Jazak Allah for this, a real eye opener for sure. If we really want to help, the best way is to target the next generation, to try and get them out of the circle: their parents are poor, they can’t afford to educate them, so they will end up poor, unable to educate their children… and so on. An organization which I have heard a lot about is The Citizens Foundation, who educate poor kids in Pakistan to try and break this cycle of poverty (http://www.tcfusa.org/). May Allah reward you Sister Maryam for writing this post, it has inspired me to start a monthly donation to them. It costs only $10 a month to educate a child through them… that $10 a month, peanuts for most of us, can and will Inshallah take a kid away from being a bawab and into something like a software engineer.

when we have too much, we only want more.

-Adil

SubhanAllah, a timely reminder. I was just speaking to a sister here about the poverty. It’s truly humbling to see how families struggle here for basic necessities while back in the West we complain about the most minute details.

Another thing you can do is give them meat or prepare some food. The price of meat has skyrocketed here (supposedly because of the swine flu scare) and so many families cannot afford meat anymore.

Giving the kids some candy or fruit is nice for them as well 🙂

My bawab and his family were really incredible people. Simple, humble and content. They helped me settle in (while my landlord ripped me off), kept up regular checks, gave good advice and looked after me well. They even helped me break into my room at 5am when I lost my keys! SubhanAllah the whole family got up and searched for tools as they couldn’t sleep knowing I locked myself out. I was their “guest”.

Bawabs often work in well to do middle class suburbs of Cairo and so all around them is expense upon expense upon expense. They can look but not touch all the things around them and it really is heartbreaking to see the bawab children request snacks that the parents simply cannot afford yet they see all the other kids enjoying them.

From my thrid floor balcony I would look down on their quarters – a husband, wife and four children sleeping in a box 12ft by 12ft with only a ripped cloth to shelter them from the elements. Many bawab families are forced to pitch camp on land about to be developed and remain living in dangerous construction sites for months till completion so as to secure some future income. They can often be seen sleeping rough on piles of sand and brick but they never complain. Poverty disciplines the mind and focuses the heart on Allah swt.