Yesterday I went over all of my paperwork with Project Hope, and I began shadowing. I shadowed two classes, one of 7 year olds that speak and read english very well at the Cambridge School. The second class I shadowed was a level 1 adult english.
The community of girls I live with are pretty amazing, in between the classes, someone brought Sfi-ha home to eat, and we had grapes and cookies. Everything feels like it is centered around meals here, which I do not mind at all.
Then we went to the park for a going away party type-thing. Nablus is the city of sweets, at the park we had a condensed milk like sweet pudding with granola that was amazing, then we had slushies with ice cream in them and then we had chocolate cake with walnuts, all in about an hour and a half period. I love it and hate it at the same time, I have officially re-downloaded the work out app on my phone, but I cannot say no to trying all of these new sweets. Maybe ill just get 'thick' as Stanley one of the other volunteers calls it.
We played an hour long game of chess, that was a very stressful experience. As I waited for my opponent to make his moves a reoccurring thought came into my mind. This park, centered around a fountain, with people playing cards, listening to music, eating or smoking shesha, is so calm and peaceful. Not peaceful like in the states, where for things to be peaceful means that the park is empty and you are enjoying it on your own, but peaceful, as in everyone interacting, with out friction. A friction I most would expect to see in every aspect of Palestinian life with the amount of conflict here in recent years. Nablus was the epicenter of the 2nd intifada, which lasted from 2000 to 2008, how are people so peaceful, that was not long ago, in 2008 I was a sophomore in high school, and people here were trapped and occupied. While I was beginning to learn about human rights, people here had been spending years fighting for their own, kids my sisters age were being arrested and tried in court.
We finished the game of chess, I must say with pride that I won a game of chess against four men. We headed home to hang out, I practiced guitar and waited for this mountain we were all planning to go to. We all piled into the cars of the "Haram boys", as they wish to be called. They smoke cigarettes and drive fast, listening to very inappropriate music from the US. Side note, Nablus is one of the most conservative cities in the West Bank, because of being the center of the intifada, they have held tight to their values and traditions in hopes of not losing them to the enemy. Remember in a place that is considered a failed state by the rest of the world, in order to survive as a people and hopefully soon as a state, you have to be nationalist, you have to fight for the way you live. So "Haram" which means bad or sinful, in the Islamic religion has a wider umbrella here than it does in other places.
The locals picked up al of us internationals, a whooping three cars worth of us. I brought the guitar, and we drive up to the samaritan village, only to turn back and go to another mountain top. The Samaritan's are a group older than the Jews, which means they are very old, only about 700 of them remain and they live on a mountain top near by. These people have Palestinian, and Israeli passports, they are a very interesting group.
This place is very mountainous, or "foothilly" as some would say. We drove up to the top and got out to see the whole city of Nablus, with Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and even the Jewish settlements sitting on the outskirts of the city from where we were sitting. The view was magical, and the historical representation of what these little lights scattered in the distance stood for and represented meant even more to me. I decided to climb up higher, even with a risk of snakes, nettles and the fact that I wore Chacos.. big mistake. It was worth it, I saw my first shooting star, I was able to visually take in what the occupation meant, and though it was still light polluted, the stars felt quite a bit closer to where I was sitting.
At 11:30 we headed back to the house for the curfew at 12, it is 2016, and the Israeli Army still comes by the four refugee camps in Nablus every night, Jets fly over head during the day and pop up check points are a constant not-so surprising, surprise. As I got home and washed my feet with cold water hoping to be able to pull all of the nettles out, I was reminded of my privilege to experience a place like this with the locals. Also, I need to mention that these Haram Boys, are actually people who just finished schooling to be lawyers and doctors, they are the 1% in Nablus, with nice cars, and no where to take them, impressive degrees and nowhere to use them. They hang out with internationals to practice english. These are a people that are dying to live, they just need the opportunity to utilize the education they were able to achieve through their relative privilege here.
More to come,
-Jliv
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