Monday, June 19, 2017

Kids, Camels, & Cairo by Jill Dobbe

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.  


I reviewed this book as part of Rosie's Book Review Team.  You can find her book review website here https://rosieamber.wordpress.com/ber.wordpress.com/

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