Umm Karim, a mother of four, can only afford one meal per day. Her teenage sons both lost their jobs when the factory they worked in burned down in Egypt's revolution.

Umm Karim, a mother from Ras Sudr in South Sinai, recounted how her four children, all diagnosed with leprosy, were expelled from the colony after just two days of treatment.

Even Umm Karim's small state pension of about $21 hasn't been paid. But a neighbor takes issue with Umm Karim's pessimism: "You don't understand," says Maghdi Said, who farms and has factories.