For those of you watching the news and worrying...

Everything is fine here in Nablus. The West Bank and Gaza are separated by Israel and are run by two separate governments, which are treated and regarded separately by Israel and by the world at large. Life is here just going on as usual. In fact, irony of all ironies, today is actually Palestinian Independence Day (despite the obvious lack of an independent Palestinian state). And for those of you not watching the news, for whom this post makes no sense, read this.

Sponsor a Child

Looking for a way to help Palestine this holiday season? For just $50 per month, you can help Tomorrow's Youth Organization provide a child from impoverished areas in Nablus and surrounding refugee camps with quality education and healthy meals! Click on the link below to learn more: http://www.tomorrowsyouth.org/support-us/sponsor-a-child/ 

"At night, when the sky is full of stars and the sea is still you get the wonderful sensation that you are floating in space." - Natalie Wood

The Dead Sea is the lowest point on earth,
making this bar the lowest bar on earth.

 There are no words to describe the sensation of floating in the Dead Sea. The water is saltier than salt itself. It hurts any open cut on your body and is slick like oil on your skin. The water is so buoyant that when you are on your stomach trying to swim, your feet somehow find themselves in the air. While walking into the water, there are random sink holes of Dead Sea mud, which is sold here for extravagant prices as body scrub but which I snagged a jar of from the sea floor. Since the words don't do it justice, I've posted a couple pictures.

Covered head to toe in Dead Sea mud. 

Floating and reading the newspaper in the Dead Sea.
Would have worked better if it wasn't so windy.

"You measure a democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists." -Abbie Hoffman

This was the second election night I've gotten to watch from the eyes of the Middle East.

Four years ago, tears were shed, all-night parties were held, horns were honking in the streets, and random people were approaching us in the streets yelling "MABROUK OBAMA" (Congratulations). The tone of this week's elections was considerably more subdued, though still overwhelmingly in favor of Obama. There were no tears of joy shed and nobody danced. People here have lost their sense of hope that Obama will make a chance in US policy toward Israel or Palestine, but there were offers of "mabrouk" within the center where I work, even accompanied in some cases with leftover Eid cookies. Four years ago, people around the world were full of hope. This year, we're all just looking for some stability and a little forward momentum.

Elections provided the opportunity to think back to election night in Tunisia four years ago, and look at how much my world has changed. Four years ago, I barely spoke a word of Arabic. I was in college with little idea of the career I wanted. Four years ago I was living under a dictatorship that fell in early 2011 to popular protests that swept across the region I have come to love. Four years ago, the only leaders the US had ever known had been overwhelmingly a group with whom I don't identify-- rich white men. Four years ago, I walked into my host family's house after an all-night party at the embassy watching the election results come in to be greeted with a giant hug from my host brother who said over and over "I never thought America would do it. I never thought they'd elect a black man", to which I couldn't help but agree, "I wasn't so sure we could either".

Today, white Americans are no longer the majority. The face of America is changing, and it's coming to look a lot more like the one I identify with and recognize as my America. It is overwhelmingly a little younger, a little darker in skin tone, a little bit more gay-friendly. This year, we elected our first Hindu senator in the state of Hawaii. The first gay senator in Wisconsin. This year we have the highest number of women elected to senate ever. And we still have a black (or at least non-white) president, and the first president to openly endorse gay marriage. Americans took to polls to legalize gay marriage in Maine and Maryland, and Minnesota became the first state to shoot down a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. We may even get a 51st state. Four years ago, I was hopeful about the direction my country was headed in, and I was met mostly with high unemployment rates and frustration.

Today, I'm still frustrated with my country and our policies on many issues, and experiencing this election year in Palestine has only thrown those frustrations into even sharper relief. But today I'm also proud of my country, because I think for the first time since I've been eligible to vote, I can say with certainty that despite everything, I am confident that my country is going in the right direction, even if much more slowly than I would like. Now if only we could get Michele Bachmann out of office...

“You educate a man; you educate a man. You educate a woman; you educate a generation.” - Brigham Young

Women's rights in the Arab world consistently rank low as compared to the rest of the world. There are definite issues of harassment, of degradation, of abuse and of a general lack of equality here. And while these issues come across as systemic in the region, change is happening, however slowly, and should be recognized and appreciated when it does.

Sexism is not specifically Arab, Muslim or Eastern. Sexism is still widespread in the United States today, even by those we entrust to run our country. Comments about "legitimate rape" and "binders full of women" and remarks like "slut" and "prostitute" directed at a college student aiming to support access to birth control and using medical, not sexual, reasoning proves that these issues are still alive and well in our own communities, and make me cringe and feel a little extra vulnerable as a woman every time I hear them.

But as a woman who feels particularly drawn to the Middle East, I would be lying to say that sexism is not something I worry about as I pack my suitcase, or think of my future career. The Middle East does rank poorly as a place for women, as does much of sub-Saharan Africa or Eastern Asia. I hear catcalls every time I walk out the door. But despite the ample warnings that we got upon arrival here, Palestine is doing a lot better than Tunis, where women's rights in general are more advanced but on an individual level I felt more ill at ease. In Palestine, maybe because the grasp of English is less strong, you get a lot of awkward staring and "Hello, how are you? Where you from?" and a few inappropriate words in Arabic that they assume I don't understand but I do. But a glare or averting your eyes will generally be enough to put a stop to anything.

