Qatf az-Zeitun

I met a bunch of clowns yesterday. They were traveling through Bethlehem on a tour of the West Bank with Clowns Without Borders, an organization which, after I looked online, I found is a fairly large and well-known organization throughout the world. Some of the clowns have professional training and have gone to clown school, while others are actors and performers by trade, and every once in a while they take month-long trips to war-torn parts of the world and perform clown shows in refugee camps and cities. These clowns were from Sweden, which obviously means that they were a funny cross between clown and eurotrash hipster - their hair varied in color from pink to bleach-blond to aquamarine, and the five of them collectively sported no less than 20 piercings on their heads/faces. They did about three shows in Bethlehem, one just on a Thursday afternoon and the other two at the Olive Harvest Festival, an annual event held in the center of the Old City.


The one on the left bears an uncanny resemblance to a friend of mine from Egypt (not an Egyptian friend). When he took off his nose it was even eerier.

So the olive-picking (qatf az-zeitun) thing is pretty big here. It's an age-old tradition which now has come to symbolize Palestinian heritage and nationalism, especially since so much land that was once used to harvest olives has now been taken by Israeli settlements, and the resource is slowly disappearing. I went with some of the boys from the village to Sa'eer, a small town south of Hebron where the school director's family owns over 200 dunums of empty, olive tree land. The trip was a day-long process. I didn't realize it at the time, but we brought a camping stove, a tea set, ingredients for tea and coffee, an arguila (sheesha, hookah. etc.) and enough food to last us a week should we need it. We had only been picking olives for about 1/2 hour before the men retired to a clearing up the hill and smoked and sipped coffee and chatted while we scrambled around on the tarps picking up olives. The more conservative women with us, who were wearing full hijab, hiked up their dresses and tied them around their waists, creating big sacks into which they pitched their pickings - they had it figured out. Compared to them, I felt about as efficient as the six-year olds (thats becoming a trend for me) who were meticulously filling up little plastic cups before dumping them into the big sacks, ultimately dropping half of their findings in the process. By the end of the day we collected two and a half huge sacks (three feet tall) of olives, loaded them into the car, and headed home just as dark clouds started to roll in, casting their grim shadows across the landscape.


It's beeing raining on and off here for the past two days. It's beautiful. Every morning smells like that first spring rain, the scent of rainwater mixing with dust and grass and slowly rising from the pavement. The rain is interupted by brief periods of bright sun, during which the children all emerge from their houses and play briefly before the next cloud moves in. When it started on Friday night, I was eating dinner in a house only about 20 meters from my room, but the children insisted that I spend the night there - they couldn't conceive of me walking home in what to them seemed like terrential rain. It's difficult to explain here why I love the rain so much - it reminds me of being at home. I kept my windows open last night, despite the chilly air, and let the sound of raindrops on the patio lull me to sleep.

another first

my next-door neighbors (really, my family here - i eat with them, watch tv with them, do my laundry in their house) have six children. the oldest is 22, followed by 20, 17, 15, 12 and 5.

sarah, who is 15, has a heart of gold. when i arrived, she quickly decided that no one in the family was allowed to speak with me in english, even though they all can, and yet is always the first to offer a reassuring word or two in my language when she notices my eyes beginning to tear up because i'm so overwhelmed that i can barely say hello. she speaks slowly so that i can understand, and offered me nescafe every morning during ramadan, even though she knew she couldn't touch it herself for another eight hours.

i've had a lot of "firsts" over the past fourteen days, and i'll call tonight my first experience with the emotional strain that the situation here inflicts upon people. sarah spent her summer at seeds of peace in maine with high school students from palestine, israel, jordan, egypt and the united states. i believe (though i don't know for sure) that jimmy carter founded the summer camp to bring students together in an effort to bring together future "leaders in the peace process". whether or not the camp meets this lofty goal is irrelevent for now; what it does do is bring people together and forge friendships that last long after the last day of camp.

tonight sarah was chatting online with an israeli friend from seeds of peace, whom i assume lives in jerusalem. the two girls reminded me of my little sister, chatting back and forth rapidly about their lives in unintelligable abbreviations and dancing smiley faces and smooching lips. her friend suggested that they meet up, and asked if sarah could come to jerusalem.

palestinians need a special permit to go to jerusalem, and though sarah's father's position would probably help her to obtain such a permit, the process is long, tedious, and inaccessible to most palestinians. instead, sarah suggested that her friend come to bethlehem and visit her home - she even offered to have a car pick her friend up at the checkpoint so that she wouldn't have to be alone on the palestinian side.

