Salaam Program Interviews
I can’t say that much about these interviews because I’d expect a certain level of non-disclosure regarding anything I said in an interview, so I can't repeat any of the more interesting things we heard. It was interesting interviewing friends, though; I actually drilled them harder than the others because a)I knew they couldn't lie to me and b) this was a chance to find out interesting things about them that they wouldn't tell me otherwise.
But conducting Salaam interviews gave me a new sense of why I came to Egypt, and why I came through AIESEC rather than Peace Corps or Fulbright. How you evaluate others is always when your values really come out: in this case, who do I want going to the US on an exchange program? And of course, when you ask people that question, you wonder, “why did I want to go on an exchange program”?
We were interviewing Egyptians who wanted to work in the US for 3 months to a year. There are many obvious reasons why an Egyptian would want this: actual meaningful work experience, a tremendous increase in salary, free availability of liquor and attractive loose women, American life makes sense, to improve their English, see what the “Great Satan” is all about… So of course we had to filter through a lot of that and make sure their reasons were legitimate: people who would further the aims of the exchange opportunity, and not try to stay in the US after the program ended. This comes down, largely, to their ability to take advantage of opportunities. My favorite question was the ‘AUC question’: “Since you’ve had so much exposure to the US, why should we give you this opportunity rather than to someone who’s had less exposure? We don’t want to waste this on you.”
I think of interviews as having two types of questions: questions where you try to trip them up, and questions where you give them an opportunity to shine. I was pretty sure the above question was of the latter type: it’s a chance to talk about how, with your limited exposure, you’ve gained a keen interest in something American and so you know what to look for. Impress us that you’ve made something of your limited exposure.
Alas, it was not to be, for the same question ended up as more of a testing question. It was like a lot of people hadn’t thought about that before.
What? You’ve spent years in the US, and you never thought we’d ask what you had done with that experience that made you worthy of another one?
But in addition to seeing amazingly frequent pitfalls, there were some shining moments, that made clear why I went on Salaam in the first place. Why go for work experience rather than academic experience? Why be so excited about an exchange program when you have no clue what job you’ll end up in?
This summer, I wrote:
“I decided a while ago that I wouldn't make any major career decisions while at Yale simply because I felt I needed real world experience first. Law school will come in time, but I know enough former lawyers that I need to be sure of why I want to go, and what I hope to do with a law degree. Studying abroad, while enlightening and incredibly valuable, is still in an academic environment. AIESEC and the Salaam Program are great because they put a great deal of emphasis on involving you in the culture: instead of spending your nights wandering around the city with Americans, you very much become a part of the local social scene. The Peace Corps, as far as I understand, seeks to improve relations by focusing mostly on the volunteer work that Americans do to build communities, helping with education or improving health care in foreign countries. Social support seems to vary greatly in different countries and positions. Salaam offers similar work as well, but puts a lot more emphasis on simply meeting and talking to people. Not only is this a great social experience and a great opportunity for self-discovery, but it helps with my academic interests: to delve into political, religious, legal theory, it helps to know how people in different cultures approach and think about similar life problems: their attitudes towards concepts like freedom, equality, respect, authority; the importance they attach to work vs friends and family; what or how much they expect from religious institutions, legal systems, various social groups.”
This kind of cultural involvement you only get from engaging the business environment: not simply as an onlooker, but trying to work it out and be productive in this environment.
I’m not expecting brilliant theoretical insights, but here are a few things I have learned:
1) I don’t respect rules either when they make no sense. I used to think democracy and rule of law should be advocated separately, but I’m realizing that rule of law requires, first of all, good laws, and without feedback from the populace, I’ve no idea where those good laws would come from.
2) Tocqueville was right in emphasizing how many habits and thoughts of power and authority derive from civil associations. In Egypt’s case, it’s business culture that sets the tone of the political culture: obsession with titles and seating arrangements, single central authority figure with no clear assignments for what anyone else does, very little upward communication, relaxed and not very professional. There are appealing things about the business culture here, especially in that it’s a much friendlier environment, but none of these benefits translate to politics.
