Hello friends. I've been in Bethlehem for a week and a half now, and time is moving quickly. I'm busy with many projects and I'm exhausted, but it's a welcome exhaustion borne of concrete and tangible work and not simply the general emotional exhaustion of living in Palestine.
I want to modify a statement I made in my last report. I called Bethlehem one of the "deadest cities I've seen". I think instead that life is more concentrated here. In the outskirts of the city few shops are open and I don't see many people on the streets, but the marketplace is thriving and there seems to be a bit of a night life. Or at least enough of a night life to draw a lively crowd at a hip hop show I attended last weekend. The group is called Dam, meaning 'eternity' in Arabic, and their signature song is 'Who's a terrorist?' I wish I could have understood more of their lyrics, but it was nice simply to be in a room with politically charged music and to witness the young Palestinian hip hop scene (young both in the sense that it's just beginning to develop and also literally the age of the crowd (mostly pre-teens and teenagers). Dam is from Lod, a town within the current borders of Israel (quite close to the airport) that is split between Palestinians and poor Jewish immigrants. There's apparently a wall between the Palestinians and the Jews in Lod, similar to the wall being built through the West Bank. I hear that people are shocked when they go there, which I plan to do with a delegation from Boston at the end of August.
Preparing for this Boston delegation has been one of my time-consuming projects, but one that I'm most excited about. The more I work in Palestine, the more convinced I become that people need to come here and see for themselves what is happening. To get acquainted with Palestinian life to some degree, and to experience what it means to live under occupation. Of course I will never feel exactly the way a Palestinian feels, but the closer I can get, the more effective I think I am in my work for justice. [Anyone who's interested in coming here, please contact me. I'd love to give you suggestions or help plan an itinerary for a group.]
I've been practicing for the delegation by playing tour guide a few times in the past couple days. A friend of mine from college just participated in the Birthright Israel trip (a free trip to Israel for young people who haven't been to Israel before). She and another participant were exhausted from the Israeli propaganda they received over the past week, and wanted to come see a bit from the other side. I showed them around Bethlehem (to the best of my ability), and told them a bit about the Wall and the settlements. Last night the other folks in the Palestine Summer Encounter program came to Dheisheh to take a tour with my host father. I didn't do all that much work beyond arranging the trip, but tomorrow I'll take the group to the Salfit region and really will act as a tour guide for the day.
I'm working with two Palestinian organizations here. Shiraa, the Laborers' Association for Studies and Development, is entirely run by volunteers and has no money, but does excellent work (Abu Rabia, my host father and director of Shiraa, actually attributes Shiraa's effectiveness to its lack of money, although at this point he'd be happy to have a bit of funding for some of the projects). Shiraa has taken a lead role in supporting the municipality workers in the Bethlehem area, who have been on strike for a couple weeks because they have not been paid in several months. The organization supports families as well, through English classes, a women's embroidery cooperative, a dabke troupe and other youth activities, etc. I plan to help with the embroidery cooperative for the short time that I'm here, specifically in regards to worldwide distribution (so if you have ideas, please let me know!).
The other organization I'm working with, the Arab Educational Institute (AEI), focuses on nonviolent education with both Christian and Muslim Palestinians. Their 'summer school' (a week of presentations and workshops about nonviolent change, cooperation, and more) is coming up next week, and I'm charged with preparing the icebreaking activities for the week. It's been interesting trying to convey my ideas to people from a different culture and in a different context than I'm used to. After the summer school ends, I hope to work on another project: conducting interviews with some of the young people from AEI who have traveled abroad to attend conferences or speak. I'll pose tough questions to them to see how they each choose to 'communicate Palestine,' and possibly offer some of my own thoughts at the end.
It seems I've written a full e-mail about work, but I'm learning just as much from my wonderful host family as I am from all the projects I'm trying to coordinate. The oldest kid, Rabia, is a good language study partner, and I've played card games and chess with the other three (although the youngest, Yazzin, is a 10-year-old clown who never misses an opportunity to cheat). I attended my first Muslim wedding a few nights ago, and while I didn't always appreciate being in a small room with about 75 women while the men were dancing outside, I did notice that the teenage girls danced freely with the older women, and the self-consciousness level was considerably lower than I've seen in mixed gender groups (in Palestine, the US, and everywhere else I've been).
More next week, but for now, that's my update from the holy land.
-Hannah
