I want to put a blurb on my time with the ICAHD (Israeli Commission Against House Demolition) crew. Chris and Tim picked me up at around 8:00 ish, if I remember correctly. Then we drove down to the site in East Jerusalem, technically part of the Westbank. There were a group of thrity or so Internationals, from Spain, France, and America (and lowly me, too). The internationals were all tennis shoe-wearing grunt labourers, and the actual builders were Palestinian. We moved rocks and garbage, hauled dirt to cover the front yard and did this all with zero tools. Strange, I thought, to myself as I was clawing at hard dirt and putting handfuls at a time into a bucket. There were only five buckets and the rest were using sticks or whatever to pry the hard red soil apart. Nobody really knew what to do and I soon realised that the effort was just as much about community as it was about getting work done. I don't want to give the wrong impression about the re-building. The house had been built in two weeks (from what I could gather). It was a simple design, with nice kitchen cabinets and the ever-present tile floor. I love all the tile and ceramic here and think it rather classy. There was very little for us grunts to do and Chris, Tim and I felt we were kind of in the way (at least I felt that), so we left around 11 and had lunch with Bassem, who is Palestinian and works at MCC in Jerusalem. It was a good time and for the work I did, I sure did sweat alot!
Below is a "journal" entry I wrote yesterday, after returning, really sunburnt, from the beach. As explained in the entry, I am setting up a blog site, so that I will be out of your inboxes. Right now I am in an Internet Cafe and there is an extremely obnoxious man sitting beside me filling out his on-line dating form with his friend, who is Israeli. The man is obviously American (for the accent) and he is annoying the hell out of me. He treated the employee with total contempt and seems to be very full of himself, and lies, as he describes himself outloud, to his friend who is typing the commands. I thought I'd throw that in here, because it keeps me from telling him to shut-up!
When I get ADSL in my home, so I can build / maintain Zochrot's website, I will be able to get this blog site off the ground. I don't know when I will get ADSL and I don't know when I will be at an Internet Cafe again. I start work on Monday, and look forward to that!
Okay, this is from yesterday/Sunburnt!
This morning I woke up at eight. I was planning on sleeping in, but it was too hot to sleep, already. Last night I was up ‘til after one am, I had to go to the store to get some water. Between the hummus sandwich I ate yesterday and the nasty tap water in my apartment, I was in really rough shape. I was feeling the aches and boobely-boops even when just drinking a glass of tap water. I don’t think it was the tap water, alone; I am convinced it was the hummus pita I had for lunch. But it seemed clear to me that the tap water was only exacerbating the situation. So, when I was getting some water from the tap before going to bed, my stomach was screaming at me, and I heard the words of my landlady echo in my head about how gross the water is – she won’t drink it.
My landlady is nice. She’s my age, named Urit (as in Oorit), and was born in Israel. She has a friend staying with her from Toronto.
Last night, after my e-mailing fiascos I continued my walk and dipped my feet in the Med. Sea. (I was feeling very vulnerable and paranoid over who I had sent what to. I was actually trying to catch Porterhus up to speed and I think an e-mail that was supposed to be to Baart and a select few accidentally went to everyone. I can’t be sure until I check my e-mail to see if people are all upset; hopefully I didn’t send it out, like I think I did. I did send out a warning e-mail to delete it if it came to any unintended inboxes; but immediately upon doing that, I realised that would only increase the desire for people to read it. I am coming to hate the send button. I don’t know what it is about it: maybe its finality; maybe that I am expressing myself and feeling vulnerable about people judging me or thinking I need to fit a certain form. Like my pops, the other day, sent me an e-mail saying that the Burnett missions committee might object to some of my uses of language. That annoyed me because what am I supposed to do? Pretend to be someone I’m not? Present myself in a way that is supposed to impress people and communicate piety? I am who I am and it is what it is. I am going to just blog, instead of sending any more e-mails. I will send one last one to tell people my intentions. I just don’t fit in with the category I’m supposed to be in (evangelical Christian on a “mission.” I never have fit in, and I don’t like the feeling of thinking that people are being all offended or whatever. I don’t know what exactly changes in my feelings by blogging instead of e-mailing; I guess it’s the knowledge that people have to desire to read what I say, they have to type in the blog address and I’m not in their inbox, so they can’t blame me for being in their space in ways they find offensive or too strongly worded.)
Last night at the beach there was this van parked on the sidewalk, between the road and the beach and there were a bunch of bearded, tassled, side-curled Jews dancing their asses off to some kind of trance, techno music. Obviously I couldn’t understand the words, but I did enjoy watching them for a minute. There were about five or six of them, in matching clothes. Two were working the table of resources, books, etc., and two were on top of the van, dancing up a storm, then there was either one or two dancing just around the van. I thought of how D-Block back home would have joined right in, groovin’ out with the Jews. Burro D-Block misses you, D-Block.