3) Multinational corporations have a much bigger role to play than I realized earlier. It seems everyone here wants to work for Vodafone; if not, for some other multinational. Hell, half the people I ask (middle-class and up) say their 20-year goal is to be CFO of a multinational. It’s a question of management systems: people want a management system that brings out their skills and potential. Economic reforms are effectively just bringing in new multinationals, and trying to learn management systems from them.
4) They seriously have to start respecting the social sciences, and this includes everything from management to sociology. It’s always been an interesting trend that Muslim extremists are frequently engineers or doctors or something in the physical sciences: science is the pinnacle of Western enlightenment skepticism, positivism, and ultimately glory. Plus, these people are well educated, presumably not ignorant, and at the tops of their societies in many ways. Partially, it’s that every Egyptian (and Pakistani, for that matter) parent wants their kid to be a doctor or an engineer. Engineering is so respected that even MRS degrees are often in engineering. But this means that there are a shitload of Egyptian engineers and lawyers and doctors making almost no money, since there’s no demand left and no way to manage them effectively anyway. Are we surprised that they’re frustrated?
5) “Modernization” in Cairo seems much more blatantly Western and anti-Islamic than it is in the US: similar to the concept of secularism, which means atheism here, but means free exercise of religion in the US. It's mostly a problem of how modernization is managed: foreigners are where all the money is, so Egyptian businesses want to appear more Western and less ‘radical’, so many of them act anti-Muslim. Damn suck-ups.
6) As a result, practicing Islam is in some ways easier in the US, because being religious is less of a barrier to other things you want to do. Upper classes seem much more scared of it here.
7) Egyptians often insist that they love Cairo, but it’s hard to see, as a foreigner, exactly how they express this love. Still working on that. Not too many civil associations or movements to fix this or help that or abolish this other thing. Might be a similar effect to the Africa Cup final, where Mustafa Mahmoud Square was still full of people 7 hours after the match ended. Take every chance you have to feel pride.
8) Damn, these people are dependent on their mothers. It’s making me much more dependent too.
9) Arabic is a very logical and systematic language. This is not a perfect match for Egyptian society. Maybe this is part of why colloquial Arabic is so different?
10) I’m going to miss things not making sense. If there was an expectation for things to make sense, so much else of Egyptian life would be simply unbearable. As it is, it’s quite enjoyable.
11) It's not surprising that Egyptians don't trust international media... all media in Egypt is total shit. Business magazines don't fact check, even getting the names and positions of Ministers wrong. This is damn basic information. Even asking for directions can be a mess, as you keep getting conflicting information from everyone you ask, including cops stationed in the area. Information availability, in general, is so bad that the only thing you can trust is something you've witnessed personally, or heard from someone you trust deeply. Of course distant media produced from halfway around the world, and that says something unfavorable about your religion or ethnicity or country, isn't going to be trusted. Not sure what this means for American PR efforts.
12) Egyptian life just flows. It’s awesome. Everyone else should learn from this. And Egyptians should be prouder of this.
But conducting Salaam interviews gave me a new sense of why I came to Egypt, and why I came through AIESEC rather than Peace Corps or Fulbright. How you evaluate others is always when your values really come out: in this case, who do I want going to the US on an exchange program? And of course, when you ask people that question, you wonder, “why did I want to go on an exchange program”?
We were interviewing Egyptians who wanted to work in the US for 3 months to a year. There are many obvious reasons why an Egyptian would want this: actual meaningful work experience, a tremendous increase in salary, free availability of liquor and attractive loose women, American life makes sense, to improve their English, see what the “Great Satan” is all about… So of course we had to filter through a lot of that and make sure their reasons were legitimate: people who would further the aims of the exchange opportunity, and not try to stay in the US after the program ended. This comes down, largely, to their ability to take advantage of opportunities. My favorite question was the ‘AUC question’: “Since you’ve had so much exposure to the US, why should we give you this opportunity rather than to someone who’s had less exposure? We don’t want to waste this on you.”
