artificial lines ; border symptoms

http://www.ipsnews.net/africa/nota.asp?idnews=49659

Running Away From Home; Mara Girls Escaping FGM

Posted in Jessie Boylan, journalism by jessieboylan on December 11, 2009

Running away from home; Mara girls escaping FGM
MUSOMA, Tanzania
01.12.09

In the darkest corner of the room, under the clamour of 12 women’s voices, sits Ghati Chacha, she can barely be heard. Her newest born suckles on one of her breasts as she tries to speak about how she refused female circumcision.

“I refused because (the previous) President Mkapa had banned circumcision in Tanzania,” she said. After this, however, Chacha was forced to marry an 80-year-old man because, according to the local customs of the Kurya tribe in the Mara district of northern Tanzania, she was no longer suitable for a man of her own age.

“I was forced to be married by my father,” she said. “I tried to refuse but my father ordered me to leave home. He was paid only 12 cows for my marriage.”

It is made obvious that Chacha is the only one in the room who is uncircumcised and her story gets cut off as the other women in the room shout to be heard.

“The young men laugh at each other if they marry an uncircumcised woman,” said Mondesta Mugaya, a 65-year-old woman, who used to perform circumcision in Kitarmanka Village in the Musoma rural district.

“And the uncircumcised girls are still considered to be children,” she said. “At traditional ceremonies uncircumcised women aren’t allowed to be there.

“I don’t believe in circumcision for girls anymore, but without it girls sleep around a lot.”

Female Genital Mutilation is seriously dangerous; it is usually performed without anaesthesia on girls anywhere from infancy and up. The conditions are often unhygienic and the tools can be razor blades, knives or even teeth, (one woman told me).

The procedure can cause severe bleeding and problems urinating, and later, potential childbirth difficulties and newborn deaths. According to the World Health Organisation an estimated 100 to 140 million girls and women worldwide are currently living with the consequences of FGM. And in Africa, about three million girls are at risk for FGM annually.

–

In Mama Regina’s office at the Catholic Diocese of Musoma Bhoke Mwita* is smiling. She’s sitting on a wooden chair swinging her legs and fiddling with her mobile phone. In 2004 she and her two children found refuge here.

“My husband died in 2003,” she said, “and I was supposed to be inherited by my husband’s brother, but I refused. I said I needed time to think about it. Then I ran away.”

It was Mama Regina Andrew who, not long after she had started an FGM campaign with the diocese, found Mwita in her village seeking help. As the assistant for the Women in Development (WID) program Mama Regina has helped 36 girls escape from FGM, and another 90 women from problems like domestic abuse and forced marriage.

“It is one of the biggest ceremonies in Kurya tradition,” said Mama Regina. “Some 95 percent of girls are still being circumcised in the Tarime District.

“The law is against FGM, but we don’t know how the government is dealing with these issues,” she said.

The tradition is deeply embedded in some cultures, such as the Kuryas’, and according to the Diocese it has only been in the past 10 years perceptions have started to change.

Mama Regina and some Sisters regularly visit villages to hold public meetings and events, they also initiate working groups to provide information about women and children’s rights, particularly the effects of FGM.

“It wasn’t an easy task,” she said, “because women are seen as not the same as men, not as important. The women do a lot of work, at home, in the farm, with the children, but it is the men who are the beneficiaries.”

“You see; girls are seen as income generating for the family,” said Mama Regina. “Parents don’t see the reason to send girls to school because they won’t receive the dowry when the girl is married. They think it will make the family poor.” (Perhaps because they may marry in a non-traditional way outside of the village, where cows bare no relevance or because they want their money or cows or damn dowry if they please it.)

–

Mwita was 18 when she was circumcised and tells me about the ceremony.

“First they set the date, where around 100 girls will be circumcised together. You don’t sleep the day before while they are preparing you. There is a lot of celebration, drumming and food. On the day you’re not allowed to eat or drink because maybe you’ll urinate or something during the process.

“Everyone is singing, trying to make you happy. You reach the special place and all the girls are sitting on kangas (cotton material commonly used for skirts) lined up. Everyone from the community is there, men, boys, women, and children. The older women collect money from the community before they start.

“So you wait your turn.

“When it was my turn, I felt extreme pain, but you’re not allowed to cry. If you do, they will beat you and leave you there.

“I bled a lot and fell down, but didn’t cry.

“It takes three to six weeks to heal, and after the circumcision you are considered a real woman who is ready to be married.”

“After circumcision I actually felt less of woman,” said Mwita, “because the system has been disturbed, I didn’t feel like a woman at all.

“If girls die during the circumcision, which happens a lot, then they won’t be buried at home. They will get thrown into the bushes and eaten by hyenas. It’s considered a curse, a spell (to not survive circumcision), so all their belongings have to be removed from the house, in order to get rid of the curse.”

–

Mama Regina Andrew

Mama Regina believes that for the Kurya FGM will take many years to stop. “It’s a kind of religion,” she said. But this belief doesn’t stop her and the Diocese from fighting for girls and women’s rights in the Mara region.

“We started the big FGM refugee camp just out of town here as a place for the girls to get counselled, as well as somewhere for them to run to when they escape from their communities,” she said.

“When the girls go back to their communities they say ‘Thank you for this tradition, because I fled, and now I’m educated’. The families see them speaking with confidence, without fear and this helps them realise the importance of stopping FGM.

“I believe that it will take time to change, but one day soon it will be a shame to be circumcised.”

According to Mama Regina when Mwita arrived at the diocese she was very thin, very nervous and softly spoken. Now, said Mama Regina, she has gained a lot of confidence, strength, and weight, and is completing secondary school.

Through the WID program, Mwita herself now runs micro-finance programs for women in villages to start businesses such as farming, bakeries and clothing shops. She also speaks at public forums and educates about the effects of FGM.

“When I go back to my village,” said Mwita, “people respect me and they are cautious about what they say to me. But it is like bringing Western values in, and I am aware of the difference.

“Life is different for me now, it’s better to be here (in town) than in the village. Now I am strong, unafraid, and can fight for my rights.”

*Not her real name

Tagged with: africa, Catholic Diocese, Female Genital Mutilation, Jessie Boylan, journalism, Musoma, poverty, tanzania

Once Upon a Water Source

Posted in Jessie Boylan, journalism by jessieboylan on December 11, 2009

contaminated stream leading from the NMGM to the Tigithe River

Once Upon a Water Source
30.11.09 – Musoma>Tanzania

She’s tending to her shamba, her farm, the farm is still here, but…a little discoloured in places, some banana trees and pineapple plants have wilted, some are fruiting, but she can’t eat them, or rather, she won’t eat them.

Susanna Solomon, 55, is slim and shy mother of 12 from Nyangoto village, situated in the rural Tarime district on the eastern side of Lake Victoria. She has been farming here for a long time and continues to do so even though she can’t use her produce.

“I was farming rice before,” she said, “but I can’t anymore because of the chemicals.”

The area we’re talking about was contaminated by a leakage from Barrick Gold’s North Mara Mine in May this year.

In large sections the grass has completely died, and plants and some vegetation have off-coloured stalks. The stream running from the mine site (just 100 or so meters away) has a green moss covering it, there is no sign of insects, tadpoles or frogs, and some crystallised plants stick out of the water, as if frozen or covered by salt.

“I was advised not to eat the vegetables I’m growing,” she said, “because you can be affected. I am still cultivating the land because otherwise I will lose it; so I am just here to hold the land.

“I am still waiting for compensation, but they haven’t said anything about (it).”

Monitoring by Barrick at the time of the seepage detected pH levels of 4.8 in the Tigithe River, which is far too acidic for fish to live in, and far under Tanzanian drinking water standards.

According to the local community the contamination has caused surrounding crops and animals and fish to perish. Many villagers have also complained of health problems, such as skin irritations and stomach pains as a result of drinking and bathing in the water.

Although some 700-1000 heads of cattle have allegedly died since the incident occurred, no one was able to back the statement up with evidence. Barrick claim that the accident happened only as a result of villagers stealing the PVC lining from the leach ponds on several occasions, to use as roofing for houses and shops. However, in the areas I visited, the lining was not evident.

Walking along the path to the river are many people, mostly women and children going to collect water from the Tigithe; from upstream though.

“We have always collected water from here, we live nearby,” says Esther Dustin, amongst 5 other women from the area. “Most people depend on the river for everything; for bathing, washing, drinking, and for cattle.
“We have been complaining about the water sine 2005, but this year was the worse. We have to use the water, because there is no other source, the Mara River is too far from here.”

–

Many villagers have visited health centres in the region complaining of skin irritations due to bathing in the Tigithe River, the results of their tests have yet to materialise.

Chacha Ochibhota is young, he’s 21 years old, he has a skin pigmentation covering his face, his eyes are bloodshot, he speaks quietly and moves slowly. His medical examination states that on the 1st of July, he claimed to ‘have used acidic water, contaminated by the mining project – sustaining burns on the face…’ Referring him to the Tarime District Hospital for further investigations.

“I started feeling the problems in May this year,” he said. “I have a farm near the Tigithe River. When it was hot and sweaty I would bath in the water and wash my face and body to cool down.

“It felt different, when I tasted the water, it didn’t taste normal, it was a salty taste, and it was the feeling of rubbing salt in wounds…

“I was referred to the district hospital, but because I had no money, I didn’t go.

“For me,” said Chacha, “I need only treatment, so I can do work. Now I can only lie in bed, or do soft work…”

–

The community state that Barrick are not compensating people fairly, if at all – and Barrick state that they are compensating people “handsomely”.

Gerhard Hermann, the Production manager for NMGM Ltd. says “We compensate them for their land, for crops on their land and also for any structures.

“We pay as if their entire property was planted with bananas (even if it’s not), we call that the ‘full banana concept’.”

No sick or displaced person appears to be taking direct action against Barrick.

“No one has laid any charges against us as far as I’m aware,” said Hermann. “(Because)…they have to have a case, and the fact that they’re not doing anything, makes you question if they really have a case or not.”

Barrick were not able to replace the lining completely until August this year; due to manufacturer delays, meaning that between May and August acidic liquid was soaking into the earth and leaking out into the environment unstopped.

“This is where we want to dig a trench, so if we ever have breach of the liners again we can pick up the seepage in a nice deep liner here and then pump it back into the ponds,” said Hermann

contaminated shambas

Currently, the water flowing from directly below the containment pond is at a pH level of about 4-4.5. Tanzanian drinking water standards are between 6.5 and 7.5.

According to Barrick, 10 meters downstream from where polluted water enters the river, the pH is back up to normal because of dilution.

