Fr Francis Preston, former Provincial of the Salesians in Great Britain, is now working in Jerusalem. He has sent the following account of his visit to Egypt for a meeting of Rectors which took place in Cairo from 4th to 8th March 2009:

The Salesian Middle East Province [MOR] where I have been working for three last three years has communities in seven different countries: Israel, Palestine, Egypt, Turkey, Iran, Syria and Lebanon. Travel between these countries is very difficult.

Those Salesians with Lebanese or Syrian nationality cannot obtain entry visas for Israel and those of us with Israeli residence visas in our passports cannot enter Lebanon or Syria. One of the few places the confreres of the MOR Province can all meet is Egypt, hence the choice of Cairo as the location for the recent meeting of Rectors of the local MOR communities.

It was my first visit to Cairo. It is the largest city in Africa with a population approaching 20 million people. It's a drab, dusty place - not surprising since it is surrounded by desert. The traffic is incredible. The Salesians have a large secondary school and a technical school in the densely populated suburb of Rod El Farag, a couple of miles north of the city centre and just a short walk from the mighty River Nile which flows through the heart of the city. Rod El Farag is a working class district with a mixed Christian and Muslim population who live together in relative harmony. Every morning well before sunrise the voice of the muezzin calling the faithful to prayer booms out from several mosques that surround the school. So there is no chance of a lie-in! The call to prayer is repeated several times during the day which can make the recitation of community prayer and any kind of communication quite a challenge.

Fr Francis Preston (right) with Fr Nicola Masedu, Rector of the Salesian Community in Bethlehem

As there are only two direct flights a week between Tel Aviv and Cairo I had three days before the Rectors' meeting to do some sightseeing. I took the opportunity to visit the Egyptian Museum in central Cairo and spend a couple of hours viewing the treasures found in the tomb of Tut-Ankh-Amon. The opulence and beauty of the jewellery and artefacts buried with the young Pharaoh are quite amazing. Thanks to the kindness of one of the Cairo community I was able to spend a couple of hours visiting the pyramids and the sphinx at Giza. They are rightly regarded as one of the Seven Wonders of the World. I was struck by the sheer size and at the same time the simplicity of pyramids. Their construction was certainly an incredible feat of engineering.

I also had the opportunity to pay a brief visit the Salesian Community and school in Alexandria, a port city which is situated at the northern end of the Nile delta where one of the distributaries of the great river reaches the Mediterranean. The journey there from Cairo took two and half hours by train. It was a fascinating experience. The fertile soils of the Nile delta make it one of the most intensively cultivated areas in the world. The green fields and plantations are crisscrossed by irrigation canals and provide food for the fast growing population of the delta area. Alexandria itself is smaller and cleaner city than Cairo. The Salesians educate more than a thousand boys and girls from kindergarten upwards. They and the Salesians gave me a very warm welcome.

The three day meeting of Rectors was an enjoyable and rewarding experience. Fr Francesco Cereda, the General Councillor Formation, animated the first part of the meeting and presented the documents of GC26. The second part of the meeting gave each of the Rectors the opportunity to describe the particular challenges he and his community are facing. It is no easy task for the MOR Provincial and his Council to govern and animate a province that spans seven different countries with widely different cultures and traditions. But I was greatly impressed by the generosity and optimism of all those who took part.

On the last evening of the meeting we had a simple supper on board a felucca, the traditional Nile sailing boat. For most of the time we drifted imperceptibly slowly, carried along by the river. Only at the end of the evening did the boatmen raise the large triangular sail. What a difference that made! Powered by the evening breeze the boat accelerated over the surface bringing us safely back to the river bank in an instant. My week in Cairo was all but over. What an interesting few days it had been, and so very different from any other Rectors' meeting I had attended before!