Teaching and Learning

I've been lazy about posting since I actually started teaching - working with children might be the most wonderful yet tiring experience I've yet had. My schedule isn't even that rigorous - two hours of organized class a day, then a few hours of visiting houses, playing English-language games and speaking with the children - and yet by the end of the day all I want to do is collapse into bed with my book and a cup of tea. It's cold at night now - my tiny space heater barely heats the room, I sleep in a sweatshirt under three blankets, and the cold linoleum floor startles me to consciousness in the morning. I fall asleep to the sound of wild dogs barking and wandering through the fields, and I wake up to 100 high-pitched voices boarding the bus to school at 7 am.

I'm learning that teaching is all about learning to accept criticism, especially the harsh, biting criticism of 8 year old children. If I thought I was comfortable with failure before, I was totally wrong - some days I leave class feeling like I should just pack my bags and go home, that the kids would be better off without me as their teacher. Other days though - the days when the kids come running from their houses asking what time class begins, the days when I sing Head-Shoulders-Knees-and-Toes one hundred times over with a bunch of seven year olds, and they still want to sing it again, the days that end with me sitting on the floor in one of the houses, sipping tea and watching Barcelona kick Mallorca's butt with a group of 12 year old boys - those days I can't imagine being anywhere but here.

And then there is the ever-looming presence of occupation always creeping its way into the everyday lives of the people here. On most days, the people in Bethlehem's SOS village are able to carry on life without close incursion - they watch the violence elsewhere in Palestine on their televisions in the morning, then head to work or school or play, happy to be part of an international organization that has and will continue to withstand the destruction that is slowly eating away at Palestinian society. Yesterday, however, was not one of those days.

Government schools opened two weeks ago after having been on strike since the beginning of the school year. On the first day of school, you could almost smell the sense of relief in the air - everyone was happy that, at least for the short-term, life would continue normally for the students. Only two weeks later, a group of Israeli soldiers blocked off the main road passing by one of the schools, preventing buses from entering the premises to take the students home. A few (clearly not very thoughtful) students began throwing stones at the soldiers, in my estimation because of a mix of anger, frustration, desperation, and humor. Among those boys were three SOS kids - boys who grew up in the village where I live and now live in youth houses in downtown Bethlehem.

We didn't find out until later last night that one of the boys was shot. Fortunately, the bullet only grazed his stomach and arm, and a short operation has restored him (or will restore him) to perfect health relatively quickly. I just keep thinking that one inch in either direction and he could be dead, a more accurate shot by the soldier and he could be dead, any person - young, old, boy, girl - who picks up a stone and throws it in the wrong direction could be dead.

The world doesn't hear very much about these daily instances of physical violence - let alone the continuous structural violence that permeates every corner of life here. We read about the big events, like last week's massacre in Beit Hanoun. We read that an Israeli security team "inadvertently" killed 19 people in the Gaza town, mostly civilians, and that Palestinian military groups are threatening retaliation. We read that every country in the world except six agreed to publicly condemn the massacre, but no public condemnation ever happened because these six were able to prevent it. Perhaps if we read about these daily tragedies, we might not be so quick to pin the "terrorist" tag where we do.

this is life - i want to live.

today i traveled to sa'eer, a small village about twenty minutes south of bethlehem. im tamir's uncle passed away three days ago, and though i'm not sure of the exact purpose of today's gathering, i know that all of her relatives gathered to pay their respects and share lunch. sa'eer is near hebron, a city known for its proximity to a very large israeli settlement and the tension and violence which results from this pairing. sa'eer, though, is so quiet and peaceful and simple, i felt as though i was worlds away from any kind of intrusion from the outside. the roads have yet to be paved, herds of goats wander the streets like people, and the mountainside is only sprinkled with white stone homes, the remaining view filled with olive trees and vegetable gardens and a sky as blue and clear as a calm sea. from where we entered town, i could see no more than thirty homes, all of whom i gathered belonged to not-too-distant relatives of im tamir's family.

when we arrived this afternoon, im tamir (my "mother" here) and i were quickly separated from the men in our group, and shuffled to the party of women gathered in a nearby home. we removed our shoes and sat on cushions lining the floor, our feet covered with home-woven blankets to shield us from the fall breeze. blended scents wafted through the windows, a mix of animal and dust and fresh herbs from below, and the sound of babies crying and women chatting filled the high-ceiling-ed room. a few of the younger women were breast-feeding or rocking babies wrapped tightly in blankets, while i sat between im tamir and a distant relative, the oldest living member of her family. she wore traditional palestinian dress: a black dress with green, pink and yellow embroidery on the chest, and a white scarf over her hair. she briefly removed the scarf to show me her traditional headpiece. im tamir jokingly guessed that she is the only woman left in palestine to wear this - she may be right, because i asked around and still couldn't figure out what the hat was called. her eyes glowed warmly when i sat down to greet her, and when she took my hands in her own, i felt the wrinkles and callouses of a life of farmwork and children and hand-made clothing and cold winters and hot summers. she is like a living monument to an age past, to a culture and a people both barreling forward and desperately clinging to its roots.

after tea with the women, we walked up the hill to the house of im tamir's niece. im tamir's family owns a stone factory in the town, so all of the relatives are able to build very luxurious homes inexpensively. at the top of the hill, we entered the villa property, and walked a bit further through a garden of cabbage and mish mish (apricot) trees. the house itself was beautiful, though in places not quite complete. every room was of white stone, and the floors shone with the luster of brand new tiles. only the salon and the master bedroom were furnished, the other rooms all sported make-shift dressers of boxes and suitcases and mattresses and pillows substituted for beds and sofas. from the third-floor balcony we could see all of sa'eer, from the stone factory at the top of the mountain, all the way down to the strip of lush farmland in the valley. i watched the sun set and felt as though i was witnessing the transformation of some great piece of art, like monet's series, the same scene snap-shotted in different lights, each independently beautiful in its colors and minute details.

driving home, the chilly fall breeze slipped through the windows, and i closed my eyes and felt like i could have been driving through rural pennsylvania at night, it was so quiet. when we re-entered the bethlehem area, though, we were greeted by rows of israeli military cars and soldiers at the beit jala checkpoint, usually empty. the other three in the car whispered to one another in hushed voices, and i sat quietly in my corner, unsure of what to expect. we passed a hospital between beit jala and bethlehem and saw more israeli vehicles and crowds of palestinian men standing outside. when we arrived back at the village, we heard that a building nearby had been destroyed. israeli security patrols the streets at night, but in recent years they've rarely done more than arrest people (in this area: the story is different elsewhere). for some reason, though, an israeli construction crew began bulldozing the building at 3 am today, and worked well through the morning. in the disturbance that this action obviously caused, two palestinians were killed and one injured, including a teenage boy and an elderly woman. the building was on the same block as one of the SOS youth houses, where 15 teenage boys from the village live. when we returned to the village close to 8 pm, the boys were still hanging out here, uncertain about walking home.

i sat in the office downstairs this morning and chatted with a co-worker - jamal, also a former SOS kid - over coffee. as usual, the conversation inevitably turned to the political situation, and jamal told me about his childhood, first in a refugee camp in ramallah, then at SOS in bethlehem, about his studies at birzeit university, and about his current work in the village. i asked him if he ever thought about leaving palestine, and he answered with a definitive no. he said: "this is life - i want to live."