I've gotten and heard worse here, but nothing worse than I've gotten walking down the streets of Portland. Which, in many ways, is precisely my point. Being a woman, to some degree or another, means tolerating being objectified no matter where you are in the world. And we should encourage and support those who are strong enough and brave enough to take a stand against such abuse.

The video shown here was produced by students in a Feminist Theory class in the Language department of University of Jordan, where sexual abuse is closer to what it is in Tunis than what it is in Palestine. These girls gathered together and as a school project, wrote out common phrases called out to them while they walked around campus or their feelings associated with it.

And equally as important as the women who stood up and made this video is the response of the university administration, which, dishearteningly, was to demote the professor who taught the class from Dean of the Language Department because of fears that the video provides negative publicity about the university as a whole. As societies, the best we can do is stand up against harassment and encourage, not discourage, others to do the same. Change is happening-- this video is proof that women here and around the world expect better.

"A vacation is having nothing to do and all day to do it in." - Robert Orben

Eid break is wrapping up here, and it's hard to believe that I only have four weeks left before I'll be back in Portland. Life here feels so normal that it seems like I could stay so much longer. Monday starts my final rotation of kids, the oldest group (11-12 year olds), and then the last week is final evaluations and wrapping up administrative work.

This last week I spent traveling Israel proper, so I spent a day in Jerusalem, one in Tel Aviv and Jaffa and three in Haifa. The trip north was an adventure of public transit. We walked to the bus station in Nablus, caught a bus from Nablus to Ramallah, from there caught a bus from Ramallah to Callendia (the big checkpoint between the West Bank and Israel proper by way of Jerusalem), then we caught an Arab bus so that we could do the slightly easier drive through checkpoint, which was stopped and boarded by an Israeli soldier who checked everyone's ID's. Military service is mandatory for Israelis, so men serve three years just out of high school and women serve two years. What this essentially translates to on the ground is that a kid younger than me with a gun the size of his torso boarded our bus, had clearly never seen Americans on the Arab bus before, and had, by all evidence, never seen an American passport. We got through fine, but not without the kid flipping the passport open and closed, open again, back to the front page, back to our visa stamps, and then back to the front the passport again before essentially shrugging us through.

From the Arab bus station inside of Jerusalem, we walked to our hostel to drop off our bags, and went out to explore the city. We got to Jerusalem on Shabbat, so West Jerusalem was pretty much shut down for the Jewish holiday, but the Arab side still had plenty going on, and a few streets in West Jerusalem had some restaurants and bars open as well. We met up with a couple of girls we had met our previous trip to Jerusalem and went out to get dinner and chocolate fondue, all of which was delicious. Time and time again while there I was struck with the disconnect of the people sipping coffee in the sunshine in Jerusalem while not even an hour away, people in Nablus lived in camps and poverty with F-16's flying overhead. The next day we headed into the old city, where I got immediate looks of shock and surprise when I spoke to the vendors in Arabic, and even more so when I said I was living in Nablus. A lot of tourists come through Jerusalem, most of whom don't speak a word of Arabic, and many of whom don't speak any Hebrew either, so I could tell it was an interesting break from the usual. From there, we caught a bus up to Tel Aviv.

Our only night in Tel Aviv, our basic goal was to experience American life. We went to an American bar right near the embassy, where we watched football, ate nachos, drank beer and experienced a little taste of home. The next day we went to the beach, choosing one closer to Jaffa (an Arab community outside of Tel Aviv), and once again was struck by the differences. Here I saw girls in hijabs giddily playing in the water, enjoying the day with their families, playing with the dogs on the beach, and I couldn't help but think of Balata refugee camp. Most of the refugees in Balata originate from Jaffa, so as I looked at the families and the coast and the parks, I thought of the kids I teach and how this could have been their lives in a different world. It made me mourn for the lives they would never know they were missing, and also made me wonder how these particular Arab families got to stay in Jaffa, while so many were forced out of their homes. From there we wandered into the downtown area of Jaffa, where once again I was met with surprise when I asked the three men standing near the cash register if they were in line in Arabic. Tourist communities are always so interesting to me that way. From Jaffa, we headed back to Tel Aviv to the central train station, and caught a train up to Haifa.