Barrick claim to be operating on a zero-discharge policy, meaning that no water from the waste or leach ponds will enter into this environment. This process was explained to me while standing next to the leach pond looking up at the massive wall of the waste dump containing Potentially Acid Forming (PAF) material (sulphuric acid).

“Basically what it is, is an impervious layer, right at the bottom of high dense polyethylene plastic, 1mm thick, dense plastic, which the acid cannot penetrate through, we have a drainage system on top of that, and on top of that a waste dump.

“So any water percolating through the waste dump can only report to one place and that’s the pond, when it hits that liner, it can’t go anywhere else, the only place water from there can go from there is into the drainage pipe, and the only place those drainage pipes go to is a lined leach pond…once it reaches the leach-pond it is also completely contained.”

Unless of course something breaches it, which is what is said to have happened.

destroyed PVC lining for the ponds

—

“They are trying to put the blame on the community,” said Chacha Wambura, the executive director of Foundation HELP, an NGO based 100 km away in the town of Musoma. Wambura has been working to expose environmental issues around the NMGM and running awareness-raising and capacity building campaigns for the national community.

“People are not cooperating because they want justice to be done.

“The community can be aggressive, but the company (and the government) are not trying to alleviate problems.

“The government are backing Barrick 100 percent, without knowing it they are fueling their own graves; because this water flows into the Mara River, and discharges into Lake Victoria, and so many animals and humans will be affected by that.”

Mara River

Tagged with: africa, barrick gold, corruption, greed, Jessie Boylan, journalism, north mara, photography, poverty, tanzania

Once Upon a Gold Mine

Posted in Jessie Boylan, journalism by jessieboylan on December 11, 2009

N Mara Gold mine, Pit

Once upon a gold mine…
Musoma>Tanzania
29.11.09

Up in the mountains, surrounded by green grassy valleys and fields of maize, cassava and banana plantations, between scattered villages and townships, past herds of goats and cows, amongst flowing rivers and natural springs, on top of displaced peoples land, lies a gold mine.

The gold mine has some problems.

Gold exploration began here in 1993 after some foreign engineers discovered local artisans chipping away at some rock, “aha! They’ve struck gold! – We must buy this land!” they (may have) said.

And so they bought the land, or leased it, and evicted all of those – the Kurya’s (the local tribe) – who had been digging there long before the foreigners arrived on the scene.

local/s mining, NMara

The mine began production in 2002 and since then the lease has changed hands three times, and is now in the possession of Barrick Gold.

Barrick’s North Mara Gold Mine has been under constant attack for their performance socially, culturally and environmentally since they took over the lease in 2006; so much so, as they were nearly shut down earlier this year – due to a major acid leakage in May which caused abnormal pH levels in the local Tigithe River, of which some 6000 households rely on for all their domestic needs.

Community and company relations have never been warm here in the Tarime district, where the mine is located.

“When it started there were good relations,” said Daud Itembe, the chairman for the Matonga Village Council, “people were hoping that the mine would help development. After East Africa Gold Mines passed the lease to Placedon, the hope of citizens started to leave…

“Services that EAGM had started began to stop. And after Placedon passed (the lease) on to Barrick, the situation got worse. Barrick has not provided one single service to the local community. We see the mine as being useless, no one is benefiting from it.”

According to the local council there was an agreement that 1 percent of production revenue would go to the local municipality, however, they have yet to receive this money. Currently the North Mara mine is not making a cash-profit.

“The villagers provide (a lot of land) for the (tailings) dam, and the waste flows to the residential areas. They have asked to be compensated but nothing has happened. There has been no discussion between villagers and company to organise the 1 percent of revenue.” Said Itembe.

a part of nyangoto village lies at the bottom of the mine - the community refuses to move

“Barrick is here for business, not for good relations between them and the community.” said Lucas Cornel, the Village Executive Officer, in their council offices, which appears to double as a barn, the walls and floors are cracked and a donkey clops in, followed by a local citizen.

“They were brought here by the government and not by the community, they’re here for profit and nothing else,” said Cornel.

Despite some efforts by Barrick to implement a strategic plan with the community, according to the council, nothing is happening. “The community refuse to collaborate, they see (Barrick) as being a liar. We are tired,” said Cornel.

Walking around the base at one end of the mine, dodging puddles and mud, I talk to a local miner who comes here with his two young boys every day looking for gold. He is wearing gumboots, and I am envious because it has been raining heavily on and off all day.

“I’m looking for food,” Mogubo Mirumbe says sarcastically. “I’m looking for gold stones, for survival. “I don’t have any other income, no farm; it was taken by the mine in 2002. After that I have come here every day.

N Mara tailings

“I was given ‘tomato money’ for my farm- not enough. Here I earn between 1000 and 2000 Tsh per day (between US 75c and $1.5), depending on what I find. There are about 6-10 stones in a bag, which sells for 20,000 Tsh (in town).

“With my money from selling gold I bought 200 cattle, I have only 9 left, I think they died because of drinking this water,” he said pointing to a stream that flows out from the mine pits, (which I am later told by Barrick are natural springs situated under the mine uncontaminated by any waste).

In the last three years the North Mara Gold Mine has experienced regular intruders stealing and damaging goods like diesel, scrap metal, piping, and high-quality plastic lining from ponds from the site, adding to the tense relations.

security 4wd after some beatings

These incidents often result in security, police and community clashes, with the community wielding machetes and rocks, and the police armed with tear gas and live ammunition. Occasionally there are fatalities.

Every day there are hundreds of trespassers on the mine site, rummaging for gold. The security and police have been accused of accepting bribes to allow them to continue their work, or simply don’t care. Sometimes they step up their response and then conflict occurs.

When I visited the mine I did indeed see people scattered all over the site with buckets, tools and bags searching for bounty. A group of young girls who are sitting in hand dug holes start to run away as we arrive, however, noticing that we’re not security, they continue with their work.

We walk up onto the top of a rock pile and look down into the valley below. “Two things you need to see here,” says Gerhard Hermann, the South African Production Manager for Barrick Tanzania, “the first is the illegal mining, and the second is, see the guy sitting next to the hole of water, that’s actually an FFU (Field Force Unit) police officer, so you can make your own deductions as to what’s happening there.”

According to Hermann the amount of work required to farm compared with the amount of work required for mining gold is vastly different. Plus what people make from selling gold is much higher than profits made from agriculture. This is what draws people here, he said.

“How do you even discourage them from coming here in the first place?” said Teweli Teweli, the PR and Communications Officer for Barrick Gold Tanzania. “This is where the government comes in. This is where they have to invest in the community, to give them alternatives…”

In contrast, unsurprisingly, to what the community has said about Barrick’s performance, Hermann states that community relations were good until December the 11th 2008 when US$25 million worth of equipment was damaged during an on-site break in. After that Barrick cut off all ties with the community and pulled out from any social service programs they were running.

They say that only recently they have looked at re-engaging with the community, but the pace is slow and uneasy.

“We’re in touch with the local councillors, chairmen, and executive officers,” said Teweli, “some of them have come out in local media, trying to discourage the community from vandalising any mining infrastructure, because one way or another it comes back and hurts the community itself, but of course a lot more needs to be done.

“There’s only so much we can do as a company; we need the other two players to come in, the local community and the government and have a coordinated approach as to how we address these issues.”

The government do not appear to be engaging or mediating the tense relations between company and community, and unfortunately were unavailable/unreachable, (or on safari), to comment for this article.

“The community always put pressure on the Minister of Energy and Minerals to deal with the issue, but they don’t do anything. This is why the people use force, to show Barrick and the government that they are tired,” said Daud Itembe.

“We feel like we have no say as to what happens, that there is no way our voice can be heard; it is just between the central government and the company.”

leach pond

Tagged with: barrick gold, gold mining, Jessie Boylan, journalism, mining, north mara, poverty, tanzania

backlog #3: North Mara, TZ, Barrick Gold, polluted waters, rain, motorbikes, fixers, FGM, abuse, poverty, tradition

Posted in Jessie Boylan, journalism by jessieboylan on December 11, 2009

23.11.09 – 03.12.09
1. after the masaii mara i travelled back south to tanzania – not far south of the kenyan border on the eastern side of Lake Victoria, the North Mara, the Mara region of northern Tanzania. I travelled in a mini bus of 12 seats that had about 30 people – i have been in crowded buses before, but this was insane. they then tried to fit a man who had busted his leg and was bleading, on top of a rusty suitcase, and his small boy who was wearing an oversized suit – i dont know what happened, but it didn’t work. so – i arrived in Musoma, a town on the shores of Lake Victoria, i got taken to a hotel, the most expensive in town, of $25 a night – more than i had spent anywhere, but i really wanted a clean bathroom, to myself; I know, greedy, but i needed it. I met with my fixer, rhobinson, who had been organised through the TZ institute of information and… something – he was great, very humble, but active, a journalist himself, and he owned a motorbike – on which we were to travel hours and hours on dirt, dusty or wet roads interviewing people for a week. he organised the schedule, tomorrow we would start with the community affected by Barrick Gold’s North Mara mine – about 2-3 hours away on this motorbike of 60km an hour, sometimes 80..

2. we left around 9 after i struggled to find internet that worked so i could read my editors comments/wishes/focus for the articles. the article is yet to be published, as my editor is covering the copenhagen climate conference: http://www.ips.org/TV/copenhagen/ – so hopefully after then they will be put online. I am still waiting for 5 more stories to go up. so i will publish the drafts; unapproved by the critical CAPITAL LETTERS of my editor. whom i love and respect for teaching me much about writing and journalism. and although my time brief doing this; has pushed me to continue. i hope.

so. on the bike.

3. through the police blocks – where are you going? ‘to tarime’ – why? ‘i am looking, researching’ ‘im a tourist’ – haha, put the helmet on her, for saftey ma’am.

4. it’s really green here, it’s really been raining, and will, on and off for the next week. the landscapes dotted with rounded huts with pointy roofs. thatched, mud, villages, so normal now, i love these glimpses, flickering by on the back of a motorbike. slow and quickly. this boy, he’s little, a baby really, picks up a bucket, throws it on the ground. these girls, they hop. they laugh and chase each other. these boys push a tire along the ground, yelling something at the same time. these women carry water on their heads, babies on their backs. this old man does nothing, these young men lean against the side of their shop, chewing a piece of grass, turning their gaze as we pass. these goats block the road, they don’t notice the horn, these cows block the road, they don’t notice the horn.

