Friday, July 3, 2009
Thursday, July 2, 2009
First Day in Nablus and Honeymoon Phase.
If I had enough energy, I would write a book just about today. My head is overloaded of information and my clothing damp with sweat. I will do my best before my first impression gets confused with my second one.
The day started early and the ride was smoother than we expected. We caught a cab to the central station of Tel Aviv and then hoped on a sherut taxi to Jerusalem. We spent little time in Jerusalem and my observations are probably very superficial. I missed the wind that made my hat fly away from my head in Tel Aviv; without it, the sun feels hotter and heavier. Jerusalem is crowded and I lost all my minerals during the little walk we did with our big backpacks from the cab to Damascus Gate. We drove to the Nablus check point with a fun Israeli-Palestinian who sounded very excited about us going to Nablus. In fact, with an Israeli passport he cannot enter the Nablus himself. As we were driving away from Jerusalem, he told us about his family and he explained to us that on the left of the big freeway we were driving on live the Arabs, on the right the Jews. Also children attend different schools, and that is just the way it is.
We had read that we are supposed to walk through the check point by foot and then hop on another cab on the Palestinian side. Surprisingly, our taxi driver just stopped in a parking lot and told us to hop in another cab. While we were nervously waiting for the check point, we arrived to Nablus. The second cab driver spoke no English but had a very communicative use of his ten fingers. We bargain the price and got to the city center. Going from Nablus to Tel Aviv is quite a weird transition. Under this crazy sun, women wear long black dresses and their heads are covered.
Project Hope is like a family, and all the people we met today had a vibrant, positive energy. We dropped our bag at the office, signed some papers and discussed our project in more details with a young woman. They sounded excited about our project and we learned that we will be working with the children and teenagers at the Askar refugee camp. We will have three age groups: 9-11, 12-15 and 16-20. We will go visit the camp on Sunday, after the weekend that here is Friday and Saturday. The actual workshops will start on Monday.
We thought we were done for the day and looked forward to a nice shower… Instead, we got a tour of the city by a local volunteer. He was very friendly and happy to talk about his life. He studies English literature at the local university but he wants to become a professional translator.
Back to the Project Hope office we were given a short lesson on things we need to know about Nablus. The project coordinator explained to us that just a generation ago, women in Nablus ‘would wear short skirts’. He added that ‘The intifada and the latest Israeli invasion left people with nothing left other than religion’. We are also not supposed to talk about it during our workshops, or at least do very subtly.
The rest of the day game me euphoria (I am still trying to come down from this Honeymoon state).
After the meeting we visited our apartment which is a crazy house right in front of project hope’s offices. The evening included a concert with local musician in the French cultural Center, right next to Project Hope’s building. In the evening we met a lot of local volunteers and had chats about little things while we waited for the sun to go down. Nablus is just magical, (I cannot stop saying it) and I spent the evening with a deep state of well being that I had not felt in a while.
The evenings here end at around 11, the city gets too dangerous after this time. I share a dirty room with 3 girls and in the whole apartment there are around 30 people. We have one bathroom for girls, and one for the boys, only. People here come from all over the world and are all ‘special’ in some way. The house is covered with books of all sorts. I will turn around and give you some titles just to give an idea: ‘English-Arabic dictionary’, ‘This Week in Palestine’, Open call of proposal from the Eu ‘the Occupied Palestinian Territory’, ‘Hebron, Restriction of Palestinian Movement’, ‘the World’ s Most Dangerous Places”…and so on. All the volunteers are very friendly, passionate, and ‘into it’, very into it. Most of them know people, or have themselves been harassed by Israeli soldiers and they really feel for the Palestinian people. I arrived in the middle of a conversation about how humiliating, mean and just (quote on quote) ‘fucking inhuman’ the Israeli soldiers can be. I have troubles good and evil analysis… it is just not that easy to me. I was listening quietly for a while about people being stopped and mistreated for hours at the border, about 17 years old Israeli with big guns beating up 60 years old Palestinian man…than I got in the conversation. I was trying to see it from the Israeli’s point of view. However, the odium is so deeply rooted…it escalated with every violent episode. It is hard to be diplomatic here in Palestine. So hard because people feel it on their skin and each person has its own experience and it is through these lenses they perceive reality.