The train to Haifa was cramped and uncomfortable and we spent the duration of the hour and a half long ride sitting on the train floor, but when we got there it was well worth the wait. Think of Haifa as Florida-- lots of retirees and young people and not much in between. We spent the bulk of our time in Haifa at the beach, where I (sort of) learned to paddle board, read a good book, and met some interesting people. One of the things particularly apparent to me on this trip is that sometimes a good geopolitical debate is worth it, while other times, you just don't want to get into it with the random beach bum why exactly you are living in Nablus, why being in Israel makes you feel more insecure than you ever feel in the West Bank, and why Israeli policies are shockingly racist and uneven despite their cries of democracy-- which means that a lot of conversations go like this:

Beach Bum: So what are you doing here?
Me: Vacation
Beach Bum: Where are you from?
Me: America
Beach Bum: How long have you been here?
Me: (choosing my words carefully) I've been in Israel for almost a week.
Beach Bum: And how long are you here for?
Me: Two more days
Beach Bum: And then you go back to America?
Me: (stalling a little, looking around for a change of subject) Not quite, I'm going a few more places before I leave. I have to go. (abruptly leaving)

Better yet, three American girls together, all from different places in the US but saying that they work together, as well as that they met here, left many people with confused looks on their faces. It wasn't our plan to lie ever, simply to divulge the least amount of truth necessary for conversation if it wasn't someone we felt the need to talk with longer than a few minutes.

In Haifa, we also went to the Bahai Gardens (the second holiest site for people of Bahai faith) and a beautiful sculpture garden on our last day in town, before taking a taxi back down into the West Bank and returning to reality in Nablus. It's good to be home though and have a couple of lazy days before work starts-- vacation can't last forever.

A little taste of Portland in
Jerusalem

The beautiful Baha'i Gardens in Haifa, with the temple visible
at the bottom

One of many beautiful sculptures at the sculpture garden in Haifa

"I still believe that if your aim is to change the world, journalism is a more immediate short-term weapon." - Tom Stoppard

My small moment of pride for the week is that my recent post on TYO's WISE program was republished in both the Christian Science Monitor and Nextbillion.net. Check out my small moment of journalistic success here:
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Making-a-difference/Change-Agent/2012/1031/Incubating-women-s-businesses-in-Palestine

http://nextbillion.net/blogpost.aspx?blogid=3001

Done bragging now. I'll update about Eid vacation in Israel in the next day or two.

Incubating Women's Businesses in Palestine

The women in TYO's WISE program participate in a wide array of trainings,
 including Business English classes like this one.
Photo: Lila Wakili (Tomorrow's Youth Organization)

This post was written by me and originally published in Global Envision.

In Palestine, entrepreneurs are everywhere, but successful businesses are hard to come by.

The economic situation in Palestine is uniquely difficult, and aid agencies have stepped in to help maintain living wages as much as possible under the blockade imposed by Israel. In recent years, business development and entrepreneurship programs surfaced across the West Bank and Gaza, and suddenly there was an influx of people trying to start their own business to escape the crushing levels of unemployment.

However, many of the programs put in place lacked follow-through. Entrepreneurs were left to sink or swim on their own. “It was like walking them to a cliff,” explains Samin Malik, coordinator of Women’s Empowerment Programs at Tomorrow’s Youth Organization based in Nablus, Palestine. So TYO took a different approach--instead of just helping female entrepreneurs launch businesses, it helped promising new women-run businesses survive.

TYO’s Women’s Incubation Services for Entrepreneurs (WISE) brought back six businesses that had developed a foundation from their initial women’s entrepreneurship program--Fostering Women Entrepreneurs in Nablus, and recruited nine additional female entrepreneurs by running advertisements in local newspapers, radio and on Facebook. The requirements were simple--businesses had to have a foundation or business plan already completed, and had to be based in the northern West Bank.

Candidates who responded to ads underwent two rounds of interviews, designed not only to determine the entrepreneur's eligibility for the program, but also to assess her strengths and needs moving forward. Partnering with the Small Enterprise Center, TYO sent their final 15 candidates to one-on-one coaching early in the process in order to set their women up for targeted support and success. Additionally, the year-long incubation project will provide marketing, access to capital and financial growth trainings, as well as business English and social media trainings facilitated by last year’s Palestinian TechWomen delegation.

When planning for an incubation center, TYO kept in mind that the conservative culture in Palestine often limits businesswomen’s opportunities to participate in meetings, classes, conferences and other development programs. Furthermore, the psychosocial environment at times leaves women discouraged when they do not see immediate growth or results in their efforts to propel their businesses forward. By planning programming in the mornings and weekends, TYO is able to work around many of the restrictions on women’s mobility. Not only that, but establishing the TYO center in Nablus as the base for WISE, they are able to fill a gap by being the only business incubation center in the northern West Bank geared to women, and provide support to women who may not be able to travel all the way to Ramallah, where such programs are more common. By serving as a support system to the businesswomen, Samin and Inas Badawi--a local Palestinian--provide examples of female-to-female support that is uncommon in Palestine, and try to foster the same sense of encouragement between the women they work with.

It is this model of American-Palestinian cooperation that sets TYO’s WISE program apart from other entrepreneurship trainings in Palestine. Their model provides them with contacts and networking within Palestine, but also regionally and internationally because of the center’s connections with the U.S. State Department, the British-based Cherie Blair Foundation and U.S. organizations that support women's empowerment in the Middle East. While TYO is technically an American NGO, it is run largely by local staff like Inas and youth volunteers from An-Najah University. Due to its sustainable and holistic approach, TYO's incubation doesn’t just focus on building better businesses, but building a better community where women are integrated and have full participation in society.