5. the peaceful hum, splatter, purr of the motorcycle , the wind snaps at my face, i hide behind rhobinson, to hide from people’s gaze as well as to hide from the wind.

rhobinson the trusty fixer and journalist, and our helper in nyamongo village, waiting for the rain to stop

6. upon arriving in Nyangomo village, Rhobinson had arranged for another man to help us – visiting people who had complained of skin diseases due to bathing in the Tigithe River after it was contaminated in early May – after lining was removed, but, a scandal. ongoing – he organised us to meet local councillors and chairmen, and to talk with local small-scale miners who visit the site every day to earn about $1.5 per day off gold sales. locals use mercury to extract the gold, using their bare hands and home-made equipment, often grinders are contained within homes at the base of the mine, refusing to move.

7. so we visited the contaminated area, we visited areas where water was discharging from the mine (which i was later to learn is from natural springs (uncontaminated..?) that sit underneath the mine). we were too late to travel back to musoma, and more people to visit the next day, so we stayed in a cheap guesthouse in the village centre, that smelt like petrol and had drunken people yelling into the wee-hours, but i was so tired i fell asleep amongst it all underneath the hole-full mosquito net.
Rhobinson tells me a story which i can’t understand/comprehend, about a woman who is beaten, abused from a young age, who goes on to move about across tanzania continuing to be beaten and abused by those who she comes across – i ask him about stories to cover women’s issues in the Mara district, and this is what he tells me – Female Genital Mutilation is still huge here, abuse is huge, education for girls is still so low… AIDS, the list goes on. So i fall asleep thinking about corruption, abuse, tradition, poverty, FGM, aids; i feel kind of numbed, numbed by everything – as if to say “oh, you have such a terrible life.. okay, who else can we talk to?” – im not sure this is how i really feel, but it feels a little how i feel – as if the lives have piled up and i am no longer actually seeing them on the same level, one by one, a reality by a reality. there are so many – and each person has one to tell.

8. after the end of the next day i return exhausted to Musoma – try to write something but end up drinking amarula watching the soccer on my comfortable hotel bed – thinking of how to retell these stories…

9. the next day rhobinson takes me to a village about an hour out of Musoma to talk with women who are the victims of abuse and of FGM - didn’t really know what to expect – nor had i prepared my questions or research about the issues. but going on the little time we had i jumped on the back of the bike and listened to rhobinson brief me along the way – yelling over the top of the motorbike engine – actually i tried not to talk on the back there, because when i did he would slow down to about 50km an hour and i knew we would never reach the village.

10. the women; about 8 of them, were gathered around at the edge of the house in the Kitarmanka village, along a dirt track somewhere in the musoma rural district- sitting on a woven mat, they brought chairs out for us as we arrived – and so; i didn’t know where to start, who they were or what i was asking them, but rhobinson just said “they will tell you their story one by one” – and so i pressed record and started taking notes.

Justine Mahunda

Justine Mahunda: I was born here in 1964, I was married in 1984, to a man named Mahunda Sendi. He paid 25 cows and 15 goats for my dowry. When I got married I already had one child who was born in 1983; I moved with her to my new husband’s home. My husband was so much older than me, he could have been my father! I was forced to marry him by my family, because of tradition; the responsibility is of the parents, he offered a good price for me.
He was always abusive because ; he had 5 wives – so he kept some wives and got rid of the others…
We had three children together, and in 1988 he chased me away from the family?
Why?
Because he had found a new wife, I was already the third wife for him.
I went to the elders – who, according to tradition, the husband must provide land, he did, but never provided and money or support for me, I lived with my children alone with nothing since 1989. He had a lot of cattle but gave me nothing.
My husband died in 1989. He was killed by somebody called Jumaa Nyansambo, who was my new boyfriend – who is now in jail for the murder.
(the story is a bit muddled and hard to follow…)
We were/are always in conflict; it is a normal style of living for us here.
That day; the day he killed my ex-husband… he came with a knife to my home, and cut me here (she points) and here on my head (she shows) – then my son came to protect me and Jumaa took an axe and cut the son with the axe in the waist and the cut his arm in three pieces! he then cut his shoulder as well and took the knife again and cut my son twice on his head. My sons name was Sergere Mahunda, age 23. We took him immediately to Musoma hospital, it was late at night – he passed away the next morning.
Jumaa ran away to the neighbours house and tried to kill himself – They took him to the hospital too, where he was arrested and taken to jail.
He never attends court, but I hope one day he will be tried; although, it is not neccessary now, what else can be done?
Accordng to tradition… it is normal for women to be beaten..
But does the community accept that it’s normal? Do people agree with it?
There are two types of conflict; one is the kind when people are always in conflict, so it’s normal, the other is when a man beats his wife almost to death, then it is a problem, then they can get divorced.
He could be me if I had done something wrong, or even if I hadn’t, it was just normal> this is just the way the man behaves… It is very difficult to find a man that does not beat his wife..
But people accept it in the community? As ‘normal?’
We get beaten inside the house, so people don’t see.
Are things changing?
Now people are starting to change their minds about this; if people complain to the community, but if a woman is quiet she is only doing this to obey the marriage – to complain is to abuse the marriage. If a wife was beaten by her real husband it is accepted, but not if he is not her real husband…
By law it is illegal, but if a woman takes her husband to court then she won’t be accepted back into the family. Traditionally women are supposed to take her husband to their parents to fix the problems, and it worked, but now most people take them to the police or to a court of local leaders – it is starting to change now and women will be accepted back into the family.
–
she went on to talk about alcohol as the main cause of problems between husband and wife, and she told me that she used to drink a lot, and accepted that she was beaten for drinking. I asked the women in the gathering who had been to school, only some 3 out of 8 or 9 had finished standard 6, which would be.. primary school? – some finished at age 14 or 15, others at age 20. And i asked if at school if there was much education around domestic abuse – they simply shook their heads and said that they were taught how to cook, etc..

It started to rain heavily and we moved inside – one of the older women of the group told me her story, which was strange, also horrible, but i didn’t understand it entirely.. beaten by police? who stole her 15 cows..? also married to an old man, who was rich (with cows) and had 4 wives – she had stomach problems, ovary problems and could give birth, so was kicked out of the house. She contracted TB and couldn’t work anymore – she still lives with her mother.. the story trailed off as I was totally lost and not sure if I could ‘use’ the story for anything.. – We began to talk about FGM and this went on until dark, we were all crammed, now there was about 15 or so of us in this bare dark blue room in this house – talking about FGM, the traditions, the horrors; the mindsets – then i clicked each of them -
and the story is to come in the next couple of posts..

kitarmanka women

11. the following days were spent trying to chase government officials for quotes; going back out the North Mara mine and interviewing Barrick and doing a mine tour – then trying to complete the FGM story and start another story on girls and education. I ran out of time and wanted to leave, to go, to go to cairo and be settled again for a little while – i don’t know why i needed to rush so fast, but i had this plan in my mind and i followed it.

Tagged with: africa, barrick gold, Jessie Boylan, journalism, north mara, poverty, tanzania

backlog #2: dar to the masaai via a flooded road

Posted in journalism, nomads, travel by jessieboylan on December 11, 2009

well. after dar i travelled quickly to nairobi to meet up with some friends to go to the masaai mara. to finally see some, animals, lions, leopards and the like – and squeal with glee and childish happiness at seeing these animals in africa in the wild where they choose to live and sleep. although it is very voyueristic , i enjoyed it nevertheless.

the road to the border was completely flooded, no one could cross – until a few bigheaded 4wd’ers decided to attempt – they succeeded, then i left my local bus and jumped in a pink 4wd, we crossed, later down the long dirt road my local bus passed us – i rejoined it at the border to much laughter of the passengers..to continue to nairobi.

so the masaai was amazing, strange and surreal to spend hours on treeless flats looking for something trying to kill or hunt something – but very exciting, and driven by a friend who had lived there for three years, allowed us free drinks and tip-offs to where the wild things are.

not too much writing these days, just transiting, interviewing, looking, seeing thinking, being, thinking about writing, but not much happened.

more photos from the past 5 months here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=163386&id=664642717&l=79f8ffc7e7

Tagged with: africa, Jessie Boylan, journalism, kenya, masaai mara, tanzania, travel

dar es salaam – charcoal and energy

Posted in nomads by jessieboylan on December 11, 2009

dar es salaam was a week spent researching, writing, interviewing, photographing people in and out of town about issues around energy use in Tanzania, specifically charcoal – you can read the article here: http://www.ipsnews.net/africa/nota.asp?idnews=49344

household charcoal use, Tabata Changombe

Tabata Changombe, dar es salaam

charcoal retailers Tabata hood

“Environmentally, charcoal use has a severe impact, accounting for a large part of deforestation in developing countries. According to the Tanzanian Traditional Energy and Development Organisation, TaTEDO, some 300 hectares of forest are cleared each day in Tanzania, for timber, to clear space for agriculture or grazing livestock and for the production of charcoal. One hundred million tonnes of charcoal are produced annually in Tanzania, resulting in nine million tonnes of CO2 emitted into the atmosphere.”

Jumaa, charcoal retailer, Tabata

i liked dar – a sweaty, hot coastal city on the indian ocean, a huge muslim influence due to the slave-trade and product trade – the muezzin, the call to prayer came back to my ears – it was comforting. the noise and business helped me move forward.

outer dar, family

this family lived among the tallest palm trees i have ever seen. the women, not pictured, said the area was turning to a desert because of all the deforestation due to charocal production – but people have to live, and charcoal is another income. – alternatives needed.. government corruption? tradition? routine? corruption..

family, outer dar

recently circumcised, and very silent, boys

Tagged with: africa, charcoal, jessieboylan, journalism, photography, poverty, tanzania, travel

backlog – niassa to dar – transit

Posted in nomads by jessieboylan on December 11, 2009

goodbye niassa

as i now have warm feet and am still for a while i can go back on the past couple of months a little bit perhaps.

11.11.09
1. everything is turning to salt - to dust, to fish. everything smells of fish. – i have been watching these streets come alive this morning, these dirt roads grow light today – and i am still waiting – i wish i had more money and i pay the man to drive me to the border. i am not ready for patience now, it rained, i am not ready for travel now. – i have been slow for the past 3 months and now i am moving, i want to be moving – through the in between and out the other side.

2. vamos vamos – lets go, per favor, por que estoy, los todos, que? why are we waiting, from 5am, i am here, it is 8am now – the millions of eyes setting on this young white woman, sitting on her bag waiting for a non-existent mini bus to take her 5 hours north on a dirt road to an artificial border to cross into another country, tanzania – from mozambique.

3. i think of this dust embedded in everything - this town has tarmac, asphalt, and the rain has dampened the uncovered earth, but the smell and the taste of dust and all of its histories, its bare-footed steps, or boot-footed steps – lodged in my nostrils.