Today, as we were walking to the old city, the local volunteer showed us a destroyed house. It was just in the middle of the city and it was destroyed in 2002, by Israeli bombing. A whole family was killed, 4 children included. In front of the house there is a memorial, translated also into English. In big letters stands the sign ‘Never Forget… Never Forgive…’. In the back of my head my conscious tells me that this is destructive energy, but I cannot talk. I cannot talk because I don’t understand and because my house will probably never be bombed. My opinion stands in a limbo between feeling the Palestinian’s pain and wanting to find a way to think more rationally.
The day started early and the ride was smoother than we expected. We caught a cab to the central station of Tel Aviv and then hoped on a sherut taxi to Jerusalem. We spent little time in Jerusalem and my observations are probably very superficial. I missed the wind that made my hat fly away from my head in Tel Aviv; without it, the sun feels hotter and heavier. Jerusalem is crowded and I lost all my minerals during the little walk we did with our big backpacks from the cab to Damascus Gate. We drove to the Nablus check point with a fun Israeli-Palestinian who sounded very excited about us going to Nablus. In fact, with an Israeli passport he cannot enter the Nablus himself. As we were driving away from Jerusalem, he told us about his family and he explained to us that on the left of the big freeway we were driving on live the Arabs, on the right the Jews. Also children attend different schools, and that is just the way it is.
We had read that we are supposed to walk through the check point by foot and then hop on another cab on the Palestinian side. Surprisingly, our taxi driver just stopped in a parking lot and told us to hop in another cab. While we were nervously waiting for the check point, we arrived to Nablus. The second cab driver spoke no English but had a very communicative use of his ten fingers. We bargain the price and got to the city center. Going from Nablus to Tel Aviv is quite a weird transition. Under this crazy sun, women wear long black dresses and their heads are covered.
Project Hope is like a family, and all the people we met today had a vibrant, positive energy. We dropped our bag at the office, signed some papers and discussed our project in more details with a young woman. They sounded excited about our project and we learned that we will be working with the children and teenagers at the Askar refugee camp. We will have three age groups: 9-11, 12-15 and 16-20. We will go visit the camp on Sunday, after the weekend that here is Friday and Saturday. The actual workshops will start on Monday.
We thought we were done for the day and looked forward to a nice shower… Instead, we got a tour of the city by a local volunteer. He was very friendly and happy to talk about his life. He studies English literature at the local university but he wants to become a professional translator.
Back to the Project Hope office we were given a short lesson on things we need to know about Nablus. The project coordinator explained to us that just a generation ago, women in Nablus ‘would wear short skirts’. He added that ‘The intifada and the latest Israeli invasion left people with nothing left other than religion’. We are also not supposed to talk about it during our workshops, or at least do very subtly.
The rest of the day game me euphoria (I am still trying to come down from this Honeymoon state).
After the meeting we visited our apartment which is a crazy house right in front of project hope’s offices. The evening included a concert with local musician in the French cultural Center, right next to Project Hope’s building. In the evening we met a lot of local volunteers and had chats about little things while we waited for the sun to go down. Nablus is just magical, (I cannot stop saying it) and I spent the evening with a deep state of well being that I had not felt in a while.
The evenings here end at around 11, the city gets too dangerous after this time. I share a dirty room with 3 girls and in the whole apartment there are around 30 people. We have one bathroom for girls, and one for the boys, only. People here come from all over the world and are all ‘special’ in some way. The house is covered with books of all sorts. I will turn around and give you some titles just to give an idea: ‘English-Arabic dictionary’, ‘This Week in Palestine’, Open call of proposal from the Eu ‘the Occupied Palestinian Territory’, ‘Hebron, Restriction of Palestinian Movement’, ‘the World’ s Most Dangerous Places”…and so on. All the volunteers are very friendly, passionate, and ‘into it’, very into it. Most of them know people, or have themselves been harassed by Israeli soldiers and they really feel for the Palestinian people. I arrived in the middle of a conversation about how humiliating, mean and just (quote on quote) ‘fucking inhuman’ the Israeli soldiers can be. I have troubles good and evil analysis… it is just not that easy to me. I was listening quietly for a while about people being stopped and mistreated for hours at the border, about 17 years old Israeli with big guns beating up 60 years old Palestinian man…than I got in the conversation. I was trying to see it from the Israeli’s point of view. However, the odium is so deeply rooted…it escalated with every violent episode. It is hard to be diplomatic here in Palestine. So hard because people feel it on their skin and each person has its own experience and it is through these lenses they perceive reality.