Struggling businesses may currently be the rule in Palestine. But the 15 businesses in TYO’s Women’s Incubation Services for Entrepreneurs program are proving to be the exception.

Want to know more about the kids I'm working with?

Read profiles on a couple of them on TYO's blog: http://www.tomorrowsyouth.org/2012/10/intern-student-profiles-fall-2012/

“Graffiti is one of the few tools you have if you have almost nothing. And even if you don't come up with a picture to cure world poverty you can make someone smile while they're having a piss.” - Banksy

One of my favorite Banksy paintings

We went to Jerusalem and Bethlehem last weekend, so we saw all of Banksy's graffiti on and around the West Bank barrier wall. The experience of seeing all of the resistance art was incredibly moving, and has definitely been one of the starkest and yet most inspiring things I've seen since I've been here.

A beautiful mural of an olive tree breaking
down the wall

Jerusalem included a trip to the US consulate to talk about the possibility of foreign service work, a tour of the old city, a view of al Aqsa Mosque and Dome of the Rock from a distance (though not from inside because it was Friday so people were praying inside), as well as the Church of the Holy Sepulchre which is  the burial site for Jesus and the Wailing Wall. It was so interesting to see a city so incredibly steeped in religious history. One of the biggest things about just entering Jerusalem is that you have to enter through one of two checkpoints. One, Calendia checkpoint, is a walking checkpoint, which is usually a faster way to get through into Jerusalem. Because we went on a Friday though, and so many people wanted to go to al Aqsa to pray, we took a bus to the drive through checkpoint in order to enter the city, an option available to us as non-Palestinians and to Palestinians who have managed to obtain permits to go into Israel proper, but not without IDF soldiers boarding the bus to check permits or passports first.

Another great Banksy painting

After spending the night in a hostel in Jerusalem, we took a bus back to the checkpoint and went through a huge maze of a walking checkpoint into Bethlehem. In fact, we got lost and confused about which way to go to the point that the IDF soldiers manning the checkpoints were laughing at us. The main checkpoint into Bethlehem walks you along the West Bank barrier wall, giving us our first up close experience with it. Once inside the city, we met up with a cab driver who took us around to each of the Banksy paintings, various other very powerful street art pieces, to holy sites such as the birthplace of Jesus (The Church of Nativity) and the shepherd's field, identified since ancient times as where the shepherds saw the star of nativity, to souvenir shops run by his friends where we bartered deals, and even to his home where we met his family and were offered a delicious and hot meal cooked by his wife. Finally, we ended up at a Banksy shop in Bethlehem where we bought a few posters of our favorite pieces of art, and got the opportunity add our two cents and graffiti the wall ourselves. It was quite an experience, to say the least. The religious significance of the place takes a backseat when you see a giant wall erected through a city that should be considered holy. It's hard for anything to seem too holy when it's surrounded by something so wrong.

Seeing so much hope and so many words of love and peace and acceptance and resistance to oppression painted on such a symbol of segregation was incredibly powerful. My favorite was just a simple sentence, written in both Arabic and English-- "You are welcome in Palestine". It highlighted so many of the misconceptions Americans have about Palestinians, and with one sentence, was a very obvious extension of friendship.

Another Banksy painting- protester
throwing flowers

"You are welcome in Palestine"

I was also sick all through last weekend, and by the time we were heading home from Bethlehem, I no longer had a voice at all. We caught a public taxi home, but as the one with the most Arabic in our little group, I was useless to us or our driver as we sought to explain where we were going, where we were from and why we were living in Nablus. I kept trying to squeak out answers, but the cab driver just kept laughing and saying he couldn't understand a word I was saying. We did make it home though, and I was able to help my group through our own version of Arabic telephone, in which I squeaked a sentence to the person next to me, who repeated the sentence to the person sitting in front of her, who repeated it to the cab driver.

The narrow alleyways of Balata

On Sunday, we headed for a long awaited tour of Balata, the biggest refugee camp in Palestine. I think seeing the living conditions where our kids come from, especially when we see them every day in our center, was a really eye opening experience. The camp is one square kilometer, the same size it was when the UN rented the land right after the 1948 war, despite the fact that families have continued to grow and be raised within that space. Because of that, buildings have been erected so close to one another that in some areas it is hard to walk through. Since people can't move out of the one square kilometer allotted to them by the UN,   people continue to build upward rather than outward, meaning that buildings which were never structurally built to handle several floors are now several stories tall, and have been built out to the point that they touch with the buildings next to them. It is so impossible to move furniture through the alleyways of the camp that people are forced to demolish walls and pass their furniture through the walls of their neighbors and then rebuild, adding to the lack of structural support in the buildings in the camps.

Us adding our two cents to the wall-- "No one can
makeyou feel inferior without
your consent" - Eleanor Roosevelt

The thing that has been most sobering and most frustrating to me since arriving here has been the fact that even many Palestinians seem to see themselves as a symbol rather than as individuals, and people are viewed as part of a political strategy or endgame. The lack of action toward solving the refugee issue is based on a desire to not solve Israel's problem for them, which makes sense to me, but in the meantime people are left living in abject poverty and extremely unhealthy conditions.I get that the personal is political, but to me, people should always come first, not policies.