There are some really cool restaurants right on the beach. They have five-foot high triangular lights all over, giving atmosphere and identifying the spot to people. I am not sure who owns which restaurant because there were several spread along the beach, the same style of lights and setup, but different colours. One had all green lights, another had all pink.
It was pretty packed in the streets last night. I know, now, why it is compared with New York and called the Little Orange in contrast. It, too, is a city that doesn’t seem to sleep. There are heaps of 24 hr places, and even at 11:30 last night, when I was walking to the grocery store to pick up some ketchup for my French toast this morning,and bottled-water to soothe my stomach, I noticed there were tonnes of people out eating dinner. Even old grey-hairs sitting around eating full-on meals at patios or inside restaurants. I haven’t figured out the concept of “weekend” here yet, since Saturday is the Sabbath and Sunday is the first work day of the week. Friday, sundown, begins Sabbath and Saturday, sundown ends it; I know people work shorter days on Friday, and I guess that there simply isn’t a two day weekend. It seems more like a five-and-a-half or six day workweek. Well, if I’m wrong, I’ll find out soon enough.
It’s amazing to me how many pubs and restaurants there are here. It seems like a total holiday getaway destination. It just has that feel.
When I got home at about 11 last night, from my beach tour, I met my landlady, Urit, as I mentioned above. She’s really friendly and showed me how to work my stove / oven, and how to clean the elements with soap and a toothpick – I did that after I got home from the grocery store, which is why I was up so late. My neighbourhood is really quiet, even though there are dozens of cats that live on my street. Someone is feeding them because this morning, when I was leaving to hit up a store to buy an alarm clock and some Internet connection stuff, I saw piles of catfood all along the top of a wallfence, with maybe ten cats havin’ at ‘er. They looked cool, all in a row like that. Skinny, really skinny; and a little creepy looking. Needless to say, I haven’t pet one yet.
On my errand outing, I bought a kettle for really cheap, some phone cord adapter stuff and an alarm clock. I also spent some of my precious little spending money on a twenty-dollar set of computer speakers. What it has done for my spirits is well worth it! I came home, set the stuff up, ate some peanut butter and jam sandwiches and phoned Eitan Reich from Zochrot, to ask him about ADSL. He is my point-man, so to speak, for the next few weeks, and it is from him I’ll be learning the grant writing stuff this coming week. He said he was about to call me to ask if I wanted to hang out tomorrow evening, get some coffee and chat, etc. I am very glad about that; not that I’m lonely yet (I’m not) but I am looking forward to talking with people and actually having conversation. I kind of like Tel Aviv for the fact that people will totally talk to you if you initiate conversation, but if you don’t, you don’t have to speak to anyone. It’s kind of like Vancouver that way; maybe like any big city.
After lunch, I decided to go to the beach for a swim. I made the horrible mistake of wearing my bathing suit there (and back, which is where I paid for it). Can I say diaper rash? Thankfully it is only one leg and before I left home I swiped my nephew and niece’s zinc cream – I should be healed soon enough. But, boy did that hurt, walking the twenty-five minutes home. On the way to the beach, I went to Dinzengoff Centre, which is a fairly large shopping mall ten minutes from my house (nearly halfway to the beach). To get in, I had to get my bag searched, which I am finding is a common occurrence. I also had to let the dude check me out with his beeping wand. I’ll get used to that, I suppose. I did not like the mall experience. I can’t stand malls. And the smell of McDonald’s, a powerful aroma wafting through the air made me rather uncomfortable – both with covetous desire and repulsive disgust. I steered clear, thankfully. I finally got back outside and before I knew it, I was at the beach.
There were umbrellas and lounge chairs everywhere. I noticed, again, the sign that forbade bathing or swimming. I stopped to ask a guy about it, and he was working for Diet Coke, giving out those little sample cans. It was so cold and I was grateful. I was with enough foresight to bring a bottle of water and a granola bar – but without the foresight to bring sunscreen. As I write this, I look like a lobster! As I was moseying toward the stairs to access the beach, the Diet Coke guy gave me another sample can. The guy told me that signs don’t mean anything in Israel. Okay.
The first thing I noticed about the sand, when I got on the beach was how unbelievably soft it is. I knew that from last night, but it is really dusty, powdery stuff. The second thing I noticed is that it was burning the hell out of my feet-bottoms. I tried to bear it, but in a nearly falling-over panic, had to put my flip-flops back on. I selected myself a lounger chair, under the shade of an umbrella. I turned to the Russian-looking fellow who was only a few feet away and asked him if he spoke English, then if it was safe for me to leave my stuff unattended while I swam. In his harsh Russian accent, he said “You tell me.” I found that rather confusing, but just marked my spot with my mind and went into the sea. It was so refreshing. Warm, but not gross-warm. The gross part is the floating garbage everywhere. Mostly plastic remnants. It’s not as gross as it seems like it should be; maybe the fact that there are heaps of people in the water normalizes the feeling of swimming with garbage.