Today, as we were walking to the old city, the local volunteer showed us a destroyed house. It was just in the middle of the city and it was destroyed in 2002, by Israeli bombing. A whole family was killed, 4 children included. In front of the house there is a memorial, translated also into English. In big letters stands the sign ‘Never Forget… Never Forgive…’. In the back of my head my conscious tells me that this is destructive energy, but I cannot talk. I cannot talk because I don’t understand and because my house will probably never be bombed. My opinion stands in a limbo between feeling the Palestinian’s pain and wanting to find a way to think more rationally.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv is a strange city. There is a little bit of everything: Huge skyscrapers stand in the middle of unfinished ground level houses, large streets like in most American cities and little ‘Europeanish’ roads with Asian and African smells. People are good looking, easy going and a lot of American English is spoken on the streets. All the people we met during the day were extremely cordial. Through Couch Surfing, Meike got in contact with a guy who hosted us for two nights allowing us to be a little more ‘insiders’ and to save the money for a hostel. He is an interesting guy who plays in 3 bands and works in the oldest bar of Tel Aviv which, he tells us, has been in business for 20 years. He has a serious look when he is in standby but his smile is very warm.
The day went by super quickly. We walked to the beach that is only ten minutes away and walked around for the rest of the day. We are catching a shared Taxi to Jerusalem in a few hours and I cannot sleep. I ended my day in the bar next door which reminds me of one of the many coffee shops in New Orleans. I ordered a beer which will probably be the first and last one this month and read the first twenty pages of Thomas Friedman’s ‘From Beirut to Jerusalem’. Reading about the Middle East’s history in Tel Aviv is a whole other story.
The day went by super quickly. We walked to the beach that is only ten minutes away and walked around for the rest of the day. We are catching a shared Taxi to Jerusalem in a few hours and I cannot sleep. I ended my day in the bar next door which reminds me of one of the many coffee shops in New Orleans. I ordered a beer which will probably be the first and last one this month and read the first twenty pages of Thomas Friedman’s ‘From Beirut to Jerusalem’. Reading about the Middle East’s history in Tel Aviv is a whole other story.
Interlude - Tel Aviv
06/30/09 12:21 AM Tel Aviv, Israel
Here we are in Tel Aviv, in a house which is … quite the place. Meeting up with our couch surfing host here in Tel Aviv was surprisingly easy: ran into each other walking down the street in the middle of the night, really. We spent a couple hours at a bar with some friends of his. Great people; very interesting, progressive and forward thinking. None of them were religious. Probably the best comment of the night came from one of the Jewish guys on the topic of baseball in America: “It’s such a strange game, I didn’t’ understand it at all. The highlight of the game was when three wieners ran around the bases.” I then proceeded to try to inform him of the finer points of baseball, of which I believe I failed miserably.
Tel Aviv is such an interesting and different city from anything that I have experienced. Maybe the most similar place would be Barcelona and Spain, but it is still far removed from that. I’m not sure what I thought a Jewish city would be, but I think I felt it would be different from this.
From the areas that I have seen, it seems like a city of almost slums surrounding ‘gems’ of elegant high-rises. It is a very dirty, bustling, vibrant city. I don’t say these things as a bad impression. I am amazingly fascinated by this city, a city where, right next to a brand new, glass window display for a high-class dress boutique, there is a crumbling, gutted, windowless housing block. It is, if anything, a city of extreme contrasts:, reflective, I think, of the whole land itself.
It is hot here. Hot as hell. And it never goes away. It is hot inside. It is hot outside. The heat is stifling in the daytime, and still present at night. You sweat. You sweat bottles. I can’t get used to a place like this. I don’t think I ever could. I’ve always complained about living in cold places, but I guess I’m made for it. I could never live in this place, though it is nice for a visit.