"Now that I have seen, I am responsible"

"Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it" - Henry David Thoreau

Man, do I ever hope that quote is true, because I sure have been busy the past few weeks. I plan on updating my blog about seeing DAM (a Palestinian hip hop group) play and about the rotation change in classes, inchallah sometime this week, but in the meantime, check out our post on Library Day and the International Day of Play for TYO's website.

And remember, if you haven't liked TYO's page on Facebook, please do so! (I'm trying to get the most likes of our intern group, so if you liked the page but are not friends with me on Facebook, please leave a comment to let me know!-- The intern who gets the most likes wins a prize! And I'm in second place so far!)

10 days left in the TYO "Like" Drive!

Anyone who hasn't liked TYO on Facebook, please do so now as a favor to me. For every "like" we get, $1 gets donated to support our programming. All of the amazing work that I'm getting to do here, I only get to do because this organization has such a strong internship program and such strong programming in general to support the women and children here in Nablus who need it the most.

Please help me return the favor to them by liking TYO on Facebook, and sharing this link with your friends and family: www.facebook.com/tomorrowsyouth

Thanks everyone!

"Well-behaved women rarely make history" - Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

We have this stereotype in the West, that Muslim women, veiled women in particular, are voiceless and powerless, and while there is certainly a long way to go on the gender equality front here in Palestine, I just wanted to dedicate a post to the many strong, feminist, amazing, smart, funny women I have met here.

Palestinian women face substantial obstacles in gender equality-- girls are often married at ages we would consider sexual abuse in the US, legally as young as 15. Polygamy is also still legal, though not common practice, in Palestine. It is a written in clause in a marriage contract, which a woman can consent to or refuse to allow. Domestic violence is still incredibly high, and the social pressures on women to behave appropriately, especially in a community as tight-knit as this, is huge. Family sizes also average 8-10 people, unemployment is as high as 38% in some parts of Palestine and 1 in 4 men in Nablus has been arrested by the Israelis at some point in his life.

I don't know about you, but to me, any woman who can raise a family in those conditions is anything but powerless. The amount of strength it must take to get up and go through daily life here-- especially as a woman under those conditions, responsible for 6-8 kids who all need food, clothes and an education, not to mention a place to run and have fun-- is unimaginable.

Societal pressure is extremely high here for women to veil, which I do see as problematic. A girl as young as 10, one with a love of the color pink and all the glitz and glitter and fashion she can find, walked into my classroom on the last day of class last week wearing a (pink and glittery) hijab for the first time, refusing to answer the question of whether she is veiling because she wants to or her parents want her to. Wearing a veil isn't a problem and it definitely doesn't take away your personality or make you voiceless, but being forced to wear one (or disallowed from wearing one in countries like France and Turkey) is a problem.Women here are witty and smart, not voiceless people hidden behind a veil. The fact that Americans view Middle Eastern women that way is, I think, a failure in our own brand of feminism.

Feminism runs so much deeper than choosing to or not to veil. Women at our center are working to improve themselves, through everything from health and fitness to general English to Business English and Entrepreneurship training. Some of these women run businesses and went to college. Others are largely illiterate. But they all show up every day, determined to better opportunities for themselves and their children. And I don't think there's anything much more feminist than that.

But there is not one way to dress like a feminist or talk like a feminist or act like a feminist, and these women prove that to me every day.

***

I'm going to see the Palestinian hip hop group DAM, who raps about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, poverty and women's rights among other social issues, tomorrow. Check out their music here:

"Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions." - Albert Einstein

Today could not possibly have been more fun. We had a library day, so we brought all of the neighborhood kids in for a reading activity and then an activity. Today, we told the kids the story of Caine's Arcade, which you can watch here (and definitely should because it's amazingly cute):

Then we had them each make a game or project out of cardboard. Kids games were funny, clever, cute and messy-- everything you want in a good cardboard game. Below, check out some of the games kids created.

Two girls from Khalla make
a dollhouse.

A maze made out of cardboard!

Sheker's soccer field (and
matching outfit

Maybe not the best picture, but my
personal favorite project, Hassan made
a yoyo out of curled up ribbon.

Seeing the kids so excited about the projects that they made totally made the chaos of Library Day worthwhile. Kids were so proud of their projects and they were looking forward to going home and playing their games with their siblings. Many of these kids don't get the opportunity or encouragement to be creative, so seeing what they came up with was inspiring. And to see them playing and goofing off and laughing is always a reminder to me of how resilient kids are and how similar kids around the world are. The only real moment where we were forced to really look at where these kids came from was when kids started coming up and asking if our center director had been kidnapped or arrested or killed. She has been on vacation for the last week in Jordan and just got back in town yesterday, but kids noticed her absence around the center and their minds didn't immediately go to vacation, because their parents have never gone on vacation. Their minds went to arrested or kidnapped or killed, because those are the experiences these kids know. But after numerous reassurances that our center director was alive and well and right upstairs, kids were back to playing with their cardboard creations in no time. 

