My
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
Kids, Camels & Cairo by Jill Dobbe is a lighthearted memoir
about an American family’s experience living and working in Cairo, Egypt for
two years. A husband and a wife who were living comfortably in Wisconsin accepted
teaching positions together in the same international school in Cairo. It was their oldest child’s first year in
college. He remained in the State while
his parents and younger sister moved to Cairo.
The memoir provides fascinating
insights about Egyptian culture. The
memoir especially excels in provide the perspective of an American woman trying
to adjust to social limitations a woman faces living in Egypt, and her
experiences were often notably and interestingly different from her husband’s.
Other insights include Egyptian attitudes on education, cuisine, immigration,
and extreme poverty and extreme wealth living together in one country. I
appreciate the author openly sharing her observations.
The writing style of the memoir is
casual, and portions of the book read like an email from a friend.
It took a while for me to adjust to the casual style, I appreciated
Dobbe's down-to-earth and straightforward writing. For the most part the book is organization
chronologically, though the writing is somewhat stream of consciousness,
expounding on events out of order if they tie into something that reminded the
author of it. The memoir may have
benefitted from being organized by different themes or types of insights. For example, taking her daughter to Cairo,
poverty in Egypt, learning to live in a Muslim county, adjusting as a woman in
Cairo, etc.
The year the Dobbe’s moved to
Cairo was their daughter’s last year of high school. This was hard for me to read about, because
it did not entirely seem in the daughter’s best interest to be uprooted from
her educational and social support in Wisconsin. And it is unclear why the
Dobbe’s could not simply wait one more year to work abroad after their daughter
completed high school. It was mentioned that at times the daughter would cry in
her room in Cairo and did not wish to attend her own graduation in Cairo
because she never developed a fondness for the school or her classmates. I must
admit this left a sourness for me that hung throughout the book.
The
Dobbe’s had several opportunities to travel throughout the region, including
the great pyramids and the Red Sea. It is organization chronologically,
though the writing is somewhat stream of consciousness, expounding on events
out of order if they tie into something that reminded the author of it. The memoir may have benefitted from being
organized by different themes or types of insights. For example, taking her daughter to Cairo,
poverty in Egypt, learning to live in a Muslim county, adjusting as a woman in
Cairo, etc.
The year the Dobbe’s moved to
Cairo was their daughter’s last year of high school. This was hard for me to read about, because
it did not entirely seem in the daughter’s best interest to be uprooted from
her educational and social support in Wisconsin. And it is unclear why the
Dobbe’s could not simply wait one more year to work abroad after their daughter
completed high school. It was mentioned that at times the daughter would cry in
her room in Cairo and did not wish to attend her own graduation in Cairo
because she never developed a fondness for the school or her classmates. I must
admit this left a sourness for me that hung throughout the book.
The Dobbe’s had several
opportunities to travel throughout the region, including the great pyramids and
the Red Sea. It was a delight to see
some photography from their travels. Kids, Camels and Cairo is
recommended to anyone interested in traveling to Egypt and an absolute must
read for anyone looking to travel to Egypt to teach.
Thank you Brittany.
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