Tomorrow morning we are starting our day early. Have to pack up, (hopefully say goodbye and thank our host, take care of a few items, and find the Sherut Taxi to Jerusalem. From there we take another taxi from the Damascus Gate to Ramallah, West Bank and from there we can grab a taxi to Nablus. God willing, everything goes according to the sheet and goes fine. If not, we’ll have some fun! We are still not 100% about the situation we are going into at Project Hope: how many kids, ages, English level, how long and often we are instructing, but it’s all good, we just take it in stride as it comes. We have some activities ready, and sat down at a café today to get a rough outline planned. The first hurdle is, of course, introductions and beginning to get an understanding of who these kids are and where they come from, life-wise.
While we are instructing a “photography workshop”, a lot of it is going also be basic cultural understanding and exploration. But I’m very interested in the artistic possibilities of these children. If we can get them to open up and really explore themselves and their surroundings, the extreme situation that they have been raised in could really provide some amazing inspiration for them, and me as well.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Tel Aviv - Bar Relations
June 30th 2009, 4.30 am. Tel Aviv, Israel.
The day was exhausting. We are laying in the couches a cute small bedroom appartment and we are both about to pass out.
At the passport check a petit young girls asked as just wnough questions to make us nervous. We were both pretty intimidated. We changed some euro into Shekels and used a paied phone to call Drohr, our couchserfing contact. We got on a trian to the city center and wen to meet him in the bar where he will be working until 6 am. We met some of his coworker and an girl from california. Funny talk about religion that went more or less like that:
Israeli guy: Are you jewish?
Us: nop.
Israeli guy: are you christian?
Us: as chirstian as you can be (ironic)
Israeli guy: Religion is just a waste of time
We talked about our trip to Nablus and drank a beer each. One Palestinian, one Israeli to be fair.
They had a very distinguished taste. We also got in a conversation about laws and the police.
The appartment where we are now is colorful and lived.
The day was exhausting. We are laying in the couches a cute small bedroom appartment and we are both about to pass out.
At the passport check a petit young girls asked as just wnough questions to make us nervous. We were both pretty intimidated. We changed some euro into Shekels and used a paied phone to call Drohr, our couchserfing contact. We got on a trian to the city center and wen to meet him in the bar where he will be working until 6 am. We met some of his coworker and an girl from california. Funny talk about religion that went more or less like that:
Israeli guy: Are you jewish?
Us: nop.
Israeli guy: are you christian?
Us: as chirstian as you can be (ironic)
Israeli guy: Religion is just a waste of time
We talked about our trip to Nablus and drank a beer each. One Palestinian, one Israeli to be fair.
They had a very distinguished taste. We also got in a conversation about laws and the police.
The appartment where we are now is colorful and lived.
Here we come-
Tuesday, June 29th 2009. 20.30, On our way to Tel Aviv.
As I write, we are flying over clouds. Under us lays Berlin. After almost two months of planning, filled with many 'technical' problems, sitting on this plane I am taking a deep breath. Berlin is already far away and as for every departure, I have mixed feelings of nostalgia, fear and excitement.
Traveling is always an adrenaline boost, but this trip is something more important to me. I feel like it represents a smart compromise between my curiosity to understand a little bit more about human beings and the need to invest my time to 'give something back'. As a student, I have been feeling pretty much like a leech. I have been sucking knowledge left and right. I have been traveling, exploring, reading, writing and taking silly tests; it has been all about me. Now, when I say that in this project I want to 'give back' I am aware that what a 22 years old has to give is not too much as I am aware that I will probably end up taking a lot anyways…but it is a fair balance, it is more 'sustainable' learning, and it makes me feel energized.
The idea of going to Palestine has been in the back of my head for a couple of years at least. I have internalized this dream so much, that I can barely remember where it comes from. As I am getting so close to realizing it, I only yesterday started rethinking about what are the reasons that pushed me to spend so much time working on this project. The quick conclusion is that what brings me to Israel and Palestine is a sense of frustration. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict echoes in politics all around the world and understanding it, or trying to, is a must of every international relations student. However, when one tries to figure out the chain of events and the root of the problems it is very easy to crash with a list of biased analysis of history, religion, culture and politics that make it challenging to have a general picture of the story. Every article, discussion and book on this topic left me with a sensation of looking at a half-megapixel picture, of a thousand years old tale. So, after having repeated for a while this exercise of frustration, I decided that trying to understand people without getting to know them is just pointless, and here I am, on this flight to Tel Aviv.