"You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do." - Anne Lamott

Graffiti in the old city of Hebron

Hebron should be a required stop for tourists coming to Israel. It is one of the more extreme places in the West Bank, because it is very holy in both Islam and Judaism. It is a place where Israeli settlers literally live on top of Palestinians, and Palestinians working in the old city have to put up wire and fabric to prevent settlers from throwing things like glass and bottles of urine down onto them. 

Wiring catches garbage thrown down by settlers
onto people working and shopping in the old
city of Hebron.

To really understand the settlement issue in Palestine, you need to know that first of all, according to the United Nations, the international community (including the US) and the Oslo Accords signed by both Palestine and Israel, Israeli settlement in the Occupied Territories (read: Palestine) is illegal. The Fourth Geneva Convention states that "the Occupying Power" (in this case, Israel) "shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies" (again, read:Palestine) Despite this, Israel continues to actively pursue Israeli settlement in the West Bank. Israeli settlers are civilians who have either destroyed Palestinian homes and taken over the land, or simply taken over the homes, and fall into one of two categories: the very savvy, and the very religious. The very savvy are Israelis who come to Palestine because their government provides them with a loan to take over the land in Palestine, and then forgives the balance after 10 years (loans which are financed by the US, despite repeated efforts by US presidents on both sides of the political debate, including President Obama and former President Bush the first, to reign in continued building of settlements). It's a pretty good deal, if you're comfortable having all of your neighbors see you as an invader. 

The very religious, however, are a different group entirely, and these are the settlers you find in Hebron. Hebron, as the burial site of matriarchs and patriarchs of the Bible such as Sarah and Abraham, Jacob and Leah, and Isaac and Rebecca,  is the second holiest site in Judaism, so it's home to 500 or so religious settlers, who don't work but are offered stipends by the Israeli government to just study Judaism intensively. The Israeli army provides a presence of about 1500 soldiers to protect those 500 settlers, and 18 checkpoints throughout Hebron.

A water tankard with bullet holes
preventingit from storing water.

The same water tankard,
just a full shot.

The best way to describe life in Hebron is that of a ghost town, or of Apartheid South Africa. There are literally full streets where Palestinians can neither walk nor drive, and entire neighborhoods that used to be shops and homes that were shut down by Israeli forces during the second Intifada, not to mention the overbearing presence of the Israeli military, the checkpoints, the settlers who throw glass at the Palestinians, or the Palestinian water tanks shot out so that they can no longer hold water. Hebron is the reality of life under occupation. This is Palestine.

A tapestry of Handala, a cartoon
symbolizing a Palestinian refugee
child witnessing life under
occupation, made by a women's
cooperative in Hebron.

This is a wall dividing where Palestinians
are and aren't allowed. In this photo,
we're walking on the Palestinian side,
but we also ventured up into the
Israeli side.

The empty, abandoned streets of Hebron,
with the Israeli flag hanging above.

"There aren't enough days in the weekend." - Rod Schmidt

It's 8:30 at night and I'm about ready for bed. Week two of classes successfully completed! Including paper mache today! And if I can survive paper mache masks with a room full of 10-11 year olds, I can survive just about anything. So for those of you looking for an update, check out the TYO intern blog to read about our first week of classes! Second week updates coming soon, as well as updates on tomorrow's visit to Hebron and Saturday's Library Day, which will inchallah be based on this super cute Youtube video called Caine's Arcade.

Also, don't forget that the TYO "Like" Drive is still going on, so if you're on Facebook and you haven't yet, please like TYO's Facebook Page  to help raise money for the programming to support kids and mothers here in Palestine. Thanks for everyone who has helped out already!

"Even the five fingers on your hand are not the same, are they?" - Arabic proverb

Tel Aviv is just over an hour from Nablus, but the two cities are worlds apart in so many ways. Nablus is a conservative city with somewhat crumbling infrastructure in some areas, where I can't show my shoulders in public and I feel self aware of my lack of hijab covering my hair. And where people are nothing but encouraging as I struggle to communicate in Arabic and excited to tell me their stories.

In Tel Aviv, I could walk around in a bikini if I wanted to and nobody would even notice. Men and women run on the streets for exercise and wear skimpy attire every day--- it's a beach town, so not unlike LA or Miami in terms of tourists, bars and clubs, and clothing. The buildings are tall and new; hotels line the beach front, and if you don't focus too much on the Hebrew you could imagine you are back in America with relative ease. But I could either talk to people in English and maybe be understood or try talking to people in Arabic and either be understood perfectly or shot dirty looks for attempting it, depending on if I was talking to an Arab Israeli or a Jewish Israeli.

The Port of Jaffa, with Tel Aviv and the Mediterranean visible in the background.

