She is now in Roanoke Rapids safe, but the daughter of Robert and Phyllis Davis misses the friends she made as a pre-kindergarten teacher, the country’s unstable political situation forcing her to leave without her January paycheck as banks shut down or were robbed.
Davis in Egypt.
The 2000 Roanoke Rapids High School graduate never thought the unrest in the country would make her stay there only six months, she said in an interview Friday.
“It was not visible to me,” the East Carolina University graduate said of the impending trouble.
Then there were rumblings on January 26 there would be protests on a holiday called Police Day. There were protests that day but everything seemed OK.
It wasn’t, however. “When Internet and mobile services went down and you can’t call home, I started to get really worried. (Egyptian president Hosni) Mubarak banned Twitter. It was almost like he was playing God.”
That Friday there were even bigger protests. She didn’t see the tear gas canisters being shot where she lived in Cairo. “The people I saw were singing the national anthem.”
The army took over, there were prison escapes and the situation escalated. “There were rumors of looting and rioting. My roommate and I got up to go grocery shopping and couldn’t find any bread.”
When she went to buy wine her favorite store was closed. “You could see shop owners closing their doors.”
A friend took these pictures of Egyptians armed
with sticks.
Otherwise nonviolent, working people could be seen carrying sticks and guns for protection against escaped prisoners and looters. “The next day I tried to call the owner of the school. Banks were robbed, banks were closed. The school couldn’t get money to pay. I couldn’t have money wired from home. I couldn’t get through to the embassy.”
Plane tickets out of Cairo were expensive. The cheapest flight she found was to JFK on Turkish Airways for $900, the only plane that left Cairo that day. She was fortunate she had a friend in New York and she took the rail to Rocky Mount, greeted by reporters and her family.
The Egypt beyond the lure of the pyramids and its exotic culture is different than what the people experience, she said. “The people have been oppressed for a while. I don’t fully understand it because I live in America in a Democratic society. I can’t comprehend what it’s like to live in a country run by a dictator. It’s sad because the people have hearts. I’m glad the people are standing up for what they want.”
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