I am definitely here for the stories aware that I will have to process them, put them in prospective and make my own puzzle, which will remain doubtlessly unfinished. I expect to go home in a month with a ‘feel’ (and not an understanding) of what it means to live in the West Bank which will share my suitcase with a lot more frustration and a new list of unanswered questions.
As I write, we are flying over clouds. Under us lays Berlin. After almost two months of planning, filled with many 'technical' problems, sitting on this plane I am taking a deep breath. Berlin is already far away and as for every departure, I have mixed feelings of nostalgia, fear and excitement.
Traveling is always an adrenaline boost, but this trip is something more important to me. I feel like it represents a smart compromise between my curiosity to understand a little bit more about human beings and the need to invest my time to 'give something back'. As a student, I have been feeling pretty much like a leech. I have been sucking knowledge left and right. I have been traveling, exploring, reading, writing and taking silly tests; it has been all about me. Now, when I say that in this project I want to 'give back' I am aware that what a 22 years old has to give is not too much as I am aware that I will probably end up taking a lot anyways…but it is a fair balance, it is more 'sustainable' learning, and it makes me feel energized.
The idea of going to Palestine has been in the back of my head for a couple of years at least. I have internalized this dream so much, that I can barely remember where it comes from. As I am getting so close to realizing it, I only yesterday started rethinking about what are the reasons that pushed me to spend so much time working on this project. The quick conclusion is that what brings me to Israel and Palestine is a sense of frustration. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict echoes in politics all around the world and understanding it, or trying to, is a must of every international relations student. However, when one tries to figure out the chain of events and the root of the problems it is very easy to crash with a list of biased analysis of history, religion, culture and politics that make it challenging to have a general picture of the story. Every article, discussion and book on this topic left me with a sensation of looking at a half-megapixel picture, of a thousand years old tale. So, after having repeated for a while this exercise of frustration, I decided that trying to understand people without getting to know them is just pointless, and here I am, on this flight to Tel Aviv.
I am definitely here for the stories aware that I will have to process them, put them in prospective and make my own puzzle, which will remain doubtlessly unfinished. I expect to go home in a month with a ‘feel’ (and not an understanding) of what it means to live in the West Bank which will share my suitcase with a lot more frustration and a new list of unanswered questions.
Monday, June 29, 2009
Setting Out
06/29/08 8:34 PM. En route (somewhere over Hungary I think) to Tel Aviv
Hello fellow adventurers (in spirit at least!)! First let me thank all of you for you support and readership. We really hope that this blog will allow you to join us in experiencing this journey that we now depart on.
When Gioel first about a month ago told me about her planned project in Palestine, I thought that it was an absolutely amazing idea. When she called me on Friday afternoon with the offer to join her, I was absolutely speechless. I couldn’t believe what she was telling me: join her in the chance of a lifetime to visit The Holy Land, but not just visit, actually serve, help, and become involved with the people of the West Bank. After giving it a good moment of thought I called her back and told her to put me on the flight; lets do this. I believe that this will be one of the most important decisions that either of has ever made, and I truly think (and hope) that we will emerge from this experience changed in absolutely every way for the better.
I am so excited to be able to work with these children of the Balata refugee camp in Nablus, to expand both their and my horizons in new and unknown ways.
This is such a fascinating and absolutely unknown land for me that I really have absolutely no idea what to expect, but I know that whatever it is, in whatever way it manifests itself it will be great. And of course I will proceed into the unknown with an open mind, and my wits about me.
So we should land in a couple hours in Tel Aviv, staying tonight and tomorrow night there, with a couch surfing contact (another first experience for me!) and that will give us tomorrow to explore Tel Aviv for ourselves before we set out on the journey to Nablus on Wednesday (July 1).
Thank you all again for keeping Gioel and I in your thoughts, and please follow along on this blog, let us know your comments and feedback, and we will both do our best to bring you as close as we can to Palestine.
From Foreign lands, yours truly,
Erik
Hello Everybody
Welcome!
Hello everybody,
This blog is a quick way to follow out project in collaboration with Project Hope Palestine.
In the following weeks we will post out pictures and stories and we invite you to give us feedback and leave comments. This is our way to thank you for all your support.
As a quick update, this program has been organized and developed by Alex, Gioel and Meike. Gioel and Erik are on their way to Tel Aviv and Meike and Alex plan to join in the second part of the month.
Thank you again for reading,
We hope you enjoy.
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