A short report on Sekem, originally written as a letter, has also been made available on this website.

A colleague of mine regularly works at Sekem, usually for several months at a time, and I had always wanted to visit her when she was there to experience Sekem up close, after reading Ibrahim Abouleish's biography with great enthusiasm.

Due to the postponement of another trip, this trip to Sekem came about very spontaneously. We booked the ‘Sekem & Luxor’ package. My colleague's recommendation proved to be a wise one – you don't have to worry about anything, everything is planned and booked.

With this offer, you spend four full days in Sekem (Mon–Thu), fly to Luxor on Thursday evening and spend the days until Monday in Luxor, West Bank, in a hotel whose owner speaks German and is acquainted with Mr Kreuer and Sekem.

Tuesday, the 10th day, was the return flight from Luxor. If you leave Luxor at 8:30 a.m., you'll be back in Berlin at 2:30 p.m. (with a short layover in Cairo). It's kind of a wonder of technology – at least for someone like me who isn't a frequent flyer at all.

I'm not going to recount the entire trip, just the main point that motivated us to take the trip: What will happen in Sekem after Ibrahim Abouleish's passing in 2017? How are cultures and ideas integrated there? Is anthroposophy simply being exported to an Arab-Islamic country? Is that even possible? Are the anthroposophists only among themselves? How do Central European impulses and Arab-Islamic realities of life interpenetrate?

To begin with the conclusion: Sekem is not an anthroposophical enclave in a spiritually alien environment, but an Egyptian corporation! Helmy Aboulaish, whom we were able to speak to briefly at the end of the week on Thursday morning, and his daughters have not only understood the spirit of their father and grandfather, but are also able to develop it further and make it fruitful for the future of Sekem. This became abundantly clear during the (incidentally very good) guided tours. The individual businesses: agriculture, Sekem-Isis (food), the pharmaceutical companies, the Waldorf school, the textile processing company, the clinics (doctors' house), the university in Cairo-Heliopolis, Sekem-Wahat, the second farm in the desert (‘Sekem II’, so to speak, approx. 400 km south-southwest of ‘Sekem-I’), etc. – all of these are now independent companies, making ‘Sekem’ a holding company.

The sheer size of the whole thing is impressive; the university alone has over 3,000 students, with faculties in pharmacy, organic agriculture, physical therapy, business and economics engineering.

The fact that Sekem is now rooted throughout Egypt as an impetus for agriculture has to do with the establishment of the Egyptian Demeter Society. My colleague added:‘The interdependence of agriculture runs through the EBDA – Egyptian Biological Dynamic Agriculture – the Egyptian Demeter Society. Farmers have to be trained in how to cultivate crops in accordance with Demeter standards, etc. – otherwise Sekem cannot sell the products as ’Demeter products". These are mostly herbs, seeds or dates, etc. Sekem mostly sells to large companies, which then process the goods or sell them under their own brand name, such as ALANA with its textiles, which can be bought at DM. The products do not say Sekem or Naturetex on them, but Alana.

Berlin, March 2024 - After learning some shocking things about the Egyptian school system (it's all about memorising textbooks and not asking questions...), it became clear how privileged the children in Sekem are in terms of their education: they are taught independence and freedom instead of mindless cramming. On Thursday at 12 noon, there was a small celebration, held every week (there: end of week) – a delightful experience to see all the (typical) Waldorf performances of the classes in Arabic.

We also took part in a short eurythmy lesson during the second tour on Thursday – in Arabic, of course.

In all our encounters with the staff there, the formative spirit of Ibrahim Abouleish is palpable. And as I said, Helmy, his son, knows how to carry on this spirit. (Incidentally, he had been in my father's class at the Waldorf seminar in Witten-Annen and remembered this.) In any case, the generational change seems to have been convincingly accomplished there, which is not a matter of course, as is unfortunately repeatedly demonstrated in similar undertakings and initiatives.

Rafik, the employee who gave the first tour on Monday, is German, but grew up in Cairo and was a classmate of Helmy Aboulaish, which led to a fruitful friendship and collaboration. In Sekem, we received the 2022 annual economic report (‘Sekem Report’), which is very impressive – if only because of its hundred pages.

We were also very fortunate to have Ms Nihal El Mofty as our guide for ‘Ancient Egypt’, with whom we travelled to Cairo twice (to visit the Egyptian Museum in Cairo and Sekem University in the Heliopolis district).

This would now lead us to the other part of the trip, the one to Ancient Egypt, but that will have to be left out here. Egypt is (with the exception of parts of Cairo and possibly Alexandria) truly a Third World country; the inevitable cultural and social shock caught us completely unprepared and was not so easy to digest.

My personal conclusion: The Sekem idea is exactly the answer we need to get to grips with the major migration problem of our time (which I believe will only get worse): to make life in their own countries worth living again for the desperate people of Third World countries, thereby rendering their uprooted wandering around the world obsolete.

One thing is clear: we want to go back there, but this time we'll book the ‘Sekem & Wahat’ package. The initiative must continue to spread and is worthy of every support.

Eckhart Boelger