Déjà-vu

My step-father’s mother spent much of Boxing Day afternoon recalling her memories as an evacuee during the second world war – fascinating stuff, though my inclination towards sleep for much of that day may have had something to do with it… But anyway, I had a strong feeling of déjà-vu this morning, as I checked my [...]

Givat Haviva, Gaza and guarded feelings

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Hopefully both my mapreading and map-embedding abilities are up to scratch – if so, then that small settlement at the top of the image is Kibbutz Barkai – where I’ll be staying for the majority of the next five months. At the bottom of the image is Givat Haviva, all of a 20 [...]

Pushing out the bounds

Every Saturday, the university scholarship students come to the foundation to meet with the staff and talk about activities going on: what they want from the foundation, and what the foundation needs from them. Yesterday was the same, though since the university semester has now finished, the discussion moved on to activities for the summer. [...]

A few of the teenagers here have discovered the joys of facebook without the acquiring the etiquette to go with it: apologies to any friends who might have been pestered with friend requests from strangers with Arab-sounding names and “1 friend in common”. Still, it made for an interesting conversation yesterday when I commented, in [...]

Every corner you turn in the old city, it seems like there’s another monastary, chapel (or Jewish or Muslim equivalent), or religious shrine of some kind: I wandered past Ethiopian, Russian Orthodox, Franciscan, and Armenian monks today, each with their own turf and area of influence. This afternoon there the Franciscans led a walk along [...]

From the outside looking in

I can’t seem to escape from the NC… I found out two days ago that one of the students here is leaving in a week to spend 3 months interning in western North Carolina, and was able to help him plan his route via Asheville and all sorts of places I’d never have heard) of [...]

Last-minute cramming…

Most of the children in Jabal Nathif are coming to the end of the school year, and are taking their final exams – it’s been amazing (and a little trying at times) the sorts of kids now interested in working on their English. Still, it’s good to have the chance to come into contact with [...]

Israel and the Jordanian Media

Selling the newspaper bags today was a good chance to get a general impression from editorial cartoons, of portrayals of Israel in Jordanian media. As the above photo shows, this paper doesn’t feel Israel gives too much respect for the independent media, and the Jordanian media has certainly been having a field day with the [...]

Happenings

So today took a negative twist when the Canadian intern (Nadim) checked his bag in Ruwwad to find his laptop gone. The next few hours snowballed from a few pertinent questions about who might have been in the room to police being called, coming, and taking notes and statements. The police were non-uniformed, guns in [...]

Nakba – “the great Catastrophe”

Palestine’s a pretty touchy issue here, even if it wasn’t the sixtieth anniversary of Israel’s creation. Lots of Palestinians live here – with and without Jordanian citizenship – and while you don’t hear people talking too publicly about their feelings, they’re not far from the surface, as I learned on my taxi ride from the [...]