4. the missionaries were nice - except the one who wanted my money immediately, as if i were to run away, she knew i wasn’t one of them. – but the hunters, the south african hunters who couldn’t get the internet to work. “that’s why we’re better off sticking to rifles, john..” he said, with a picture of himself, smiling, posing next to a dead hippo. rifle in hand. -
“here’s some banana cake and south african biscuits for your journey,” said the lovely missionary, with endless blonde kids living across the kitchen window. “do you know when you’ll arrive?” – we laugh.

5. i miss the lake.

back home from david's funeral

6. i look forward to not being looked at anymore - my obvious imperfection, the colour of my skin, the impermenance of my presence. ‘what are you waiting for? what are you looking at?’ i want to ask. but i already know the reason.

7. i have watched these streets grow busy this morning, the sacks carried have multiplied – the voices, yelling, the laughs, the volume has multiplied. the music, out of a rustic wooden shack-shop, blasting. – the stalls have opened their eye-lids. – i could still be asleep. how much to fill this car? $137? fuck. i feel broke. no pin number for my credit card, no credit card facilities…? – i’ll wait.

8. why is coke more available than water?

9. i’m smelling the bush. the trees, the sounds; i can even smell the sounds. – i’ll miss the endless greetings – the repetition of days, a comfort of routine – i hoped for, received.
now to more stories – articles, problems, goals, lies, hopes – to pollution, to charcoal, to..lives on the fringes.

10. the earth that cracks in the october heat - the build up before it melts, melds together, and the sky rumbles and cracks, breaks, angrily, and pours to layer the surface, oils wth accidents, waiting to kill another 16 people off a cliff. – he was on that bus, mickey, shaheeb, i didn’t know – later he said he saw people get chopped off as they hit the truck, and fell off the cliff, caught by trees. dragged his bag uphill, and onwards. alive. those behind him?

11. another child carries a child.

12. i’m grateful for the women, who act like a mother, like mama rebecca, looks after me – she has strong arms, she led me through fields, through crowds, through sand.
this one here in the bus station, finds me this car, but it doesn’t leave. let us move forward, 7 more passengers, but i can’t wait till tomorrow my visa is up today, and the mozambicans like my money.

13. it’s night now. 5 hours of waiting at the market i gave in and paid to move to the border. 3000 Meticais – $103 – to get me to the border – relatively pain-free. covered in dust i check out of mozambique – im sweaty, grumpy and smelly. – the border post, a few straw thatched huts, open walls, with a table in each one, and books that belong in museums, an immigration official whose had too many ’sodas’ for the day.
i cross the river, the demarcation to TZ – and the immigration post is a little more advanced with a concrete building, and new looking desks – outside three men sit, wave me over – switch, portugese with kswahilli now – a language i want to learn. Then after my stamp, for 12 days, ‘transit’ – not working.. I gave him $40, but he doesn’t have change – “$10, for sodas?” he says. – you bastard. I’m leaving.

14. I notice in the book – everyone elses purpose for travelling, was ‘peasant’ – peasant, peasant, peasant – mine, … ‘artist’ –

15. later – deals – motorbike to songea – 130 kms? 3 hours? Okay – it’s getting dark, lets go, please. – I have too much stuff for this motorbike, it’s way overloaded. The sky – blue-grey – clouds, skys flashing and cracking, forests green fresh, wet, and paranoia – crashing, dirt roads, too fast, too much stuff, no one else around – leopards, bush, forest, foreigner. – I walk over piles of dirt along the road, the mud, we can’t pass together – I get back on. We continue – through villages, the glimpses of lives lit up by household fires – the only light – the shops, always selling the same thing.

16. It’s dark, we have a puncture, we’re just outside a village, we walk it back, my white face illuminated by the moon, by the lightdark setting – pushing this motorbike through the village, I must look eerie – who is this white person, what is ‘he?’ doing – this woman, this stuff, this night –

lucy and her family, southern tanzania $1.50 guest house

17. We stop at a resthouse – my driver knows him, a teacher also – Mr. Makarana and his wife lucy, welcome us for 2000 tz shillings ($1.5) with some fish and maize and a warm bucket shower lit by candle-light – other lights powered by a noisy generator – the maize mill too – I sleep. Layla salaama.

18. next day – we get another puncture – I give up and flag a 4wd – its comfortable, dry, it starts to pelt down, rain heavily – I leave my motorbike drive – im sorry, im going. Good luck. The roads are so wet, I would never have made it on the bike. Eventually we reach songea, but I have to wait till tomorrow for a bus to dar. this is transiting.

$1.50 guesthouse shoebox room, they stared through the window at this whiteface

Tagged with: africa, bordercrossing, mozambique, mzungu, Niassa, photography, tanzania, transiting, travel

the bottom of the lake

Posted in nomads by jessieboylan on November 22, 2009

first; i want to write about what happened to david.

it was the 31st of October, heads were fuzzy, footsteps and progress was slow, we had said goodbye and thanks to some fellow volunteers, and drank some wine, as we do, the night before, did not sleep enough after spending too long tuning a guitar and sipping whisky nightcap/s. the 6am wake up every day of the week is still 6am every day of the week. I had been staring at my computer screen for hours trying to determine if I was being productive or more useless than usual. I wanted to go to the farm and help burn the bricks, or help weed, or help mulch. But I was doing something, I remember I was doing something… useful, while staring at the screen.

I chose rice over spaghetti that day. Like most days, if I had the choice.

11.30am and I must be consumed by water, I needed to be consumed by water, the fresh cool delicious water of lago Niassa just there, waiting, calling, perpetually, just there.

I see some staff on the beach chatting about something, I pass and say hello, “im going in there,” I say to dev, pointing at the blue, “nice,” he responds.

I strip to my bra and nickers, and put my goggles on. There are some waves breaking close to the shore, I swim past the beginning of their swell and a bit far out to swim alongside the lakeshore – david comes past me in a canoe, david is from the farm, and although we don’t share a language, we’ve had fun, we’ve managed to laugh, and work together, digging pits for the mud bricks, carrying bamboo, weeding, eating cassava and plantain bananas, and drinking tea.. “where are you going?” I ask. “Yah,” he says, always ‘yah’. “Are you going to the farm?” “Yah, no, Mala, Manure,” he says pointing north; he’s going to Mala, a nearby village to collect manure for the compost. “Okay, tunana bambuyo,” (see you later) I say. “yah..” he goes…

and I go swimming down the lakeshore, slowly, bobbing over the waves. When I come back after a few minutes, I notice some other staff in the water, hurrying to get out and put their shorts on, I wonder if its because they don’t want me to see them in their undies… Jamie, one of the staff from guest-management, runs over the platform that goes out on to the rocks just past the harbour. He runs back and up to the office. I see two fishermen come around from the rocks in a dugout canoe, and I think it must be because they’re not supposed to be fishing so close to shore, and they’re going to get yelled at.

Devon, one of the mzungu managers, rushes back down with Jamie and Willard and on to the platform; I get out of the water and wrap a sarong around me just as other staff come rushing down, I wonder what’s happening. Joal, a carpenter, is next to me and says, “guy from farm, canoe,” and signals it tipping over, “david?!” I say, shit, I run over to the platform and see that the guys are in yellowfin, the speedboat and are looking in the water, fuck… I run back to the lake and see them pulling the green canoe out from the water onto the boat… my heart takes gulps of air and starts to beat faster.

I grab my goggles and run into the water and swim out the boat, just near the furthest rocks, I’m cursing and breathing and cursing in time with my strokes. I start to swallow air and dive down a meter or so, to see the bottom, I can see it, but nothing..
The boat comes over to me, can you see him? No, where was the boat? I keep diving down and looking around, rocks shock me as I spot them, up and down, my head feels like it’s being squashed together between an iron clamp the deeper down I go. We keep looking for 20 mins or so, the boat circling around, and the guys looking over the edge. Finally they leave to see if/what the fishermen saw…

I swim back to shore and run around to the rocks on the other side of the bay, in case he’s over there somewhere, I clamber up and over the rough black and white stained surfaces, my feet gripping as I move. I’m still swearing as I move from one high point to the other; I look around, the clouds are semi-covering the sky and in the cracks the lake glistens and shoots crystals into my squints – I keep seeing breaks of water out further, ‘is that him?’ please let it be him, after about another 20 mins I see the speedboat coming back, so I go around and see that they continue looking around where they pulled up the boat.

I slide roughly into the water again, by this time the swell has picked up a bit and the waves are stronger – I swim over to them and dev says “the boatmen said they saw him swimming to the rocks, and we spoke to emmanuel (at the farm) who said one time david ran away into the bushes when a rock got into the water pump and he was scared.. so he might be okay..” – oh, but no one has seen him. We would have seen him. We keep looking, and eventually someone from the boat points somewhere, I follow them- now emmanuel and some fishermen have come out in another boat and we stop at the same point, he’s pointing down, I duck under, a meter or so, and see a shape, it shocks me, I see it’s an orange shirt – like the one’s the farm staff wear – I pop up, it’s his shirt, shit, oh shit oh fuck, oh jesus, I go down again and see it again, clearer.

People are further over and I move with them, I duck down and see him, david, this image will never leave my mind – he’s lying there, on his side, as if sleeping, arms bent and near his head, as if near where his pillow would be, he’s swaying with the undercurrent; I go up. ‘oh jesus, oh fuck, its him’ – I go down, there are other guys swimming now, trying to see if they can get down to him. It’s too far. He drowned.

I’m in between the boats now, and there’s a lot of commotion, people know, they know he’s dead, but people are moving fast, or slow, I don’t know.

Eventually one of the staff dive down with a rope and manage to loop it around his legs – they pull him up onto the boat, and as his torso is making its way over the edge, his limp arms flap over his chest.. I just watch..

I think, ‘should I do CPR?’ Should someone try? It’s been over an hour now, there’s no chance.

They take him back to the land, and I swim back to shore; I wrap my sarong around me and move to where everyone is gathering – the women are separated from the men, and one person starts wailing, and others join in, they start screaming and crying and fall to the ground sobbing – I don’t know where to sit, should I stay with the women or the men, I stay with the women for a little while; then we move over to join the men – discussions are happening about what to do, – we have to send a message to his family, who will go?

They are discussing whether or not to call the police, the police might cause problems if they don’t see the ‘scene’ – they might cause problems for us – say that something else happened, but devon and I are determined that we have to tell the truth, there is no other option – the alternatives scare me a little.

So dev calls the police in Cobue, and two people go off to send a message to his family, an hour or so walk south of nkwichi. – people sit together for a while, then break apart, we walk back to the office and it starts to rain – emmanuel sits down and starts crying, I am stunned, but calm.

