EGYPT

2023 - 2024

And it was while we were in Morocco that Hamas attacked Israel. We were unsure at first how we were going to respond. At this point, we've had a presence in Ukraine for over a year providing aid following Russian attacks along the front lines, but this was different. We started by working the logistics of moving trucks of food into Gaza and delivering it to existing aid organizations inside of Gaza. Which is an insulting over simplification of how that is even possible, but more on that later. After a few months of running this supply chain, we began our own presence inside of Gaza. This started by contracting Palestinians in Gaza to operate warehouses, coordinate food distribution, and begin setting up kitchens - both large and what we call community kitchens, which means equipping smaller community pockets with kitchen equipment and product to cook for themselves.

By the time I arrived, our supply chain was operational, but it needed help. We had no viability or understanding of the stages the trucks would go through to get into Gaza, which meant we had no idea once the trucks left the suppliers in Cairo (of which we were purchasing 20 full truck loads per day) where they were along the route, and once they got into Gaza it was even more complicated. My job was to get a handle on all of this and create the visibility we needed. I did this in a couple of ways. First was getting our procurement and logistics teams setup with a digital tool to track everything, so that we had a very clear picture of what we were buying and what trucks it was on. Then came the task of understanding the route those trucks were taking, and the process by which the product made it's way into Gaza. Myself and two colleagues (and our security) took a trip to drive the path that the trucks take, and it was incredible. This meant going from Cairo, through the Sinai Peninsula - which we needed specific military permission to do - and all the way up to the Rafah border in the south.

About halfway through, somewhere in the Sinai, was a checkpoint operated by the Egyptian Red Crescent. We met with the top dog there who showed us around. This was basically the Egyptian government's attempt to organize the amount of aid flowing into and from Egypt into Gaza. What happens during these crises is that [mostly well-intentioned] people/organizations/governments simply send stuff with little regard for the operation of receiving and distributing that stuff and so indeed Egypt and the Sinai was dealing with a tsunami of aid coming from all directions, more or less dropped at their feet. However, this was not us. We purchase, transport, and distribute all our own product, totally vertically integrated. It was not necessary for us to utilize the mechanisms the Egyptian Red Crescent was using, however, there were some steps happening here that the Israeli Defense Force were utilizing to get visibility on the aid coming their way to approve what goes into Gaza, which we needed to adhere to. Once the trucks got to the border (and there were two different borders that the IDF operated) every pallet needed to be offloaded, scanned, and then loaded onto another truck to transport it across the border. During this period we were completely blind, and often all pallets from all trucks (ours or otherwise) would get mixed up. The pallets were then delivered to a yard in Rafah, where our Gazan trucks and drivers would collect the pallets. This workflow was challenging from start to end, and never got easier. We certainly made improvements and used information as we learned, but this was not a normal state of affairs by any sense. It was chaos.

I took great joy in the whiteboard works of art that I noticed throughout this project. We would create some of our own, and I noticed them in the Egyptian Red Crescent offices as well. They must have been having the exact same conversations we were having trying to draw and make sense of the flow of trucks.

We had dinner in the Sinai at a fish market, which cooked the fish right there for you after you selected it. We ate on plastic tables and chairs on the sidewalk and it was the best seafood I've ever had.

I lived at a hotel in Cairo for about three months. It was right on the Nile which was nice, and you could see the Pyramids on a clear day, but there wasn't much in the way of restaurants and culture around, which meant we would go weeks without leaving the hotel. There were three restaurants and a casino. A few of us started taking boxing lessons in the morning, which was incredibly difficult to wake up for, but it was out on the patio in front of the Nile, so that was cool. I also spent Christmas visiting the pyramids. A few of us also took a weekend and went four-wheeling in the desert. While it was a crazy experience and the cabin fever was real, it was an amazing time. I was with some of my closest friends, we had fun, we dealt with challenges together, we hung out all day and night together, and I miss it quite a bit.

I was also able to hop over to Bahrain one weekend and see the F1 race. This made me happy.

BAHRAIN