The good times and the bad times

Check this out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26BoqV4WylQ
It is the most popular song in Palestine right now, and Israel is trying to get it banned. It is about the kouffi, the black and white scarf Arafat used to wear on his head that symbolizes non-violent resistance...the guy singing is calling for all Palestinians to wear the kouffi proudly and remember the Palestinian dream of autonomy, and not giving up.

I forgot to mention a few things in my last post or so. When Jiries and I went to Jerusalem to get the car insurance the actual insurance place itself was located in a village called Beit Zafafa. Before 1967 Beit Zafafa was under Jordanian mandate, and the border between the West Bank and Israel was a set of train tracks running through the middle of the town. The only separation barrier before '67 was a fence, and since Arabs still had relatives living on the established "Israeli" side, they used to hop the fence to see their families. It was captured by the Israelis in the 1967 War and the "separation barrier" (the wall in the picture that's always at the top of my blog) was built around it, annexing it to Jerusalem. Today it is still populated by Israelis as well as the original Arabs, who are yet to receive Israeli citizenship. Even though the wall isolates the whole village from the West Bank, the original division line (the "Green Line") still exists down the middle of the town, and therefore all of the Israeli homes on the non-Israeli side of town constitute as illegal settlements.

On the way to Be'er Zeit we drove past Atarot, which is Palestinian land that Israel has taken over and turned into a massive industrial zone.. We also passed Qalandia, which is inbetween Jerusalem and Ramallah on Palestinian land Israel has forced most the inhabitants of Qalandia into a refugee camp, and littered the main town with settlements and, like Beit Zafafa, it has enclosed it within the wall separating the West Bank from Jerusalem- except for the refugee camp, which is conveinently on the West Bank side. The checkpoint at Qalandia was the craziest one I have ever seen, there were hundreds of cars trying to get in and out of Jersualem.
There is really no method to the madness, it is like a maze for cars, with the occasional Israeli police jeep demanding the right of way (there is a picture in the last blog entry). Everywhere I go I wonder how the Palestinians deal with this kind of lifestyle; if they react in any way whatsoever against the Israeli invasion and oppression they are immediately labeled as security threats. Where is the justice here?

But eventually we made it to Be'er Zeit, which is a predominantly Christian town (with Greek Orthodox and Catholics) and has a famous and well known university. Here are some more fun pictures from the graduation party we went to:





This is me with a 100 year old Palestinian woman:


She was dancing for a while!!


Typical hot day doing the dishes after lunch (I like Tata Huda's expression in this picture)



As all these pictures evidence, we had lots of fun at the graduation party. The next day was a change of pace, however, when we found out that Jiries' father's uncle had died the night before. The Christians in Beit Sahour bury their dead within the day of that person's death unless immediate family members need time to travel here. There are 32,000 Christians in Palestine- about 11 villages with a Christian majority. Anyways, I put my best/only black shirt and went to Jiries' sister's (Hanan) house so that I could go to the church with her since men and women go in and sit seperately (Tata Huda was still in Be'er Zeit for a few doctors appointments). At her house we sat on the balcony until we heard the bells ringing from the church in the distance, then we picked up her elderly neighbor Mary and Hanan's husband dropped us off at the church.

Inside of the church, the men sat in the front and along the sides, and the women sat in the middle and the back. The whole town goes to every funeral; the church was totally packed with hundreds of people, many of the women hysterically crying. For Christians throughout Palestine, it is a cultural tradition to have coffee and condolences for the family 3 days in a row after someone has died. On the fouth day in the morning, they have a church service in memory of the deceased person. This practice is called "third and seven" because in the old days there used to be the 3 days of coffee/ condolences and then the service on the fourth day, but noaways that process has been condensed into 4 consecutive days. There is another memorial service 40 days after the day of death where people get together for some church, coffee, biscuits and reminiscing. This all happens AGAIN 6 months from the day of death, and for the last time after it has been 1 year. This custom unique to Palestinian Christians, Muslims have a different procedure.





The service consisted of singing from the beginning until the end; sometimes it was the entire church and sometimes just Abna Issa, the priest (Abu= Father Na= us [Father of us] Issa= his name- which actually translates to Jesus). The collective singing was sad and even a little eerie, especially with the wailing women in the background (well, right in front of me actually). The coffin was at the front of the church near the alter surrounded by men, many of which were crying. I didn't even know the guy who died and it was really upsetting to watch the ENTIRE town in mourning.

