Palestine, being a Muslim country is different than the United States in that their weekend tends to be either Thursday/Friday or Friday/Saturday because their holy day is Friday instead of Sunday like us. So when I arrived on a Thursday afternoon I bought myself some time to get adjusted since the office was closed. Friday, the weather was still horrible and because of that and the weekend many shops were not open. However, I had no food to eat in the house and though my roommates said I could eat some of theirs I thought it best to take advantage of two of my flatmates going to one of the shops to buy toilet paper.
Nablus is situated between two Mountains, well I'd call them giant hills but anyway, Nablus lies between Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim and the town itself is rather hilly so you can only imagine what it would be like to venture out in the pouring rain. Crossing the street was like trying to cross the Nile it seemed. At one point I was standing on the side walk and right in front of the curb was a fairly fast current of rain water going down the hill so I was looking around trying to find the shallow area for me to step down into. But looking across the road it soon became apparent that no such area existed. Rain was streaming across the entire road so I had better just jump in if I wanted to cross. I bounded across the street the best I could arrived on the other side with wet shoes, wet socks and making a squishy noise as I left a trail of wet foot prints behind me in the grocery store.
The store is nothing remarkable. It's a fair size with an interesting mix of Palestinian, Israeli, US and who knows where else products. It is kinda expensive, but it is nice to be able to find things all in one place and not have to make multiple stops. I bought stuff with the idea of trying to get enough of the basics that I wouldn't have to shop for them for awhile, like a bag of rice, bag of popcorn, several bags of pasta and some other odds and ends. The excursion wasn't very eventful but necessary and it made me feel like I had done something.
The following day was a Saturday. The weather was still crummy but some of the volunteers work at the local rufugee camps/town and two of them asked if I would like to go along with them observe their classes. I jumped at the opportunity because honestly at that point I was terrified. Never having taught English I had no idea what I was getting myself into. We started the day off at Askar Girls School at 8am.
Askar Refugee camp was established in 1950 and is estimated to have 14,629 residents. It's not at all what I expected. I have only walked down the main city street so my judgments/impressions at this point really mean very little. But walking down the street it seems almost like any other street in small town America. Shops line the streets, people bustle from on shop to another, shop owners linger on the side walk talking to customers/friends that they've probably known for years. The school we volunteer at was built by the United Nation and is a school just for girls. It is much bigger than I thought it would be with its four buildings built around a open gym like area that the students use for their "sports" class. My arrive caused a minor stir, first with the head mistress who was eager to recruit me to work in the school from now on and second from the students who all wanted to know my name.
Because we only meet our Saturday students on Saturdays we meet with them for two hours instead of one. I spent the first hour with the volunteer working with the younger age rang. Because Saturday school is not mandatory children are allowed to show up or not show up at will. Sometimes they will bring friends and/or family members with them. That day one of the girls had brought their little sister with her to sit in on the class. The kids were loud and active, just like children are suppose to be. You had some that wanted to pay attention and others that just wanted to hangout with their friends. At the hour mark I went and sat in on another volunteers class. This volunteer was working with older girls and was going to use me for her lesson. She knew the girls would be curious about me so she told them they could ask me questions but I would only answer said question if it was ask correctly. It was fun to see these girls in action. They are a delightful contradiction to the girls I worked with in Benin.
At 10 we left and made our way to another one of the refugee camps. This camp, Balata, is home to over 17,000 residents. However, that is only an estimate and it is possible that the number is actually much higher. Balata was built by the UN to house refugees from the city of Jafa after the war with Israel. At first these people refused the UN's offer. They wanted to return to their homes they didn't want permanent homes to be created for them. So in 1952 the accepted the UN tents.
This is a picture of Balata camp early 1950's.
This is a picture of Balata camp early 1950's.In 1956 these people accepted the UN's offer of building concrete houses to replace the tents they were living in. The school also built by the UN was not as nice as the school in Askar and behavior of the students was generally worse as well. I feel like life in this camp may be harder than that of Askar and perhaps this explains these differences, again I am too new here to know anything for certain.
After leaving Belata we headed to a woman's center in a different area of town. This was the first class that I observed that had both boys and girls mixed together. These were all young children that we were dealing with. It was a fun lesson filled in which we talked about direction words, played pin the tail on the donkey and bingo using pictures of animals. These kids met for only an hour.
At the end of the day I was beat and so thankful to go home.
1 comment:
I didn't get any Nov. posts!?
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