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Letter from Cairo: First Days
You might have encountered Giordano Ciampini over the past few months at Snakes & Lattes, where he is a manager. But Ciampini wears another hat: he is also a freelance photojournalist. After Hosni Mubarak was ousted as Egypt’s president, Ciampini decided to travel to Cairo and document the revolution’s aftermath. In this, our first installment of Letter from Cairo, we asked Ciampini to tell us a bit about himself and his decision to travel to Egypt. He sends this note via email from Cairo.
I’m a twenty-five year old ‘hyphenated Canadian’ of Italian and Portuguese origin: born in Toronto, raised in King City, attended high school at Central Technical School. I used to be a contract photojournalist at Corriere Canadese, a Canadian Italian-language daily paper. I work as a manager and barista at Snakes & Lattes, where I helped Ben and Aurelia open the store in August of 2010.
I started saving up my paycheques in August, too, ostensibly to have liquid mobility in case an international event came up—which it did on the 25th of January. I watched with bated breath as the events unfolded, and decided that I needed to see things for myself.
Although I expected it to be a hassle—since I was travelling with two bags full of cameras, lights, computers, and assorted goodies—getting into Egypt was fairly easy. All I had to do was show my passport, pay fifteen Egyptian pounds (about three dollars), and stick a visa stamp into my book.
Passing through the border was easier than getting into Tahrir Square my first night, it turns out. [Editor’s note: we’ll have more details about this in a future installment of the series.]
I’ll be here in Egypt for two months, and I want to contribute my photography to the growing historical record of events here, in the lead-up to the military’s withdrawal from the streets. I want to see, listen, and learn about how the Egyptian people earned their freedom, and what lessons we in Canada can learn from them.
One of my good friends has given me some helpful leads, which I’ve been taking advantage of—not having anyone on the ground can be a big hurdle in this region. Speaking some Arabic doesn’t hurt either. I’ve parachuted myself into only one other international-level news event: the funeral of Pope John Paul II. I’ve never been to a ‘hot zone,’ although I’ve covered violent protests in Toronto and Montreal before. I hope that my connections here will help me get into Libya in the coming days as well, where I will try to show the Libyan people’s fight for freedom and—perhaps—the fall of Moammar Gadhafi.
In the meantime, I want to send a message to Egyptian-Canadian readers: Irfa rasik foh, inta Masri! (Lift your head high, you’re Egyptian!)
Giordano
Photos by Giordano Ciampini, taken in Tahrir Square on February 25, 2011.