In the water there was this brownish guy who was really friendly to me, even though we couldn’t communicate with each other, at all. He was a few years younger than me and I was wondering what I was getting myself into when he asked me to follow him. All he did, though, was lead me to his friend to ask his buddy if he spoke English. When his buddy said he didn’t, we all laughed a chuckle and I went back to the sea. The waves were super cool, crashing and providing some good body-surfing. There were a lot of people there, and I didn’t see many people who looked like tourists. There were a lot of really skimpy bathing suits on all sorts of people, male, female, whatever.
After twenty minutes, or so, I wanted to get out of the sun and retreated to my shaded lounger. The Russian dude asked me my name and told me his, Alex. He’s from Dallas, he said. We were having a nice, polite conversation when my brownish friend came running over, saying stuff I didn’t get and laid himself out in the sand beside my chair, talking about stuff. I hauled out my Hebrew dictionary and tried to ask him his name, but he didn’t speak Hebrew. He said something that contained the words, lo (which means no) and yehud (which either means Hebrew or Jewish). Then he said a few Arabic words I recognized and I realised he was Arabic. The guy was hilarious even though I couldn’t understand a word and he kept laughing that we couldn’t understand each other. After a couple of minutes he went back over to his buddy and their chairs.
I started half reading my Hebrew phrasebook and half people watching. I noticed Alex, the Russian, kept pulling out his digital camera and after a few minutes I realised he was taking photo after photo of girls in bikinis. He was hiding himself by keeping the camera between his thighs as he reclined, but I noticed he was doing a lot of zooming. Creepy, creepy, creepy! It reminds me of a documentary I once watched, with Geoff and Heather, about three Russian dudes and their quest for love in Vancouver.
Then I heard some yelling and looked over and it was this Arabic dude pointing at me and giving me thumbs up and laughing. I did the same back and he gets up, started running at me backward, making miming movements like he’s a bus, while both his friend and I laughed, then he makes a screeching sound, uses his right arm to signal the bus coming to a complete stop and crashed into a heap beside me again, in the sand. Man, I wished we could communicate; the guy was hilarious. He was pointing at and touching my tattoo on my right shoulder, but I couldn’t understand him, so I didn’t know what to say. It doesn’t matter, he couldn’t understand me. He touched the praying hands and we both laughed. He got up again and started rolling around in the sand back over by where his buddy was sitting, then ran into the sea to play in the waves. His buddy had jeans on and a t-shirt and just watched him. Eventually they both left the beach. We passed each other as he was leaving the water and I was entering. He gave me this huge high-five and shouted Allah Akbar, which I repeated, agreeing that God is, indeed, great. He kept shouting it as he and his buddy walked up the beach. It was a lot of fun.
I spent two hours at the beach, under shade most of the time, but still burned myself pretty good. Oh, I wanted to add that Allah is not the Muslim way of saying God, it is the Arabic word for God. Even the Palestinian Christians that I met call God Allah. That sure challenges the Sunday school stuff I learned about Allah not being God.
I didn’t realize that the lounge chairs and shade wasn’t free. I had to pay some guy who was working for whoever owns it all. I got my legit receipts, and it was NIS 12 for the lounger and NIS 6 for the umbrella shade. It’s about 4.7 NIS per US dollar, so what is that, four or five bucks? That’s not bad. After I couldn’t bear the sun on me any longer (even though I was in shade), I put my shirt on and started walking along the beach. I learned that there are open beaches for swimming, with lifeguard towers, that are only a hundred yards from where I was swimming. It doesn’t matter, though; everywhere had people, everywhere was packed. There is restaurant after restaurant and bars and pubs all lining the beach. Too rich for my blood, but when/ if friends/ family come to visit, I’m sure we’ll hit up some of those spots. They look so classy, yet comfortable.
I walked home a different route for the most part. I want to keep branching out and seeing more of the city. I carry my trusty map and it keeps me from getting lost. I walked past four different McDonald’s on my half-hour walk home. Crazy! Homogeneity! I was very eager to get home, hitching up my wet swimsuit for much of the walk. The rash I got is on my left thigh, but with a cold shower and some zinc cream (and a touch of hydroquartozone), it is all but healed now. GOOD. Well, I figure I’ll leave you all thinking about my left thigh. I am going to make a gilled cheese, if I can deal with the heat of a stove in my place right now.
Oh, the dairy in this country is so cheap!
D BLOCK OUT
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