israeli citizens are legally forbidden to travel inside the west bank. while decisions at checkpoints tend to be arbitrary and the law is not consistently enforced, a sixteen year old girl will almost definitely not be allowed to visit here. so sarah and her friend won't get to see each other unless the laws change or unless they both leave the country.

and they only live 20 minutes apart.

welcome gifts

items obtained (as gifts) in the last 36 hours:

one (1) blue off-one-shoulder party top with pink stripes up arms,

one (1) hand-me-down navy blue sweater,

one (1) hand-me-down blue and green striped polo shirt,

two (2) mother of pearl hand-carved dove pins,

one (1) rosewood rosary,

one (1) pink plastic bracelet,

one (1) banana hair clip with yin-yang/heart design,

one (1) chocolate-covered marshmallow puff,

one (1) greek orthodox aluminum wall-hanging image of christ with bleeding heart.*

*will hang above my mirror for the duration of my stay here.

hong kong and calcutta

i'm quickly learning that nothing here is ever as simple as you expect it to be.

on my second visit to jerusalem, the bethlehem checkpoint was closed to palestinian travelers for the day, two days before the last friday of ramadan (an important day of prayer for muslims). i approached the checkpoint to find no less than 150 people waiting to go through, some sitting on the pavement, others pacing around anxiously, others heading for home in disappointment. i had heard of another road to jerusalem through beit jala, a nearby town, so i decided to try a new route; i had heard that the beit jala checkpoint was not nearly as stringent as bethlehem, anyway.

just outside the beit jala town limits, the road came to an intersection where we waited for a bus. an israeli military base - more like a bunker, actually- loomed nearby, hung with nets and camouflage, surrounded by barbed wire. five minutes out of town the bus pulled over and we were all told to climb down to have our papers inspected. we lined up on the side of the road, and two soldiers moved slowly down the line, staring blankly at our passports and work permits, never uttering more than a grunt or unfurrowing their brows. we climbed back onto the bus, and two older women were asked to climb down again. i figured they would simply show their papers again and climb back on - i couldn't imagine them walking back up the steep hill we had just descended in the midday heat. still, the door slammed shut behind them and we continued to jerusalem.

the difference between bethlehem and west jerusalem is shocking. the two are so distinct in demographics, appearance and WEALTH that it is difficult to believe they are so geographically close. fatima, an employee at the french consulate in jerusalem, and one of my new acquaintances (there are so many these days, it is sometimes hard to keep them straight), described the contrast as "hong kong on one side, calcutta on the other." the comparison is a bit extreme, but it serves its purpose. i sat in a cafe on jaffa street, (i think) one of the main drags in west jerusalem, and sipped an iced coffee amidst tables full of families and couples, some loners hovering over laptops or newspapers - i might as well have been in new york again. for a moment i felt like i was back at hungarian - the crowd, though slightly less self-involved, was certainly similar. physically, i fit in. still, i didn't feel comfortable knowing that life is so different and so much more difficult so close by.

i haven't been writing as much as i'd like to, because i'm having trouble deciding how to best convey my experiences here. i didn't intend for this blog to be inherently political, though i'm slowly learning that the politics are unavoidable. today a friend compared palestine to a prison - the people are not free to travel as they wish, cannot attend school, cannot send or receive mail, cannot even visit jerusalem, without the constant struggle and reminder that what was their land is somehow no longer under their control. my life is no where near as difficult as theirs is - my biggest problem these days is that i speak arabic like a six-year old and can't figure out how to say no when someone heaps more food onto my plate. but every day i see a little bit more of the reality that is living in palestine, whether it be a personal experience or a story told.

so consider my writing here not a political statement (though i suppose in reality that is what it is) and not a diary of my experiences, but a small view into a reality that in america we cannot otherwise access.

the first week

Yesterday marked the end of my first week in Bethlehem, and it was definitely not as I had expected. I don't think I ever really sat down and prepared myself emotionally for what it would be like to arrive totally alone, to start completely from scratch in a new language and to build up a support network from the ground-up. Even when I went to Egypt, I had a friend with whom I could commisserate, and was surrounded by other American college kids, all of us heads spinning and eyes wide. Here, I walked into a completely normal life, peaceful in its own right, and relatively uninterrupted for years. I am starting to settle in, but it is certainly going to continue to take time before I really feel like I belong here.

