Restaurant in de woestijn (Egypte)

• The basis of your work will be helping in the restaurant alongside local Siwa youth. This collaboration is a starting point to exchange language and culture with them to increase their employability and broaden their horizon
• Organise workshops for children at least once a week: creativity, games, recycling, language exchange – it all depends on your ideas!
• As you get used to the Siwa lifestyle, you will be able to respond to what you are learning about the culture by proposing new initiatives. For instance to improve the decoration in the restaurant (former volunteers initiated a kids playground, a creative guestbook and recyled plant holders). In the execution of these ideas, you will collaborate as much as possible with local youth and young adults.
• Help in the vegetable garden of the restaurant

• Open to experiencing new cultures
• Independent and responsible, full of ideas, proactive
• Although men are welcome, the project is more accessible for women due to the strict gender roles in the area. For women it will be more easy to visit homes and work with local women.
• The organisation recommends to come in pairs (we can help you find a buddy)

You will stay in a simple home in the town center. Please be aware that Siwa is an old, small town where facilities are limited. The home is small (but you will spend most of your time outside), equiped with a simple kitchen and bathroom. Depending on the amount of volunteers being hosted (up to 4), you may have to share a room. Electricity and wifi drop out regularly. Siwa is mostly sunny, but depending on the season it may get cold at night – you’ll have to layer up as there is no central heating. There’s no airconditioning, only a fan.

You will get a food allowance to cook your own food or eat at one of the local restaurants. Siwa has the best dates and olives of the country. The kitchen staff will surely help you discover the best regional dishes.

The restaurant, where most of your activities will take place, is within a 15 minute walk from the accommodation. There are also bicycles available – Siwa’s surroundings are very beautiful and you can easily ride your bicycle to old temples and to one of the hot springs. For further destinations such as the impressive salt lakes, you can take a “tuktuk” (scooter with a pickup truck)

Siwa is really an oasis, so there are no cities nearby. There are overnight bus connections to Alexandria and Cairo and several agencies organising touristic tours and desert safaris.

Siwa has its own language, tamazight, but everyone speaks Egyptian Arabic as a second language. You can get a tutor to learn arabic, though you will learn most from your interaction with the children!

The majority of your hours (7 per day) will be spent in the restaurant, helping to serve guests, tend to the vegetable garden, and work on decorations for specific seasonal events (ramadan, christmas, valentine’s day). Cultural and linguistic exchange with the local young staff are an important part of the job. On weekends and school holidays you will facilitate workshops for the children. In this you will work together with the other volunteer(s) to come up with new activities, such as crafts but also games or informative sessions with a playful touch.

Siwa is a small town in the oasis of the western desert of Egypt. The region is known among tourists for its beautiful scenery full of olive and date trees, ruins of temples and tombes as well as its local crafts. You can float in the salt lakes and take a dip in one of the hot springs and enjoy the best sunset views in the desert or on one of the small mountains surrounding the town. Although there are some hotels, Siwa has kept its traditional amazight character, so you will really be face-to-face with its rich culture and heritage.