Cairo Crisis....my experience 2 ....

Friday 28th Jan.

After a peaceful night,

i woke up to a phonecall from another friend from church offering for

me to stay at their house if i needed it.

I didnt know it but it was to be my last phonecall for over 24hrs,

as the Government was about to block all phonelines and internet in the country.

I headed to church.

People were sparse, and church hours had been curtailed to enable people

to get home before mid-day prayers would finish and the protests would be starting up again. Before we went home we had a short emergency

meeting about how to contact each other now

that phonelines and internet had been blocked.

I headed back to The Davies (the couple i was staying with).

We made a lunch with a few other people and played a

couple of games around the dinner table.

Then we switched on the news.

Having no phones or internet you became isolated.

For the next few days everything we knew about what was

going on in the streets around us came from what we saw on the news.

I am so grateful for the constant coverage that they gave.

Sitting around the tv,

it reminded me of pictures that you see from WWII

where you see families sitting around their wirelesses,

now i know exactly how they felt.

We marvelled and shocked at the images that we saw,

we worried about the friends

we knew who lived in the Downtown area,

we groaned everytime adverts came on,

interrupting our lifeline.

we switched to other news stations,

hoping that they would have new images on

not repeat the same ones we had seen again and again.

We learned from the news that we had been issued a curfew,

not to leave our homes.

Some of our friends who had come round for lunch

hurried home to make it back before the curfew started,

we had only been given 5mins warning.

The hardest part to watch was when they started burning down

The Government Building,

knowing that this building is just minutes away from my apartment,

knowing that i had left all my belongings behind, mainly my money.

Not having a bank account in Egypt, all my money was in that apartment.

No fire engines were entering the centre,

if the fire caught on i would be left with nothing.

Watching the violence from the police was disturbing.

Watching the clips over and over again,

people getting their knees bashed in,

a police van going crazy and running purposely

into the people in the crowds.

This night i did not sleep peacefully.