I think of interviews as having two types of questions: questions where you try to trip them up, and questions where you give them an opportunity to shine. I was pretty sure the above question was of the latter type: it’s a chance to talk about how, with your limited exposure, you’ve gained a keen interest in something American and so you know what to look for. Impress us that you’ve made something of your limited exposure.
Alas, it was not to be, for the same question ended up as more of a testing question. It was like a lot of people hadn’t thought about that before.
What? You’ve spent years in the US, and you never thought we’d ask what you had done with that experience that made you worthy of another one?
But in addition to seeing amazingly frequent pitfalls, there were some shining moments, that made clear why I went on Salaam in the first place. Why go for work experience rather than academic experience? Why be so excited about an exchange program when you have no clue what job you’ll end up in?
This summer, I wrote:
“I decided a while ago that I wouldn't make any major career decisions while at Yale simply because I felt I needed real world experience first. Law school will come in time, but I know enough former lawyers that I need to be sure of why I want to go, and what I hope to do with a law degree. Studying abroad, while enlightening and incredibly valuable, is still in an academic environment. AIESEC and the Salaam Program are great because they put a great deal of emphasis on involving you in the culture: instead of spending your nights wandering around the city with Americans, you very much become a part of the local social scene. The Peace Corps, as far as I understand, seeks to improve relations by focusing mostly on the volunteer work that Americans do to build communities, helping with education or improving health care in foreign countries. Social support seems to vary greatly in different countries and positions. Salaam offers similar work as well, but puts a lot more emphasis on simply meeting and talking to people. Not only is this a great social experience and a great opportunity for self-discovery, but it helps with my academic interests: to delve into political, religious, legal theory, it helps to know how people in different cultures approach and think about similar life problems: their attitudes towards concepts like freedom, equality, respect, authority; the importance they attach to work vs friends and family; what or how much they expect from religious institutions, legal systems, various social groups.”
This kind of cultural involvement you only get from engaging the business environment: not simply as an onlooker, but trying to work it out and be productive in this environment.
I’m not expecting brilliant theoretical insights, but here are a few things I have learned:
1) I don’t respect rules either when they make no sense. I used to think democracy and rule of law should be advocated separately, but I’m realizing that rule of law requires, first of all, good laws, and without feedback from the populace, I’ve no idea where those good laws would come from.
2) Tocqueville was right in emphasizing how many habits and thoughts of power and authority derive from civil associations. In Egypt’s case, it’s business culture that sets the tone of the political culture: obsession with titles and seating arrangements, single central authority figure with no clear assignments for what anyone else does, very little upward communication, relaxed and not very professional. There are appealing things about the business culture here, especially in that it’s a much friendlier environment, but none of these benefits translate to politics.
3) Multinational corporations have a much bigger role to play than I realized earlier. It seems everyone here wants to work for Vodafone; if not, for some other multinational. Hell, half the people I ask (middle-class and up) say their 20-year goal is to be CFO of a multinational. It’s a question of management systems: people want a management system that brings out their skills and potential. Economic reforms are effectively just bringing in new multinationals, and trying to learn management systems from them.
4) They seriously have to start respecting the social sciences, and this includes everything from management to sociology. It’s always been an interesting trend that Muslim extremists are frequently engineers or doctors or something in the physical sciences: science is the pinnacle of Western enlightenment skepticism, positivism, and ultimately glory. Plus, these people are well educated, presumably not ignorant, and at the tops of their societies in many ways. Partially, it’s that every Egyptian (and Pakistani, for that matter) parent wants their kid to be a doctor or an engineer. Engineering is so respected that even MRS degrees are often in engineering. But this means that there are a shitload of Egyptian engineers and lawyers and doctors making almost no money, since there’s no demand left and no way to manage them effectively anyway. Are we surprised that they’re frustrated?