Telling people I worked in the West Bank offered me a wide number of reactions from local Israelis. Some gave me the reaction I was expecting, which was: Why would you work there, with those people? Why should Israelis learn Arabic when Arabs here speak Hebrew (never mind the fact that Israel is surrounded on all sides by Arabic speaking countries)? But some gave me more unexpected answers. Some didn't even know that Israelis could get into the West Bank, let alone Americans. Some approved of what I was doing, but with the tone that it was good that I was trying to "fix Palestine", never mind the fact that much of what is wrong in Palestine is a direct result of the occupation. Some wholeheartedly thought that what I was doing was amazing, asking if they could do something to get involved and help the kids in Palestine. Even the five fingers on your hand are not the same, are they? No two people are the same, and you can find as many different views of the Israel/Palestine conflict in Israel as you can in Palestine as you can in America.

One of many very cool art installations in Old Jaffa.

While there, I also took a short tour of Old Jaffa, the most ancient port city still in use today. It's a city that changed hands many times, from the Arabs to the Turks to the Ottomans to the Romans to the British to the Jews (and not necessarily in that order). It was also a major location for a number of biblical stories, including Jonah and the Whale and the resurrection of the widow Tabitha by St. Peter (which I had never heard of). The Old City of Jaffa is beautiful, full of winding alleyways named after Zodiac signs filled with artists galleries and little shops, as well as restaurants run largely by Arab Israelis who live in Jaffa. It was definitely my favorite area of Israel proper that I've seen so far, and if I had more time and wasn't carrying a bag while waiting for check in time at the hostel, I'm sure I could have explored those alleyways all day long.

Street art and graffiti always catch my attention--
This one was in a doorway in Old Jaffa.

In the meantime, it's back to reality. So back to teaching classes, which are partially suspended due to transportation strikes over the next few days. Back to speaking my broken Arabic. Back to the reality of living within checkpoints, which from midnight Monday to midnight Wednesday means no leaving Nablus. Israelis regularly shut down all checkpoints in and out of Palestine for Jewish holidays, which means that if you are Palestinian, you'd better plan your emergencies ahead of time-- if you need medical or humanitarian assistance during this time, you have to get it pre-approved by Israeli authorities and get a permit. Makes sense, no? Yeah, I didn't think so either.

“Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.” ― Margaret Mead

One week of classes done. I know that everyone says this, but it bears reiterating. Teaching is one of the most under-appreciated roles in society. I got home every night dead on my feet, and faced behavioral issues ranging from hyperactivity to disinterest in any activity in the classroom. I had kids who admittedly hadn't eaten anything that day refuse to eat. The kids from our neighborhood show up after school every day, regardless of whether it is their day to take classes, because it gives them an alternative place to spend time with friends and run and play games than in the street.

My teaching schedule works out so that every Sunday I am teaching a professional competency course-- a class I feel woefully under-prepared to teach, since I am essentially teaching my peers. That being said, while I've held a job essentially from the time I was 15 on, most of the students in this class have either never worked or have only worked in the informal economic sector. 

On Mondays and Wednesdays I teach a women's aerobics class and my art class to one group of kids. It has been so much fun and so rewarding to see how into aerobics the women here get. Despite the fact that some of the women maybe have never worked out before (it's not a very big part of culture here) they come and work hard for an hour twice a week. My Monday/Wednesday group of kids definitely has more behavioral issues than my Tuesday/Thursday kids. They are great, but they are more hyperactive, less focused or interested in listening to anything I have to say, and less willing to participate in activities or mix genders at their tables. 

Kids work on designing their own comics in art class.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays I teach Advanced English to moms from the center as well as art to my other group of kids. They are a much quieter group, but not without their challenges. At the end of every class, we line kids up by which bus they will take to get home, so the kids going home to the Balata refugee camp are in one line, the kids from Old and New Askar camps are in another, the kids from the Old City and El Ain refugee camp are together in one line, and the kids from our neighborhood, Khallat al-Amoud, are in another line to walk home. Today, lining up in the Balata line, one of the boys looked up at me and said that he was sad that class was over because he had to go back to Balata camp. Knowing that a kid is so sad to go back to his own home, and that here that feeling is so normal that he feels comfortable vocalizing it to practically a complete stranger, was pretty heartbreaking. But all I could do was remind him that I would see him again next week.

"Every child should have a caring adult in their lives. And that's not always a biological parent or family member. It may be a friend or neighbor. Often times it is a teacher." - Joe Manchin

I have officially met all my kids now. Sunday was my first class, a professional competency class at An Najah University, which went surprisingly well given that I make my living as an unpaid intern. Monday was my first day of teaching classes at the center, where I taught a women's aerobics class as well as my first art class. The aerobics class was a blast. It was fun to see a group of women having so much fun and working so hard. In the afternoon, I taught my first art class. I was short a volunteer in my class, and it was chaotic and stressful in the room and the language barrier made it even harder. The whole class felt a little out of control, and left me really nervous about round two of classes. 

Classes are divided into sections, so every Monday and Wednesday I teach one group of kids and every Tuesday and Thursday I teach a different one using the same lesson plan. So I learned from mistakes made on Monday for today's class and modified my lesson plan slightly, and luckily, with the addition of my last volunteer and a much calmer batch of kids, today went great.

I actually walked out of class today feeling like a teacher, whereas yesterday I felt a little lost and like I didn't have control of my class. Today kids seemed engaged and interested in the lesson and were willing to listen and participate in a way they weren't yesterday.

