Bouncing up and down in our pint-sized Hyundai Getz, snaking our way around olive groves and grape vineyards on a rough, dusty road, three friends and I headed east from Bethlehem over ancient terraced hills towards the Green Line, the '47 border between Israel and Palestine. Aside from a few scattered villages, distinctly Palestinian with their slender minarets rising above concrete homes, the hills were mostly uninhabited and it was easy to imagine that they haven't changed much over the millenia. In the sparse terrain below, young olives and pine grasped at the limestone soil from seeds planted in a not too distant past. Even though the area was within the internationally recognized borders of Palestine, few of its residents have been able to maintain there subsistence farming there, access for them has become much too difficult in the last 40 years.
In the distance, just past the Green Line, verdant pine stands planted and maintained by the Jewish National Forest Service stood in stark contrast to the hills beneath our feet. Many of these forests have been planted within the last 60 years over what were once Palestinian villages, now deemed 'nature reserves'. The originial village of my companions lie within these reserves, now virtually inaccessible but vaguely visible only a few miles away. Our brief adventure brought them as close as they might come to the land where their families had lived for hundreds of years, and as close as I might ever come to understanding what it might mean to never be allowed to return home.
I have a little more than four weeks left in Dheisheh before I return to the States. My volunteer service has transformed considerably since I arrived 3 months ago. I began by facilitating strength training for the various sports teams, instructing on warm-up regimes, training the teenage girls in basic martial arts (for self-confidence and coordination for their dance training), conducted various interviews to get a better sense of life on the ground in the camp, and worked somewhat consistently with young boys and girls basketball teams. There have been challenges and the evolution of my involvement has not played out precisely as I had envisioned initially, but I was under no illusions that it would (I was shooting a little too high at first, I admit).
In the last several weeks I have conducted several trainings for the 4th generation dance troupe, a group of 15 youth in their mid-teenage years. The purpose of the workshops was to help them to critically examine their perceptions and feeling about a number of issues, including their 'identity' as refugees, the value of self-expression, understanding stereotypes, expressing both their fears and dreams, assessing their perceptions of the value of maintaining cultural traditions through dance, media, and the importance of sharing their personal stories. The subtext of the workshop was to prepare the youth for a documentary film in which they will have the chance to articulate these perspectives for a Western audience. I came up with the idea for the film after seeing another short documentary made by my cohort here at Ibdaa, the resident media expert, Pablo Pitcher. Although amateur in its overall construction, Pablo and I are hopeful that the content will provide a meaningful and affecting glimpse into the lives of the Dheisheh youth.
The documentary will be one of my final tasks here and, in addition, I have a considerable amount of work related to my Master's to complete, including the formal interviewing of Dhiesheh youth as well as experts on youth refugees and Palestian youth in general. My only cross-border trip in the Middle East will be to Jordan in the coming weeks, where I will have the chance to meet with the Chief UN Field Officer for Palestinian refugees there. I am afraid that the time ahead will transpire far too quickly, but I am convinced that my future service in Palestine is far from over.
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1 comment:
K and I went for a walk in Discovery park- a "Green zone" set aside for the city. There was a cold wind that numbed our hands. Something about wind helps me think clearly. I thought about who might of lived here hundreds of years before Seattle became this world technology hub. I've just been promoted to management at our software company, and I can see how easy it can be to lose myself in the affluence here. I'll see you soon! Don't put off your work until the last minute!
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