I go to the farm to find hilda and joyce – to tell them, I walk the 15 minutes there feeling surreal and unsure, it’s grey and raining a little, thunder is cracking, and lightning threatens..the bush is bright green and yellow.. I don’t find anyone there, so come back.. I sit down to eat something, rice… and stare into space, at people moving about slowly, and murmuring, sitting, staring also. Later I go back to the farm with a letter from emmanuel to joyce and hilda.

‘I’m going to wait here, we’re going to wait for the people to come back from mbueca with the family’s choice about what to do with the body, then we will take the body by boat to his family’. They’re in shock, not speaking, murming, hilda asks me if his body is bloated… ‘I don’t know..’ ‘he had 5 children,’ she says. ‘I’m sorry’. We go to the lake to remove the pump from the rocks, and hilda puts it on her head, ‘you’re strong’, mpavu I say.

I walk back and later, just before sunset about 20 of us cram into the boat, with david’s body wrapped in a sheet and blanket at our feet. Everyone puts on life-jackets, for the lake is angry, rough, the sky is dark clouds and raining on and off – why must we put them on now? Its ironic, I have never seen anyone wearing one before. The journey to mbueca is quiet, but people chatter and babies cry. The swell is big and we move slowly over the water, up and down.

Once we arrive, the chief is sent for, and we sit on an old dugout, murmuring about mosquitos, Rebbeca, big mama, who is like a mother to me, says we should be careful, because the family might say that we killed their son.

The chief and some people come down, we speak a bit, about what to do, then a bed frame is brought and we place david’s body onto it, then we carry it along the beach as the moon is appearing from behind the clouds and we can see everything, this silent precession along the lakeshore, we go into the village, up through the ghostly cassava plains, past mounds of rocks keeping the soil in place, past homes made of earth, of grass, and women begin to wail, scream, weep, yell and scream, I can see shapes, people, figures, clearly, not clearly.

We arrive at his home, and lay the body down, the family is there and are weeping, some women fall to ground at his side and cry and yell and wail. We step back and wait to be asked to be welcomed by the father.

He is humble and grateful, for us bringing his body ‘I know it was an accident, I know how hard it is to find the body out there, sometimes it gets so deep and people never find the body, thank you for bringing him to us, I hope you treat all your staff like this.’ – devon says a few words, and so does emmanuel. Tomorrow will be the funeral, the carpenters will make a coffin and bring it by boat.
We leave, back through the cassava under the moonlight, our trail, barefoot over rocks and sand, back into the boat, surreal laughter, silence, chatter, movement, the women stay in the village. We return. I wash, and notice the crocodile tracks are back, leading from the lake to the swamp across the glimmering white sand.

That night I sleep, I’m scared a little, in shock, I worry about dreams, of that image. But I sleep.

I spend the morning at the farm, watering mostly, there is no pump because emmanuel is at the lodge, and there is no one else now.

So I make several trips to the lake with a watering can, I want to water the fruit trees, it’s hot, but overcast, I don’t want them to die, the trees…

Around lunchtime, a man from mbueca comes and asks if we can hurry up with the coffin because the body is starting to puff up and bleed, they want to bury him.

The coffin is beautiful, and wrapped in green and black ma

terial. We take it to mbueca by boat – I have my camera, I want to photograph the ceremony, once on the land I ask if it would be possible .. they ask the family for me, and then I am directed where to go. I follow the men under a big tree, the largest I have seen in this area, there is maybe 100-200 people sitting under it, all men, the women have split off and gone somewhere else – I am feeling awkward, sticking out as the only white woman amongst a crowd of Mozambican men. They’re looking at me and I hide on the edge.
- some words are said, and I am pointed at as the mzungu from the lodge, and after a little while I am taken up to the family home, past the place where david’s grave has been dug – a wave with respect to those who dug it. Up to the house, there are maybe 50 people, 100 people gathered under the grass thatched roof, singing, all singing and looking out, down to the lake below. Inside are the priests, the family, david, others. I sit outside with the singers, as one song follows the other, they’re beautiful – the songs, I wish I could sing them. I record them instead.

I am taken inside and into the room where david’s body now lies in the coffin – I didn’t ask to photograph this, but it appears they want me to. The father and some other men nod at me, and signal to photograph – so I do, click, click, it’s dark, you can’t see his face, but maybe that’s ok.

Out again, and I am signaled to photograph the wife, and family who are on the floor, staring at the wall and crying – I wonder why, but do so anyway, I feel like such an intruder, photographing people grieving and singing – I can’t hide now, I am standing in front of everyone.

Out again and down the path to the tree. Then the ceremony starts- the singing comes closer and closer, led by the cross and the priests – in single file through the cassava fields, under the tree they lay his coffin, they sing, everyone sings, these beautiful songs, I have heard some of them, from where? The church singers.

They say some prayers and the ceremony moves to the graveyard. There is singing, non-stop, as he is lowered into the ground, and people begin to shovel dirt over the coffin, taking turns, the men, taking turns with all the shovels, smiling, some, this ceremony, I’ve never seen anything like it – it seems so regular, almost, but with so much respect and love, it is a beautiful ceremony; he was loved, he was known, everyone, it seems, from the entire village, is here. the clouds are booming, blossoming almost, above behind the mountains behind us, and over the lake on the other side.

Eventually it is over, and the food arrives, but we are leaving, and we run down to the boat, dodging plants and rocks; there is an incredible burst of light breaking and splitting onto the lake far away. It seems too fitting, too planned, it’s there, it’s present.

On the boat back people are laughing. And smiling, some vomiting; but this life has been cherished, even if people experience death at a much higher rate than I do, than some do. It is respected and cherished, but life for others continues…

–
that night, in my hut, in my home, my temporary home, my bamboo and grass thatched hut, where I have been able to lay my belongings for longer than I have since leaving Australia, I wake up, its about 2am, I need to go to the toilet, but contemplate not going, convincing myself I don’t need to. The moon is still bright outside and I can see it through my mosquito netting.

Suddenly I hear a mans yell, a screaming becoming louder up the path towards me, as if he’s running away from something, a leopard? I have had too many dreams about leopards for me to now see one. My heart starts beating at a million beats per second – I get up and listen, it sounds as if the man has run up my path and stopped at my door, I am silent, but I can’t hear anything, I am frightened, shit-scared, I have never felt this fear before – I keep listening. Nothing. I get out from my mosquito net and grab the machete I have been keeping beside my door since I am the only one in my village now, the others left two nights ago. Where is Esau? Where is the nightwatchman! I want to yell for him, but am dead silent. I try and peer on to my veranda, but only the glimmering-flickering of the lantern is there. I stand behind the mesh for about 10 minutes, and still I hear nothing. I really need to pee now, but am way too scared to go outside. So I pee into my large camping mug, and it resonates throughout the hut, I am still holding the machete.

Eventually I get back into bed with the machete beside me and take a while to get back to sleep. In the morning I ask Esau in broken chinyanja and portugese if he heard anything last night, nothing, nada… I was scared, I say, telipo, he says, I’m here.
I know! but maybe you were asleep… I wonder if I was dreaming, I can’t have been dreaming, it was more real than dreams of mine. But maybe I was dreaming…

David couldn’t swim, he was a fisherman before being a farmer, and he couldn’t swim, he lived on the lake all his life and couldn’t swim.
I hope he is now resting in peace.

Tagged with: africa, grieving, Jessie Boylan, mbuecca, mozambique, photography

bay of mpepo, wind

Posted in Displacement, Reslience, nomads by jessieboylan on October 12, 2009

bay of mpepo, wind

1. and sleep for a while in a long while i did, with blaring rnb across the lake with mpepo and waves crashing beneath the hut here; waiting till tonight to catch the big boat, the ilala, back across to likoma and then onwards back to mozambique, to niassa, to nkwichi, for the last month there before deciding what to do, maybe come home, back continue on to tanzania to do more articles for IPS – i have not yet decided. i am in africa and i’m not sure if i am fully aware of this.

muslim women singers from karonga to mzuzu - 3 hours

2. and yesterday, we caught a bus after many days, months, a year, 2 years of mostly good, so we part ways, and on the bus we’re squeezed into with a group of muslim women singing all the way from karonga to mzuzu, it reminds us of what we’ve shared that has found its way into the belly heart of us – and all else will sift its way through me to find itself as history and mud somewhere. so they sang and we smiled and looked nostalgically through the smeared windows over the bumps and away from each other again.

muslim women singers #2

3. so we had a conference on u-mining in Kayelekera, to share info and develop an action plan- very inspiring to see the voices of the people speak out in this kind of context that has not yet been brought up in Malawi – issues of human rights around mining, the total disregard by Paladin and the government of international standards of uranium mining and handling of radioactive materials – they’re concerned the water, poisoned will run into the rivers and lakes, it’s possible, maybe it already is.
more on this with an article..later.

a limp in my steps these days.

mzuzu hotel

Tagged with: africa, jessieb boylan, malawi, nomads, photography, Travelling, uranium-mining

hugging shadows ; and the noise of birth while they drink

Posted in Reslience, nomads by jessieboylan on October 12, 2009

fires out of control, Mcondece, Niassa Province, Mozambique

what can i say of walking through these villages that you’ve been to before; you have seen it before haven’t you? I’ve seen your pictures. You have said it before haven’t you? I’ve read your book. Nothing to add of another mzungu voyeuristic experience, of clicking and noting, and seeing your cracked walls, cracked roofs and knowings of survival.

I’m chasing james, our compadre and interpreter, through the fields of cassava southwards along the lake by the light of the moon only, it’s nearly full now. You can’t differentiate between a mound and the flat, we weave through the ghostly plants, – such a stable here, of such subsistence here; and along the houses, homes of many, fires lit inside, a baby cries, someone’s cooking, nsima, fish and some more, a dog gnarles, barks and comes closer, “give me your machete james”, the dog stops short, I hurry on, “im not going to chase you two, my feet are blistered, and this fucking sand, I hate this fucking sand, isn’t there another way?”

source of all water needs, Mtepwe River

There’s fires blazing in the mountains on the left, ahead, behind; they told us earlier, lit by travellers passing from village to village, lit by careless cigarettes – lit by them, not us, we don’t burn anymore, they told us not to – the smoke is so constant, thick, perpetual, it’s the smell of this place, this earth, these days, nights. \ when the rains come, what happens? These paths impassable, these homes unreachable, these fields ungraspable?

meeting in Mcondece village

We’ve finished our village visits in-land, just three, no clean water there, those interior villages rely on the dwindling rivers, used for every action, washing, cleaning, drinking, irrigating, also for animals, baboons, buffalos? Elephants? The like. I look there, dead trees and murky water, we have water-purification tablets, but what do you have? The ability to move? To boil? To.. stay. “we get diarreha, stomach pains, billhazia, it’s hard to say what, because we don’t have a doctor here”

This night, the sounds of birth penetrate through the valley, through the plastic-lining of my tent- I hope it is birth, I hope, I pray to some being that it is birth – maybe three hours of the sounds of pain, of occasional baby cries, of, a woman in ritual, tradition, – in the other direction, the drink, blasting reggae and arguing, laughing, loudness, they drink the lords gin, and a clear-skinned beer, - under a mango tree here, in front of fields of cassava, more. Some goats behind us, moving, stuck in a small pen, safe from leopards, safe.

