. Seminars and training courses are funded by drug companies, which are then able to promote new their. The hospital now has its own surgery theatre, in addition to 18 kidney dilators serving 120 patients three times a week.
The main cause of the proliferation of Kidney failure in the district, he explained, is bilharzia, a disease carried by flatworms in stagnant water. This accounts for 90 per cent of the cases, while the remaining 10 per cent are directly related to drinking water.
But these ills may soon be history. When the Weekly informed the governor that Dar Al- Salam had again hit the bottom of the Human Development Index list, he did not seem perturbed. According to the governor, "Dar Al- Salam will be coming onto our development map as of next year. We recognise that this is the only markaz that has no water sanitation services. And so we will be building infrastructure facilities as well as schools and literacy classes." It seems that part of the impetus for this drive to develop the markaz comes from the efforts of international donor agencies, including the UNDP. When questioned about the value of the report, Governor El-Kadwani pointed out that the governorate depended on the funding of projects by donor agencies.
Al-Ahram Weekly Online : 10 -16 April 2003 (Issue No. 633)
Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/633/fe2.htm