Blog

A joyous and happy family - that's the first impression we got when the cameraman and I arrived at the El Nafeza workshop in Old Cairo.

Enas Khamees, the managing director of El Nafeza, is like a mother with her employees and she manages, seemingly like everybody else at the project, to communicate easily with the deaf and mute workers.

Warm and spontaneous, Enas is the soul of the place. Her faith in what they are doing, and her affection for the people working with her, are obvious at first sight. She is an Egyptian artist who wants to make her own country a better place - her vocation is to reduce pollution from the burning of rice straw and revive a local handicraft to create job opportunities for Egyptians.

Actually, since the revolution, Egyptian tourism has fallen dramatically and the unemployment rate was over 20% in the 18-29 age group in the summer of 2011. So this country of 83 million inhabitants is desperately in need of jobs (I discovered on the BBC News website that 42.8% of youths are out of work in Egypt).

Enas Khamees makes a perfect tandem with Olivia Ferrie, a former administrator for Christie's in Paris and London. This French expat, who lives in Cairo, has been volunteering for El Nafeza for three years. Olivia Ferrie's dedication and PR skills are an invaluable gift for the not-for-profit NGO.  

With these two ladies and a team of 15 workers - most of whom are deaf and mute women - mixing, folding, sticking, painting, and dying paper in this joyous atmosphere, we had a delightful time throughout the whole film shoot.

Even organising the final shot was great fun!

Imagine 25 people on a sunny day in Cairo in July (this means 45 degrees Celsius). Among the 25, some are deaf and mute, some speak Arabic only, some are just 10 year old, but all 25 want El Nafeza to win the BBC World Challenge this year.

Getting all 25 to simultaneously hold the right letter, in the right sense, at the right time was indeed a challenging shot! But it was well worth it.

And since this is about women working together, let me dedicate the 'El Nafeza' video to my little daughter who accompanied me every second during the filming in Cairo - and who is still in my belly while I write these lines.