I lie awake, listening to the intricacies, notes, leaves falling and landing on the tents, a scream, or groan or shout, a bicycle wheel spins past, remote but living life here.

Mtepwe Village

So we walk, from Magachi the last of the northern villages within the project area, through the mountains, and downwards towards the lake – arriving as if the last four days have been a year, of water engulfing blisters and sweat, dirt and a headache; but so common for others these treks; hot, long, waterless perhaps a common route, not novel like for me, for us, occasional, meetings, talks, under the shades of the biggest trees or in the church (we pray under him, maybe for another piece of tin roofing), under the annex of the chief’s house – after fresh papaya, after tea.

Mtepwe school

So, this fucking sand, we’ve been walking for 5-6 hours? I don’t know, less, more, but a while in the dark, in the light-shadows of the moon, my shadows, listening to the crackling of carbon, crackling of grass, smells of dried fish, smells of…dust… the familiarity of here.

Arriving in Cobue to the site of the boat from the lodge, we’re relieved- no more footsteps for now, blistered, like I said again, and tired. We wait at julius’ bar, it’s packed, completely, overflowing, people sleeping on the sand outside on the waters-edge – the tv is blaring, music clips, or FRELIMO campaign programs, ads, songs, etc. it’s tiny, the tv, but all eyes there, a gathering, nightly, to electricity, to noise, sounds, community… “I only profit if they drink.”

A bucket of boiling hot water – I stand, naked, under the moonlight behind the bamboo walls of the wash-room; waiting for the water to cool, when it does I step in, and stand, allowing my feet to come alive again – I wish I didn’t leave my boots in England, I wish I wasn’t trying to minimise. Fuck this sand, fuck these sandals. It’s beautiful here.

The boat; packed with booze, packed with nuts, cabbages, people, we drink warm beers, and look up at the stars the moon, the lake waves, the clean water, outwards, to nothing now, the water, the reflections, the shades of blue, grey, black, ndilipo, I’m here.

Tagged with: africa, burning, development, Jessie Boylan, mozambique, Niassa, nomads, photography, sanitation, Travelling, Water

not much for many

Posted in Jessie Boylan, nomads by jessieboylan on September 20, 2009

soccer match, Cobue, Niassa, Mozambique

Cobue Lago Niassa

1. as I clip my toenails on the veranda of our sloping bamboo and thatched roof hut I hear some noises in the bushes around me, dry grass and tall trees sing in the wind, dust blows and sticks to every surface, the sea-like lake has waves that crash today – the noises, I see them, baboons; one perched in a thin twig like tree grabbing fruits of some sort; I look left, another baboon on the path, scratches itself, looks at me, cares/doesn’t care, darts off, I cut another nail- I smile at my participation in this self-grooming primate & homo-sapien subsistence.

a silver and bright-blue skink chases an insect across the floor
a 1.5m monitor lizard clomps through the bush

I dream of leopards – at least three times, of other animals too, they’re frightening, the dreams, perhaps, she says, preparing me for a confrontation one day soon. One dream; I looked out the back of the hut; it was over a hill, very green, lots of big acacias, (not like here), all sorts of animals, elephants, giraffes, hyenas, etc. just being, sleeping moving – suddenly the front door makes a noise, there’s a leopard there, its fighting to get in, I’m holding the door shut, screaming for a knife. – I wake.
Another dream, similar, where I confront it, with a machete, but I wake. It’s always dark, mostly blue like light. I learn later that these dreams may have come from Larium, the malaria medication we’ve been taking. Possibly contributing to the mental and emotional tug of war that’s been happening lately. We switch to doxy but we’ve run out.

Mala Village Dance Competition

Maladance_trypt

local farmers deliver tomatoes to Nkwichi Lodge, Niassa, Mozambique

2. these weeks have been filled with sounds and smells, stepping backwards, stepping forwards, words and thoughts, writings and images; here in the manda wilderness (ghost forest); volunteering with the trust, working on projects at the farm, collecting bamboo (.3), carrying rocks, making paths, tightening bolts, banging hammers, chopping tomatoes, making chutney, making sauce, swimming in the lake, playing volleyball, sitting around fires, walking through villages to get information for writing articles on remote health-care, agriculture, and environment issues, working with the community trust by travelling to villages and having meetings (.4) about community problems and giving info on mining +’s & -‘s (mostly -’s)… thinking forward thinking backwards. Trying to research for a new body of work here, where to start? mostly feels like a long process of attempting to understand life here, how removed it is from my own, but also how normal everything has become.

christopher, boatman from Nkwichi

2.1 – IPS articles:

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=48184
http://ipsnews.net/africa/nota.asp?idnews=48266
http://www.ipsnews.net/africa/nota.asp?idnews=48476
http://www.ipsnews.net/africa/nota.asp?idnews=48413

3. emmanuel leads us through the bush, me, machete in hand, happy we’re off the constructed paths at the lodge and into the scrub – we walk along a dry riverbed, 5 of us to collect bamboo. We find a patch and start chopping, I’ve no idea of the method-I’ve never used a machete before, only had nightmares about them after reading Mandela’s biography, and watching Hotel Rwanda and The Last King of Scotland, but walking around the sand being pointed out leopard tracks has made me desperately want to own one…- So we’re chopping, emmanuel (the farm manager) laughs at my lack of skill, but he shows me, I learn, but still hack away using more energy than needed, we all do this for a while, then pile them up into bundles of 8, these are thick pieces of bamboo, to use for making paths, to use for everything it seems, they find the right kind of tree-bark for twine to wrap around the bamboo, emmanuel gives me the smaller bundle, and tries to balance it on my shoulder, its heavy, but more painful than anything; it digs into my shoulders and he thinks I can’t do it. “we’ll come back for this one,” he says, “no, no, I can do it,” I say stubbornly.

we start walking through the scrub, the bamboo, maybe 3-4meters long, throws me off balance – it starts to really dig in to my shoulders, so painful I want to cry, but it’s just a mental process isn’t it, pain? I try not to focus- alexis, the community project manager is also struggling, so I don’t feel so hopeless. Maybe we walk for half an hour, or less, but it feels much longer, stopping occasionally to rest, i feel like giving up – feeling my shoulders caving inward, bruising or weeping… but we reach the farm and I throw the pile on the ground, delighted and sore that we made it – emmanuel and the other farm workers laugh – why was that so hard? this is something we do every day in half the time… we all laugh.
Lessons in African livelihood are white-peoples tales.

Emmanuel, Manda Wilderness Project Farm Manager

3.1. loveness, emmanuel’s child, she’s 4. We can’t communicate through language, but we get the message across, she helps her mum at the farm, she shows me how to carry a baby on my back wrapped around with a sarong, like all the other women-mothers here- but I’m carrying a teddy-bear, not a baby, she’s proud of what she’s taught me, I smile. Later, we pick weeds from in between the herbs, someone’s singing, everyone’s watering, 2 hours in the morning, 2 hours in the afternoon, the thatched shades crackle in the late-morning sun, I pick some rocket from a bed and nibble at it, loveness giggles. Later, I’m helping joyce (loveness’ mum) around the farm; her smaller child emma, she’s 1.5yrs old, and loveness are in the tool shed, there’s hacksaws and machetes lying around, nails and bolts and rakes on the ground, im stressing, trying to say ‘be careful, don’t touch that’, but joyce seems unfazed by the potential disaster, kids just seem to know how to get around and do things without too much damage. perhaps because they start carrying bricks and water on their heads from age 2.

Lake Malawi Eel caught by a local fisherman, 1.4m long

4. it’s the wind that starts near 4am that wakes me, it sounds like a motorboat – but no one has one of those here (or maybe just one person does) – just dhows, going the way of the wind. Dozing for an hour before the sounds of women and children washing and cleaning pots pans plates and cups and babies in the lake begin - we’ve an audience here on the shore of lake Niassa, kids gather and stare as we pull ourselves out of our tents and start a fire for tea- james and charles, translator and companion, are carrying weight and leading the way through these villages of mud-brick and thatched roof homes we’re visiting this week. 5 in total, 5 days, no roads, just paths, sand, a lot of sand, dirt, huts, homes, trees, farms, cassava, maize, tomatoes, greetings, laughter, formality, chiefs. We have community meetings about problems the communities face (lack of employment, poverty, lack of infrastructure/development, too many students- not enough teachers, falling down schools, no desks or chairs, no health-clinic, long distances, problems with hippos destroying crops, leopards eating the dogs that scare baboons, virus affecting the cassava, insects eating the cabbages, water wells drying up/breaking down.

Church between Chicaia and Mataka

4.1. at the first village, Chicaia, a 3 hour walk from the lodge, our responses are mostly from one man, sceptical, with good reason, of us, and ‘who are you?’, and ‘you’ll never come back anyway’, ‘we’re poor here, so we’ll except the mine even though it has problems’. It changes throughout the villages, and people are concerned about the problems and are happy to hear about the problems and benefits. The next village, Mataka, we walk to that afternoon, just 1.5 hrs from Chicaya, we meet the chief and ask his permission to camp on the lakeshore, a we do in every village, we buy some mustard leaves for dinner and set up camp. The lake is still-glass and the sun is just going down, we jump in the freshwater to wash, but don’t stay too long for fear of crocodiles.

Chicaia Elders school for those who didn't go during the civil war

4.2. in some places along the track children dance and sing us songs, we say ‘bon dia’ ‘bon tarde’ ‘mula bwanji’ ‘good afternoon’ ‘hello’ more times than we can count, every single person greets us in some way, with a respectful two hand wave-clap, or a smile and a shout. Men sit under the shade listening to a radio, or manning their tiny shops with sachets of sweets and washing powder. Each village we visit is only an hour or so walk from the next, so it’s not difficult. We buy vegetables literally from the tops of women’s heads who are coming home from the days harvest, 50kwacha (Malawian currency because this area is so isolated from the rest of Mozambique) for 2 huge bunches of mustard leaves (about 40c), a pile of tomatoes for under $1. Mango and banana season is coming, but it’s not here yet, and there’s no other fruit around.

