Witnessing ongoing anti-government protests through the window of his shuttle bus, Glen Rock resident Dan White made it to the Cairo Airport this morning, and at 8:15 Glen Rock time was on a three-hour flight headed to Dubai.
An audibly relieved Dolores White told the Glen Rock Gazette that after an indeterminate layover there - "hopefully a day or two" - her son will fly from Dubai directly to Baltimore and the John Hopkins University campus, where he is a third-year international relations student.
"We're feeling so much better now," sighed White, who said that once all the travel is completed, the most pressing issue remains finding a room for Dan back on campus. "Johns Hopkins wants to get him into spring semester classes immediately. The only obstacle right now is housing, but we're already working with his fraternity house to make arrangements."
She said Dan reported that the two-hour ride from his residence quarters to the airport was uneventful, despite moving directly through the early states of what are expected to be a massive protest in and around Cairo today. "He said everything was very orderly, there were no signs of any violence, and at no time along the route did anyone in the group feel threatened."
White rode with a contingent of students, mostly from American University, whose Cairo campus was hosting the study abroad program he would have formally begun on Sunday, Jan. 30. Students from Johns Hopkins, Yale University, Harvard University and among other schools were also headed out of Cairo this morning.
White, 20, a 2008 graduate of Glen Rock High School, had been in Cairo for two weeks, touring the area and undergoing orientation for the study program scheduled to begin Jan. 30. But since Thursday, Jan. 27, he and fellow students had been confined to their living quarters each day from 1 p.m. onward, under state-imposed curfews following last week's escalation of anti-government demonstrations, and subsequent instances of street crime and other unrest.
An anxious Dolores White spent the past two days monitoring hurried arrangements between herself, Dan, his Johns Hopkins study abroad advisor and the International S.O.S. organization - attempting to secure passage from Cairo and also ensure safe transport to the Cairo Airport. One possible flight Monday evening fell through, and as recently as last night, there were concerns that an all-day curfew on Tuesday - caused by today's expected massive demonstrations - would scuttle transportation to the airport. "Thank goodness that wasn't the case," said Dolores White.
Despite the understandable concerns at home, communications with White in recent days revealed no sense of danger, just the boredom of confinement. "He just keeps saying not to worry, and that everything is fine - he's safe, there's plenty of food and water and all that. But until we know he's safely out of the city and on a flight, we're on pins and needles," Dolores White said on Monday.
In a subsequent text message to the Glen Rock Gazette on Monday afternoon, Dan had written, "I'm stranded here in Zamalek, but I'm totally safe. We have army convoys and security guards wielding swords, sticks and knives protecting us ... we're safe for now."
Once back on his stateside campus, he'll have to deal with his disappointment at not getting to actually start and complete the study program he had anticipated for so long, and reflect on the points of interest he was looking forward to observing first-hand..
In a Jan. 26 blog entry from Cairo, Dan commented on a lecture by an Egyptian historian that he had only just attended, and his own presence during an historic moment taking place in the country, writing:
"Interestingly, the movement has been led by youth, the notoriously liberal segment of the Egyptian population, and they are surprisingly bold and courageous. The lecturer had attended the riots himself yesterday, and was going to protest some more after he finished with us. The AUC [American University of Cairo] rep there urged us to avoid Tahrir square for the next few days, and upon getting the mic back, the lecturer strongly urged us to attend in groups with support systems, to take part in history.
"I don't think any of us have any actual ideas of protesting, but he definitely piqued our curiosity regarding the historical effect of the protests, and his bait-line-and-sinker was the claim of yesterday being a potentially defining moment in the history of Egypt, and one of total regime change for a true democracy with free elections, more freedom, more free speech, less government control of medicine, the military, the police and the press."