As the U.S. State Department and private agencies work to evacuate Americans from strife-torn Cairo, Egypt, a Glen Rock family is holding its breath, awaiting confirmation of their son’s departure arrangements.
Dan White, 21, a 2008 graduate of Glen Rock High School, and international relations major at Johns Hopkins University, has been in Cairo for two weeks for a study program that was supposed to begin Monday. But since Thursday, Jan. 27, he and fellow students have been confined to their living quarters under state-imposed curfews, following last week’s escalation of anti-government demonstrations, and subsequent instances of street crime and other unrest.
A very anxious and somewhat frustrated Dolores White spoke with the Glen Rock Gazette on Monday while in the throes of monitoring hurried arrangements between herself, son Dan via text messaging, his Johns Hopkins study abroad advisor and the International S.O.S. organization - attempting to arrange imminent passage from Cairo and also to ensure safe transport to the Cairo Airport. The availability of a possible flight Tuesday morning remained uncertain, alongside rumors of a possible day-long curfew Tuesday that would keep travelers from getting to the airport in any case.
The curfew is being considered due to the “Million Man March,” a massive demonstration reportedly planned for Tuesday. In addition to prompting the extended curfew, the event would snarl transportation and possibly cause cell phone service to go down.
“I’ve been texting with Dan today, and he just keeps saying not to worry, and that everything is fine - he’s safe, there’s plenty of food and water and all that,” said Dolores White. “But until we know he’s safely out of the city and on a flight, we’re on pins and needles.”
In a subsequent text message to the Glen Rock Gazette on Monday afternoon, Dan wrote “I’m stranded here in Zamalek, but I’m totally safe. We have army convoys and security guards wielding swords, sticks and knives protecting us. I’m supposed to be leaving either tomorrow or Wednesday, but the airport is so backed up. But we’re safe for now.”
Dan is sharing living quarters with American University of Cairo-sponsored students in Zamalek, a part of the city that is actually an island in the Nile River dividing downtown Cairo and the town of Giza - roughly an hour bus ride from where his classes would have been.
But as a Johns Hopkins student, he is not included in American University’s contingency transportation plan, whereby students are to be driven to the airport in shuttle buses, then flown by military transports to Athens or Istanbul as per U.S. State Department arrangements. They will then make their own commercial flight arrangements back to the U.S.
Instead, Dan and Dolores are feverishly attempting to identify a commercial flight that would take him first to Paris, and then on to Baltimore, Md., where Johns Hopkins is located. They are working through International S.O.S. because of its arrangement with Johns Hopkins, but as of Monday, progress was slow.
White said a flight that might have departed tonight was grounded due to technical problems, and that according to Dr. Laurie Citti of Johns Hopkins, intra-university efforts are now afoot to arrange for emergency flights Tuesday to accommodate students from Johns Hopkins, Harvard, Yale and other schools - again, depending upon whether tomorrow’s events permit passage to the airport.
While getting their son safely back to the U.S. is obviously the Whites’ first concern, Dolores is thinking ahead to his ‘transition” stateside. “We’re going to have to make arrangements for him to enter classes back at Hopkins, and because he had sublet his apartment, he’ll need a room, as well as a bed and other furniture. And we’ll also have to get a package to him with warm clothes for the winter. He didn’t need those where he is now, but given this winter, he’ll need them now,” she said.
Dan will also have to deal with his disappointment at not getting to start and complete the study program he had anticipated for so long.
In a Jan. 26 blog entry from Cairo, Dan commented on a lecture by an Egyptian historian that he had just attended, and its relationship to what was transpiring in the country before his and fellow students’ eyes, writing:
“Interestingly, the movement has been led by youth, the notoriously liberal segment of the Egyptian population, and they are surprisingly bold and courageous. The lecturer had attended the riots himself yesterday, and was going to protest some more after he finished with us. The AUC [American University of Cairo] rep there urged us to avoid Tahrir square for the next few days, and upon getting the mic back, the lecturer strongly urged us to attend in groups with support systems, to take part in history.
“I don’t think any of us have any actual ideas of protesting, but he definitely piqued our curiosity regarding the historical effect of the protests, and his bait-line-and-sinker was the claim of yesterday being a potentially defining moment in the history of Egypt, and one of total regime change for a true democracy with free elections, more freedom, more free speech, less government control of medicine, the military, the police and the press.”