Slowly, as I get to know the children, I'm starting to get an idea of how they ended up in the village. One girl, Inas, is maybe 15 years old. She lives in the girls' house with the other girls who are older than 14. Though she speaks perhaps less English than I speak Arabic, we managed to have a broken conversation about her childhood, and I learned that she came (with her older brother, who is also still here - he loves to hug her and tell me she's his girlfriend) when she was about 8 after her father was killed in Jordan. Their mother couldn't provide for them anymore, so they came to Bethlehem where they would have all of their necessities. Another boy's family lives right in Bethlehem - I actually met his biological father when we went to church together on Sunday - but they rarely see him, and he doesn't visit very often.

My legs are in constant pain from walking up and down the hills in and out of town, but every day I take a new street and feel a little bit more comfortable. Yesterday took me back to the cell phone store for the third time this week; the owner obviously recognizes me and sort of chuckles every time I walk in. He knows I have another silly question about how to use my phone. I also tried to buy some envelopes yesterday so that I could start mailing letters - though I had directions, I couldn't find the store, and ended up wandering into a small tailor shop and trying to describe to the old man inside what it was that I was looking for. "I am looking for a small....(box shape with hands)....for letters. If I want to send a letter, in the mail...I put it in a....small suitcase, for the letter?" I managed to get my point across, and rather than pointing me in the direction, he stood up and walked me the half-block or so to the store. Typical Arab warmth. It turned out that he had actually seen me a few times before in town (this town is smaller than Wayne!), and he invited me to come back if I ever needed help again.

As it turns out, I managed to buy the envelopes and find the post office, but, like the public schools, the postal service is on strike. I am not sure yet what this means for sending and receiving mail, but I'll find out.

The children are starting to know me and take an interest in me; its nice to be walking along and suddenly feel a small body attached to my leg, or to be sitting reading and have a tiny pair of hands cover my eyes. I eat dinner with a different house every night (though during Ramadan most meals are taken outside, with everyone together), and some of the children ask me who I'm eating with each day, and when am I going to eat with their houses? It feels nice to be slowly breaking into a community, but I would still like to make some friends my own age; as fun as 10 year olds can be, theres only so much personal connection you can have with them.

The nights are getting colder; when the sun starts to go down, everyone disappears into their homes and reemerges later with a sweatshirt or jacket. It seems so strange to me that I was sweating when I arrived in the car last week, and now I huddle on a porch at 6 pm sipping tea to keep warm, and yet for everyone here it's completely normal. That's not a very profound statement, but it is a very interesting experience watching someone else's routine so closely. The details that I find so exciting are so simple and automatic, as I'm sure my own are when I'm at home in Wayne or New York.

walking and talking

For the first time today I wandered off the grounds of the village and walked for a while through Bethlehem by myself. The surface purpose of the visit was to get myself some food and a hot pot so that I might be able to eat during the day before 5 pm (there are only four of us in the village who are not fasting for Ramadan, and I feel guilty imposing on the other three for food everyday). In truth, my days thus far have been fairly empty, since everyone else is in school and busy with Ramadan preparations. I won't start teaching for another week or so, so my only job right now is to "get to know the village"...this leaves a lot of hours in the day to their own devices. We all know how well I don't do with free time, so I decided to take a walk.

As I trudged up my first hill this morning (Bethlehem, like most of Palestine/Israel/whatever-you-want-to-call-it, is all hills, all the time) I noticed the number of construction sites left unfinished. It seemed like every other building was either only half-built or undergoing some kind of restoration, but only a few actually had people working on them. I get the impression that, since the EU and the US cut funding to the Hamas-led government, most of the municipal projects have stopped or have been significantly slowed. As a result, the only projects that can continue are those that are funded by individual donors or by humanitarian organizations. Overall Bethlehem is a beautiful town; it's sad to see it deteriorate at the hands of a power-struggle.

After iftaar this evening, the employees and some of the older kids played a ping-pong tournament. They take their ping-pong very seriously here...At times I felt like I was watching an Olympic match. At any given moment there were no less than 25 spectators watching the games anxiously, and each point was followed by yelps and cheers. A lot of these people have known each other for their entire lives; for example, the director of one of the boys' youth houses, a really friendly guy of about 35, I guess, grew up in the village, went to college, and came back to work as a supervisor. These kinds of ties make it difficult to break in as an outsider, but at the same time I'm so impressed by the comfort and closeness of the community.

After the tournament ended, I had a long conversation with one of the activities coordinators here about his life in Bethlehem. He has lived in this part of the West Bank for his whole life, and just started working at the village last year (he explained to me what he did before coming to SOS, but my Arabic skills aren't yet honed enough to pick up the details...). The village is on top of a hill: looking out onto the glowing landscape, he showed me Jerusalem, the big football stadium nearby, the checkpoint separating Bethlehem from Jerusalem, and the nearby Israeli settlement, the largest of its kind in the West Bank. Since Israeli security tightened during the intifada, most Palestinians cannot pass into Israel, and only a few can obtain permission to work in Jerusalem.