Mataka lago niassa

4.3. we sleep and wake early, our meetings discuss depleting supplies of fish and firewood, we try to understand why – more people, more poverty, different fishing methods, using mosquito nets, catching the young fish, people need an income, this helps. The women walk for up to 6 hours to collect firewood from the mountains; they are having to go further and further because they collect only deadwood, they say. The women do most of the farming as well; I’m humbled by life here. I feel endlessly privileged and useless at the same time. There’s no health clinic, or there is one, but only volunteers, or one nurse, and hundreds of people come here, from other villages too. It’s too far to a hospital…

Mataka School

4.4 you start judging one community as being wealthier or better off than the next based on whether the school has desks or not, or whether the community has a school at all. Sense of judgment is totally skewed “this school, at least has concrete on the floor”.

It’s also surprising to notice the differences between the villages even though they’re only 1.5 hours walk apart. As we hit the furthest north one we were visiting this time, Ngofi, it had pubs (mud brick constructions with open doors and windows, blaring African reggae, the men either yelling from inside or lounging outside, it’s amazing how quickly alcohol changes the feeling. This place has more in it’s tiny shops, instantly I feel as if I should buy something, do I need something? I can’t think of anything.

Mataka School

4.5. the women in Ngofi seem more present in the committee, more vocal, stronger, they even ask to talk to emma and I afterwards, about business ideas they have for the women in the community, starting a bakery, starting a chicken house, agricultural training, things to empower the women, things they can benefit from; we’re overjoyed with this because the women have had such little voice in most of the meetings, we wish we could just say “yes, of course, we’ll start these straight away,” and these projects would only need such a small amount of money to begin, but a lot of work in terms of training and resources and distances. But we hope. Any ideas?

Ngofi Health outpost

Chigoma School

5. so for now, back at the lodge, we’ve been summoned to immigration, we hope it’s not because of our meetings in the villages, hoping that it’s just the immigration official with malaria in Cobue is bored. We have more meetings in the closer villages this week and then we’re going to 3 inland villages next week for 5 days of long hikes for more meetings. But I’m aching for the mountains, to see the forest and inland life.

6. and so. still dreaming about coffee back home, dreaming about the smells and sounds of home, still dreaming about the faces of friends and my own community there, wondering if I’ll return before the end of the year – there’s still so much I want to do and see in this continent before I leave. If I can get some more work writing articles and taking photos then I’ll try to move around a bit, but home calls often these days…

salaam
jess

Tagged with: development, Jessie Boylan, journalism, Lake Malawi, Manda Wilderness, mozambique, Niassa, photography, poverty

mud brick : thatched roof

Posted in Reslience, nomads by jessieboylan on August 30, 2009

Kayelekera village, Malawi

1. the light-flies are swimming across my screen; the lake sounds like an ocean ; it feels more like an island here than part of a large continent called africa.

for now we are in Mozambique, volunteering at Nkwichi lodge and with the Manda Wilderness project, living in a hut near lake niassa/malawi and doing many things with the lodge and with the community projects, writing more stories, walking in the bush slightly scared of potential leopards, watching baboons jumping across trees above us ; trying to have enough time and space to properly write about time looking through overcrowded bus windows at lives of great inspiration and strength bumping by. but for now a few photos and a few notes from a couple of weeks ago.

–

update from 13 august.

1. It’s been just over a month now since I left England; the short 1 week visit that was England; mainly Haywards Heath; that was meeting my family again for the first time in 12 years, that was my cousin Esther’s wedding, that was directionless walks around the hobgoblin woods and empty fields in the rain, photographing puddles and street signs, cottages and mud. What was there was the attempt to live in that part of the world while I found a job and started to have an income after just under a year of ‘being unemployed’. I was only going to be there for 6 months perhaps – perhaps less; but I wasn’t really there, and I wasn’t hoping to stay.

I have always dreamed of travelling to Africa; maybe since hearing Ladysmith Black Mombazo on Paul Simon’s ‘Graceland’ when dad played it on the car cassette player when i was a kid. Or since knowing that both my parents came to this continent, and spent 6 months here on separate journey’s. What they both loved and learned here is what I learned so far away in Australia. Yet I am still trying to uncover their adventures, stories and histories, and being here is helping that process to unfold.

I flew to Nairobi on the 13th of July with Ethiopian Airlines, the plane was mostly empty which, despite making me feel guilty about tonnes and tonnes of unseeable gases being shat into the atmosphere later to rise their ugly shapes in the form of… islanders being displaced perhaps… well, it meant I had an extra space between me and Daniel, the 17 year old Zambian guy who was returning home after 1 year of school in the UK. He was so happy to be returning to ‘space’ – to his family, to the life so far removed from the raining concrete land of northern England.

So I drank a few plastic cups of wine and read Broomberg and Channarin essays about war and trauma, and photographic processes that attempt to depict them. I read about human anxiety, about horror and violence, about sometimes empty images that show this sometimes more powerfully than a scene from war. The sky started to grow light and clouds blue-white growing pinkish-grey. I slept a minute or two before arriving in Addis Abbaba for a short layover. There I ate the seaweed snacks my aunty Hae-Soon had packed for me, she also gave me two new t-shirts and 5 pairs of underwear from Korea.

The airport at Nairobi was hectic and scattered, with very little instruction as to where to go and which forms to fill out. H1N1 forms, visa forms, what money do you have, I’m only here for 2 days and I have to pay how much?

We drove to where em was staying in her godmother’s house in the expat gated, fenced, maided, guarded area of Nairobi, where I was shocked when I saw a yuppie driving a 4×4. My fist impressions of driving through Nairobi were still trying to figure out if I was there or not – the landscape already began to feel slightly and strangely familiar – perhaps because I was back in the southern hemisphere after 8 months…? Pretty standard images of workers working on roads, markets, shops, buildings, men women children getting about their business – as people do. It wasn’t until later driving around with emma through the streets past the greenbelts, maize, vegetables, fruit growing in every and any empty space possible, past women carrying everything on their heads, water, buckets, clothes, sacks, and children strapped onto their backs with sarongs, past the lines of markets and people selling everything from socks and flowers to dogs and nuts in between the traffic, just asking for something, anything.

Collecting water, Kayelekera Village, northern Malawi

2. The smoke; the smell; the constant smell of smoke, of burning wood, burning grass, leaves, corn, chicken, oil.. plastic. This smell- it’s so familiar to dry season top end Northern Territory – to south coast camping – to desert swags and cups of tea.. It’s everywhere, it coats every other smell around- it’s comforting, it’s a smell of things that keep going- whatever that means.

I stayed just 2 days before we caught the bus over the border to Tanzania, on a public bus that broke down before we left the outskirts of Nairobi. We changed buses and trip was mostly bumpy, dodging potholes, and onto road-work diversions of dirt roads and landscapes that took me to outback south Australia, that took me to places of such familiarity in some ways, and also places of such newness-oldness. Whatever that means. Villagers/villages – mud brick huts with grass-thatched roofs. Tribes-peoples standing on the side of the road in traditional dress, with long sticks.. rubber tire sandals…

Soldier, Lilongwe, Malawi

3. Everyone is working. From age 2 till 102. Carrying wood on bicycles, so high it shouldn’t be possible, carrying water, carrying sacks, clothes… children pumping water out of the ground into buckets, dancing and singing all the while… how to describe the feeling that people here know how to survive. Perhaps that’s conceited, this-life-looks-fucking-hard. But this is also life. And life that has been this way for….ever. And it looks like life that is like no other I have seen being lived before a life that is about life and living and ever action taken in order to keep living. And that’s also conceited because how much more inside those huts, out of view, or in the valley’s and fields not seen from the road, how much more to this life there is – of culture, tradition, history, country, landscape, stories, animals, spirits.. god…
–
So a stop in Arusha, northern Tanzania for two nights before a 19-hour bus ride to southern Tanzania not far from the border of Malawi. We’re cramped in an over-crowded over-weighted bus with luggage lining the isle and falling from the compartments overhead. Whenever there’s a village stop crowds form to shove sweets, chicken, corn, coke and bananas through the bus windows. We drive past fields where there are elephants, giraffes, zebras, buffalo, dear and baboons – I giggle and shriek with the excitement of a child – ah –as if.. of course, they really exist after all, and I didn’t have to pay for a safari. All the locals on the bus are pointing them out for us Mzungu (white people) – they seem to be excited too which is comforting. Drove through a ‘valley of boabs’ – twisting and winding around mountains – the silver elephant-like trees climbing the hills, almost flickering as sun-sets, people quieten and the wind starts to cool.

On the way to Dzalanyama NP, Malawi

On the road to Dzalanyama NP, Malawi

Village elder, Malawi

4. Next day we cross to Malawi – no border fee and no one to tell us where to go or how to get there. Just a few scribbles of how much each leg to the capital city Lilongwe should take. 1000 Malawian Kwacha (AU$9) from here to Karonga, 1000MK from Karonga to Mzuzu in a share taxi/mini-van that are all only serviced just enough to keep functioning on the road. Then 1500MK from Mzuzu to Lilongwe – should get there by 10pm. It arrives at 1am. We are two of maybe 5 that get off the bus here, we’re uncertain whether we’re in the right place. We ask, is this Lilongwe? Yes… where is every one else going? To Blantyre… which is another 6hours drive south, the bigger city. Lilongwe is more like Canberra, business and politics. Blantyre, like Sydney perhaps. I haven’t made it there yet. Maybe next time.

–

5. So the next or the past 4 weeks were spent working on a project for the Mineral Policy Institute with Reinford Mwagonde from the Citizen’s For Justice on gathering information, community testimonies and a general understanding on how Paladin Energy have been operating in their Kayelekera uranium mine, the first uranium mine in Malawi and the ‘standard’ on which further mines will be based. Paladin are an Australian company which couldn’t get their feet off the ground there because of government regulations which are ‘too stringent’ – which have forced them to mine in Africa – taking advantage of lower standards of living, an unemployment rate at 85%, lax legislation (nothing that deals with radioactive materials) and minimal understanding about the dangers of uranium.

–
So we visited the village of Kayelekera, not far from Karonga in the north, we spoke to villagers and workers about what they have been told, about how much they get paid, about their working conditions and about uranium in general. We weren’t trying to scare people or instill fear. Just gain an understanding of the ways in which Paladin have been operating in Malawi. And oh how familiar it is to Australia! A company comes in and promises poor communities basic human services, like roads, schools, health clinics, clean water, and jobs, etc. in return for a 10+ year uranium mine that leaves the people, country and lake with a radioactive legacy lasting tens of thousands of years. So they come in and tear the community apart, divide them, those that want answers, those that are willing to be paid off, those who will suffer for their ignorance.. suffer because they are already suffering and the idea of an income is better than none.

We speak to some elders, some wise men and village leaders around Karonga, who are against the mine, and know Paladin are only there to make money off the peoples’ ignorance, poverty and labour.