When the service ended after what seemed like forever, the women all left through the front of the church and went into an adjacent building- only men are allowed to go into the cemetary right down the road. I went with Hanan into the giant room filled with hundreds of women; at the front of the room the wife, sisters, and daughters of the deceased man sat on chairs against the wall. The room was filled with rows of tables surrounded by chattering women, and on one side of the room pouring out the door was a huge line of hundreds more chattering women waiting their turn to go down the line of female family members to give their condolences. In this picture you can see the huge line on the other side of the room:



It was like a stampede, and I stayed as close as possible to Hanan and Mary. When I eventually squeezed to the front of the line (if you could call it that), the sight was devestating. The women were absolutely miserable and inconsolable. I followed suit and shook each one of their hands and gave them a kiss on the left then right cheek, as hundreds of women before me had done and hundreds would after. Most of the women sitting down seemed more suprised than anything to see me going down the line because I am clearly not from around here. I got past the awkwardness of being a stranger and extended my condolences to each one of them, and after kissing the last lady on the cheek I looked up to see the women from Tata Huda's senior citizens' center ("Yala Allison! We need help in the chicken!!.... nevermind, go away!") looking at me with incredulous expressions that had "what are YOU doing HERE?!" written all over them. I almost laughed out loud.

So that was really sad. I don't remember what else I did Friday, it seems like a million years ago now. Saturday, on the other hand, was another wild experience. I had to be at the Palestine Wildlife Society by 7:50 a.m. to leave for Hebron, southern Palestine, around 8. I went with 3 guys from PWLS on a fun music and AC blasting one hour car ride there, and we were greeted by about 25 Muslim schoolgirls covered head to ankle except for their faces, hands, and feet- many wore sandals. There were 3 boys. I really had no idea what we were doing when I left that morning, I just knew we were bringing lots of plants to a school somewhere. When I got out of the car I braced myself for the stares (as the only girl there showing my hair). We unloaded the plants out of the back of the truck and Ibrahim, one of the PWLS guys, chatted with the school teacher.

One inside, in the air conditioning thankfully- I thought I was hot, those girls must have been COOKING- we set up a game-show style environment-themed competition. The class split up into four groups and chose a number between 1 and 50 from the overhead projector, which then displayed a question with a corresponding picture. Whichever team got the most right won. The prize- plants! Everyone got one anyways but the winners got the biggest ones I think, or something like that. Maybe they got trees. I was unsure of who won in the end anyways. The overall concept of the game was pretty simple but they got sooo competitive about it, shouting and jumping up and down and contesting answer judged incorrect. They were all very smart and super giggly.

At one point we took a break from the game, and immediately I was swarmed by all of the students, asking me tons of questions in broken English. One of the PWLS guys is fluent so he came over and translated for a bit. They asked me how old I am, what my parents do for work, what I think of Palestine and what I am doing here. They asked if I have a boyfriend, and when I say yes they went crazy giggling- boyfriends/girlfriends aren't allowed there, but they know that its okay in other places and they wanted to know everything. It was pretty funny and I didn't mind it at all, I gave a couple of the girls my name so they could facebook me and within seconds the whole room had copied my name down.... oh boy.
This was the view from my seat for about 30 minutes:

At the end we had a "graduation" ceremony- I guess they have been learning stuff all week from the PWLS guys about the environment. Everyone got a small container of flowers and we took a group picture then had snacks.


I got home around 2 pm, took a nap then hung out with Shorok and her crazy funny friends until 7:30 then we walked them home- that ended up taking over 2 hours but it was really fun. When I got home Jiries and I went to the community center (Ush Girab) and watched the Paraguay vs. Spain soccer (football) game (match). When we got there it was really crowded with no open seats, but as soon as the staff saw Jiries walked in they cleared off a table for us and someone got a hold of 2 chairs.. then they set us up in the very front and brought out beer in a matter of seconds. We didn't get home until 11:30ish and by that point I was pretty tired.

Tonight Jiries, Tata Huda and I are grilling lamb meat. Happy 4th of July!