When I first arrived, the village director explained to me the relationship between life as a member of the village and life as a member of the Palestinian community, socially and politically. He said that they are always aware of the political situation, but that once inside the village, it is no longer a primary concern. I wasn't sure what exactly he meant at the time, but I see now how the community in the village acts almost as a shield from the politics and conflict that exist outside. On the one hand, the two are inseparable: the conditions under which the children arrived in the village are a direct result of the political violence, and their education and medical services are slowly deteriorating as the situation worsens. On the other hand, once inside the village, the children develop in an environment that focuses not on conflict but on preservation of Palestinian culture and produces educated, tolerant individuals comfortable with diversity. Even though these first few days have been somewhat lonely and a lot overwhelming, I'm learning something new from them everyday.

min al-awwal

I've been getting a lot of requests for some material on this thing, so here I go, I'll start from the beginning (min al-awwal).

After a long and harrowing trip through Frankfurt to Ben Gurion airport, I surprisingly made it through security with no problems at all. My customs official, a sour-looking girl with dark eyes, must have been at the end of a long shift, for after a series of questions (the answers to which she didn't seem too concerned with), she stamped my page and let me through. The drive to Bethlehem from Tel-Aviv is surprisingly short - less than an hour with some traffic, and by 3:30 pm (9:30 am my time, exactly 24 hours after awaking on Sunday morning) we arrived in SOS Children's Village, Bethlehem, Palestine.

SOS Children's Village is part of an international organization that was established in 1949 in response to the growing global need for support and education for orphaned or otherwise parent-less children. The first Children's Villages were established in Europe in the aftermath of World War II, but the organization quickly expanded and is today active in 132 countries. The Village in Bethlehem opened in 1966, and was soon followed by a small grade school which serves both children in the Village as well as from the larger Bethlehem area.

The Village is organized, literally, like a small village. There are roughly 120 children living here, split up amongst 13 houses, all in close proximity to one another, like a little gated community. Each house is supervised by a volunter mother, most of whom have degrees in psychology or social work. Children live in these houses until they are 14 years old, at which point they move to a youth house (two boys' houses and one girls') where they have another "parent" who specializes in adolescent psychology. In addition, there are 4 or 5 volunteers who coordinate after school activities for the children, as well as an office of administrators who oversee the Village's activities, curricula and funding.

So far I've been most stricken by the closeness of this community, and their willingness to welcome me almost as a new family-member. Of course I speak Arabic like a 6-year old and the girls all think I dress like a slob (which I sort of do, I guess), but still, everyone, from the youngest child to the most experienced mother, treats me as an equal, helps me with my language, and expects me to pull my own weight. Once I begin my work full-time, as the only native-English speaker here, I'll be working with children to improve their English talking and pronunciation skills.

Only two hours after I arrived, I was invited to participate in a Village-wide iftaar, the evening meal shared every day of Ramadan after a day of fasting. Most of the children here are Muslim, and they all take their places at the dinner table 15 or 20 minutes early, licking their lips at the sight of the massive plates of food sitting in front of them. I always think it's funny that kids seem to have the same sense of humor everywhere - a funny face is a funny face is a funny face and a celebration yields the same excitement in every culture.

Usually, the children attend school for full days, 9-2 or 3ish, just as we do in the United States. However, since the EU and US decided to cut funding to the newly-elected Hamas government earlier this year, teachers in government schools have not been paid enough and as a result, public school children only attend school for half-days, if at all. This is a problem in particular for the middle and older children (12+ years), many of whom are hoping to attend private high schools or universities in the next few years. As with any form of government sanctions, the ones who suffer the most are those who have little or no power, and who need the most help.

This afternoon I visited every house, met the mothers and children, and tried desperately to remember at least one child's name from each house. With so many kids, so many smiling faces, and so many names that I can't even pronounce (the more determined kids make me repeat their name 10 or 20 times to make sure that am saying it correctly), I'm afraid I'll never be able to remember everyone. For now, a lot of them can't remember my name, so they call me Al-Ajnabiyya, foreigner. Other variations include: Katie, Cat, Cat-E, or, my personal favorite (which dignity dictated I nip in the bud immediately) Cat-Cot (Kitten or Kitty Cat). I guess until I learn their names, I can't fault them.