Today I also taught Advanced English for moms in the community. Most of the women speak very little English despite being placed in the Advanced class, so hopefully that class will smooth out as we figure out the difficulty level to work at.

Tomorrow I have the same group of kids as yesterday, so wish me luck trying again with them...

"Safety's just danger, out of place." - Harry Connick, Jr.

This post started out as an email, so that I could keep this to a less public forum, but I decided to go ahead and post it here. That being said, please be mindful that any comments you post are on a public forum. This blog is open to anyone who stumbles upon it.

Despite the anti-American protests happening across the Middle East, including some in Palestine, most of the protests within Nablus have been about the cost of living and the transit strike here. In Jerusalem and in Gaza there have been anti-American protests, as well as attempts to riot at the US consulate, which were stopped by police and the military. There has been at least one incident of an American flag being burned here in Nablus in the Old City, which is in a different area of Nablus. As a precaution, we are all laying low in the meantime. We aren't changing our schedules at all in terms of teaching classes, but we are sticking in the building that we live and work in at least for this week, in hopes that any anti-American protests will be eased in the week to come. Luckily I'll be starting teaching the young kids and moms tomorrow, so I will be plenty busy. For more info on the protests in Nablus and in Palestine in general, check out the embedded links in this paragraph. I'll keep you posted of any changes, and just keep in mind that we are acting with an abundance of caution. 

While a couple of days old with some outdated numbers, I think the message here still stands.,
And it's a pretty powerful one.

And on an equally important note, keep in mind that even if there are a few hundred people protesting in every Muslim country in the world, and a smaller percentage yet that is protesting violently, that adds up to less than one percent of the total Muslim population. So while these protesters may be anti-American, they make up only a small fraction of the Muslim community at large. Everybody who I have met has been very helpful as far as asking about whether I feel safe here, trying to make my stay more comfortable and secure, etc. So please don't walk away from this week feeling like there is this strong overwhelming sense of hatred toward Americans here-- there's not. There is a lot of anger, but it is directed at the maker of a movie that people find offensive, it is directed at US foreign policies and it is also directed at people who are taking innocent lives in the name of their religion. So while I'm not naive about the situation and we are being careful, I also don't want people in America to walk away from this last week with an unrealistic and biased vision of the Middle East. 

And for whatever it's worth, to any Muslims who may be reading this, I am sorry. The views of that man and that video are not representative of Americans views on Islam.

TYO "Like" Drive begins today

Some of you may have already received an email from me, and I apologize in advance for what will certainly be my predominant Facebook status over the next month, but TYO has started a "Like" drive on Facebook, meaning that for every "like" we get to our page: https://www.facebook.com/tomorrowsyouth, a dollar gets donated to TYO. If you could do me this favor and follow that link and click like, I would be incredibly grateful (and won't have to harass you for the next month, which I'm sure you'll prefer).

Please help me out! It's a really small thing you guys can do that will make a huge difference for kids here, and which will help foster good relationships between Americans and Palestinians (which I think we can all agree after the last week needs some improving).

Thanks in advance!

"What makes the desert beautiful is that somewhere it hides a well." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery

One of many breathtaking views of Wadi Qelt

Yesterday we went for a three hour hike in Wadi Qelt, near Jericho. It is one of the lowest points on earth, making it among the hottest as well. We started the hike early, around 8:30am, to try to beat much of the midday sun. The desert there is so unlike the desert of the Sahara (which, oddly enough, is the only other desert I've seen, so it's my only point of reference. Maybe I need to spend more time exploring my own country, because rumor has it the desert here is pretty similar to that of New Mexico). There are no great shifting sand dunes, no powder fine sand. There are rocks, and dust, and scrubby, thorny trees, and lizards and prairie dogs. Wadi Qelt is a valley, so we were walking at an angle the whole time over loose rocks and gravel. The story goes that Wadi Qelt is the path Jesus walked from Jericho to Jerusalem, among other biblical events for those of you interested in the religious history of the place.

St. George's monastery was built into a cliff in the late 5th century.

It was a beautiful walk, with Bedouin homes built into caves along the way, goat herders with more goats than I've ever seen in one place,  as well as donkeys and dogs. At the end of the hike, we arrived at St. George's Monastery, which was built into the side of a cliff in the late 5th century, where it still stands today. It was beautiful, full of decadent religious art, and was a nice place to stop and rest after continuing the climb up the cliff to where our car was waiting for us at the top.

The ceiling of St. George's Monastery

Religious art inside of St. George's
 Monastery

Today was the first day I met the kids from our neighborhood, Khallat Al-Amoud, for the first Library Day of the session. We broke into two groups, and I sat in on a reading group led by one of our volunteers, who read books in both Arabic and English for the kids. It was a nice first glance into the work ahead of me. If the transit strikes here keep up and the first day of classes is delayed (which is a possibility), we may be having more Library Day type activities for the neighborhood kids, since full classes won't be happening and we wont be able to bus in the kids from the four refugee camps or the Old City.

Reading at TYO's Library Day!