5) “Modernization” in Cairo seems much more blatantly Western and anti-Islamic than it is in the US: similar to the concept of secularism, which means atheism here, but means free exercise of religion in the US. It's mostly a problem of how modernization is managed: foreigners are where all the money is, so Egyptian businesses want to appear more Western and less ‘radical’, so many of them act anti-Muslim. Damn suck-ups.
6) As a result, practicing Islam is in some ways easier in the US, because being religious is less of a barrier to other things you want to do. Upper classes seem much more scared of it here.
7) Egyptians often insist that they love Cairo, but it’s hard to see, as a foreigner, exactly how they express this love. Still working on that. Not too many civil associations or movements to fix this or help that or abolish this other thing. Might be a similar effect to the Africa Cup final, where Mustafa Mahmoud Square was still full of people 7 hours after the match ended. Take every chance you have to feel pride.
8) Damn, these people are dependent on their mothers. It’s making me much more dependent too.
9) Arabic is a very logical and systematic language. This is not a perfect match for Egyptian society. Maybe this is part of why colloquial Arabic is so different?
10) I’m going to miss things not making sense. If there was an expectation for things to make sense, so much else of Egyptian life would be simply unbearable. As it is, it’s quite enjoyable.
11) It's not surprising that Egyptians don't trust international media... all media in Egypt is total shit. Business magazines don't fact check, even getting the names and positions of Ministers wrong. This is damn basic information. Even asking for directions can be a mess, as you keep getting conflicting information from everyone you ask, including cops stationed in the area. Information availability, in general, is so bad that the only thing you can trust is something you've witnessed personally, or heard from someone you trust deeply. Of course distant media produced from halfway around the world, and that says something unfavorable about your religion or ethnicity or country, isn't going to be trusted. Not sure what this means for American PR efforts.
12) Egyptian life just flows. It’s awesome. Everyone else should learn from this. And Egyptians should be prouder of this.
2 Comments:
I'm going to respond only to #1, since I have so little to contribute:
I like your point about how feedback from the people is necessary for good government, and I think you're onto something with your use of the word "feedback."
However, the way you're presenting your argument here affirms the consequent, which is a no-no: All democratic governments involve popular feedback. Not all governments that involve popular feedback are democratic. In fact, it's very hard to prevent any government from getting popular feedback. You need to show that the particular formalization of feedback offered by your particular form of democracy has particular benefits over others. I am very hesitant to encourage people to talk more about their political beliefs, but leaving out the interesting part of the argument seems regrettable.
Damn you, criticizing my logic when I'm studying for LSATs. Yay for fluke high scores, by the way.
You're right, in that I'm reversing the logical steps. Good government generally requires receptiveness to popular feedback, which requires an open society (and freedom of speech, etc). But while democracy (peaceful transfer of power through elections) requires an open society (there must be competing visions of where the country should go, and enough communication and understanding between proponents of those visions, or else apathy/laziness/fear, that people don't revolt when the opposite vision is implemented), open society does not seem to require democracy, at least not logically. (Note: these are all imperfect mappings, and I've no clue how to define 'open society')
However, democracy and (by extension) open society encourage popular feedback in two ways: first, democratic rulers are much more sensitive than other rulers to the political impact of their decisions and proposals, and second, the mapping from political impact to real impact is much closer in an open society than in a closed society (for policies that affect the society itself directly... does not include foreign policy)
This doesn't help me understand Egypt, though. Egyptian society seems fairly open for alot of things, but public discourse is so nonsensical... You learn more in private conversations with taxi drivers than from any Egyptian media. The accuracy is less far different than you'd think, even when I compare taxi driver theories about CIA involvement in Cairo heat waves with business magazine reports about the names of new Ministries.
But Egypt seems horrible at getting popular feedback. All the economic reforms are hindered by this problem. Half the purpose of BEBA is to provide business feedback for the government's economic reforms. This is consistently damn basic feedback, for fairly straightforward reforms. We do nothing properly at all, and still manage to get Ministers and CEOs and whatever to come to all our events. Their chances for honest and meaningful feedback are actually so rare that they come speak at our events.
So yah... speak truth to power! Or something.
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