One man, Kapote, reminded me so much of Yami Lester, a Yankunkajara man from Walatinna station, South Australia – his warmth, his humour, his mannerisms, his style, his strength, his.. elderness… it was so warming to have this man so familiar to my life in australia over here in africa.

Kapote, a village elder, from Karonga, Malawi

–

and so. We will continue to work on this campaign, we will come back in September to hold some community meetings/education information sessions about uranium mining and the health and environmental impacts. Hold some sessions with Reinford in ways appropriate to disseminate information about these things. The questions begs is how we can come here and tell people about all the dangers when we aren’t offering any alternative… this is always the question…
you can read the article i wrote for IPS here;

Coal mine, northern Malawi

Lilongwe markets bridge

Victor and Tandewa, garden and house-workers, Lilongwe

Lilongwe, Malawi

Church singers flood the streets of Lilongwe

Lake Malawi, Chitimba

Me, Clara (Rein's daughter), and Em, Lilongwe

Lakeshore inhabitants and me, Lake Malawi

—
6. We are in Monkey Bay now, on the southern tip of Lake Malawi – a 9 hour bus ride in another ‘chicken bus’ (buses that cram people in like chickens) for a 300km or less journey. It is beautiful, calm, not all that quiet, but we’re staying in a backpackers on the lakes edge – there aren’t many people staying here so it’s nice.

Monkey Bay, Southern Malawi, a dug out canoe on front of a speed boat

We walk through a village to get here. Children often screaming mzungu mzungu, give me money, give me the bottle, how are you? mzungu mzungu… laughing waving, laughing some more. Like everywhere else we have been.
–

scrambling for fish, early morning, Monkey Bay, Lake Malawi

early morning fish delivery, Monkey Bay, Lake Malawi

so we are getting on the Ilala tomorrow, the boat that will take us over-night under the stars to Mozambique. 28 hours on the lake. We’re going to an eco-lodge/community development trust that emma’s godmothers children run on the lake in the Nyassa region. Where I hope to be working on the farm, being taught how to love and tend to fruit, vegetables and grain with all I can muster, by a Mozambiqan farmer. Perhaps we’ll be painting a school, doing some other work around the lodge and with the villagers that they work with. Also doing more research and work around uranium mining in the Lake Malawi catchment area, if there is any funding perhaps. Also trying to write the occasional story and do the occasional photo-essay for IPS to attempt to bring in some subsistence money. But I dream of also a lot of swimming and snorkelling in the lake, walking, reading, sleeping and writing . We’ll be there for 3 months, if all goes to plan. And then afterwards.. well. That’s afterwards.
–
it seems like too much to write about and too many words not writing about what I wanted – but before I leave the world of connections, even though they are so temperamental, inconsistent, slow and frustrating – I wanted to get this up here, just to show I am no longer sitting in my uncles home looking at the rain through the conservatory window wondering where I will be next.

A very sickening journey along lake Malawi/Niassa to Mozambique on the Ilala, sleeping on the deck with a swell bigger than i have ever seen before

Tagged with: africa, exploitation, kenya, malawi, mozambique, tanzania, travel, uranium-mining

on weather and tea; haywards heath, england

Posted in nomads by jessieboylan on July 7, 2009

07 july 2009, #1, haywards heath

08 July, 2009, Haywards Heath

and so, i am in england, potentially temporary, perhaps next week i will be in africa – perhaps paris? berlin? – for now i am in england looking out through the windows of the conservatory into the garden of my uncle mike’s house. i hadn’t seen my family here for 12 years. the last time i saw my 2 aunties, 2 uncles and 5 cousins from my mothers side I was 11 years old.
so cousin esther had a wedding – they said they love each other and sang the lord, we drank wine, aunt sue took a bottle away before they cleaned up, we danced a ceilidh, they danced to a cover band. next day cousin dan and i drank coffee while they went to church. the house has now dispersed, some to greece, esther and pete went on their honeymoon to cuba, joseph is here for summer and i remain. to unpack my belongings from my back pack, to watch a dvd, to make endless cups of tea, to walk freely, to spend british pounds and listen to the british accent, to make my own meals for breakfast, lunch and dinner, to feed the cats, to repair my technical belongings, to stare out the window of trains at the summer rain of england and the old houses whizzing by, to not mind because it’s lovely to wear a jumper and have rain around. thunder and lightening too. to wander the trails around haywards heath across the empty fields and into the woods so dark-so dark, no wonder they made tales of goblins in them and fairy tales about them.., past the cottages, past the english houses with steeped roofs..

- so i am gathering my bits and pieces, writing applications, looking for grants, looking for funding, looking for work, going through photographs, video and audio, saying hello to loved ones far away. missing people, feeling content, feeling transient, answering the telephone and talking to strangers, taking messages, thinking about a train to london…thinking about visas, thinking about to-do lists, thinking about here and there.

salaam
jb

some notes from gaza; may 30 – june 10

Posted in Displacement, Gaza, Israel, Palestine by jessieboylan on June 30, 2009

damage caused to a farmers house in the recent israeli attacks, northern Gaza

in an attempt not to be too long and just blot the whole of my diary down, here are some snippets from 10 days spent in gaza, seeing how things have changed/not changed since i was there in march, re-connecting with friends i’d made the first time, trying to focus my energy on stories of daily life and simply ‘life’ in gaza- trying to gain a bit more of an understanding of what life is like for people here. as varied and differing the stories are, they all have a shared experience of horror and loss, but also a shared optimism and hope that things will change. or simply a resilience not to give up and to lose more dignity that the hope imposes on them.
–

01.06.09
we are being followed around by Hamas security, they are putting curfews on us, restricting our movements and hassling our host-families, no one knows the exact reason for this; perhaps the recent infighting in the west bank, perhaps they really want to protect us, perhaps they just want to be looked at in a good way, seen as protecting peace delegations. in any case, it is causing dramas – for example, today i caught a taxi from Beit Hanoun, where i am staying again with my host family, the lovely al-za’aneens, and in the taxi was a few other people, one being a middle-aged man who spoke very good english – he started asking what we were doing in Gaza, and i responded “salaam, peace, we are a peace delegation, to bring children’s books, toys, playgrounds and medical supplies, and to support the people of gaza.” “So are you delegating with Hamas?” he says. “Well, we have to meet with them as they are the democratically elected government here, we don’t support their actions, but if you want to make change you have to talk to everyone.” – i say. “You people are disguisting, you make me sick, you should just all leave now, you are doing nothing but bad for the palestinian people, you are making Hamas look good, which is only bad for the palestinian people.” – at this point i didn’t know what to say, i had had my own reservations about meeting with hamas, about the fact that i have heard many stories about them killing people inside, and doing the same damage, if not more than israel to the palestinian people. We do not support them and i wanted to do my best to stay away from them, but how to translate this? “I am an artist and writer, i am here to listen and record stories about ordinary people, unassociated with politics!” “yes but you are doing more harm than good by being here!” he responds. Now i am crying, this is the last thing i wanted to happen, actually doing damage to the situation. but i’m upset so i respond “you can’t blame me for that, you can’t see me just as an international person to take your problems out on, i am here only to give support to the palestinian people and get their stories out there!” – and so i turn away and look at the streets zipping past, donkeys overpacked with fruit and vegetables, streets full of potholes, bombed buildings here, graffiti with the names of those killed all over the shops and walls. bullet holes flying through my mind as i cry as silently as possible. “I’m sorry, i’m sorry” he says, but khalas (enough), i can’t speak.

–
later today we re-visited devastated areas in the Abbed Rabu area, where we spent quite a bit of time in March interviewing people. Almost all of the tents had been blown over in the wind and no new ones reconstructed. It left the questions open of where are all the people now, considering not one single building has been reconstructed since ‘Operation Cast Lead’.

abbed rabbu area, damaged tents

–
In the evening I went back to the Al-Za’aneens and spoke to Ibdisam about her recent trip to Ramallah in the West Bank for a committee to enhance the position of women in the west bank and Gaza. On her way back from Ramallah through the… checkpoint to Jerusalem she was put into a small room, no bigger than space to sit on a chair, with no air and no one listening. She banged on the walls, saying “listen to me, I can’t breathe.” But no one responded for around 45 minutes, when she was told to “go back to Ramallah” by Israeli authorities. As she was walking a fruit seller told her to go and talk to the women from Machsom Watch (checkpoint watch) a group of Israeli’s who monitor how Palestinians are treated at the checkpoints within the West Bank. They spent over an hour making phone calls and organising for Ibdisam to safely get from the West Bank back to Gaza (about an hour drive); and successfully they took her through the checkpoint, carrying her bags, with one woman in front of her and one behind her, to make sure there were no problems. Now Ibdisam will deal with them when she needs to travel, If h a m a s will let her travel, that is.

02.06.09
“There is no grey area between justice and injustice, it either is or isn’t. The country should be built on equal citizenship rights…” – Jabar from the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR).

American International School Gaza

Wafa Hosptial, Northern Gaza

Wafa Hospital, northern Gaza

03.06.09
some quick notes before sleep;
just heard 5 or 6 very loud – window shaking explosions from my bed in Beit Hanoun (– which at the time I thought was the cease-fire breaking, i.e. missiles launched into Israel, but later I learned that it was Israel shelling fishermen and camps in the northern areas). I sat up, looked out the window and listened to gunfire, noises, response, anything, I am a foreigner here, so have no fucking idea what is what, what is sounds from Israel, what is sounds from Hamas, what is normal what is what – im just sitting here on my bed in the near full moon light listening wondering, feeling slightly frightened, not for myself, but for who the sounds are affecting, for where I am and what this life is like here – where no one even finches or acknowledges sounds like these sometimes – “don’t worry Jess, this is normal.”

—
this evening, on the way to find a taxi from Gaza City to Beit Hanoun – Ahmad, friend and translator from the March trip here, tells us about last year on his way to joining his friends one afternoon in a field near the border areas, a very open field, where everyone can see what is going on there.. as he was walking up to them, everyone laughing and happy, playing music on their mobile phones, a random explosion hit the three friends of Ahmad’s, right before him, all he saw was smoke and rubble, of course he was shocked and frightened, he ran over to them, and after the dust cleared he just found them in “pieces all over the footpath”.
During the taxi ride home Ahmad sat slumped, silent and chain-smoking in the front seat, unable to mutter even a word, when normally he can’t stop talking. I just put my hand on his shoulder (something women don’t do in this society!) and didn’t know what to say, how to help…

bullets/weapons found after various Israeli, on display at PCHR

Gaza City Beach

I had told Ahmad that I wanted to talk to a storyteller, or an ‘elder’, someone who was born before 1948, someone who had grown up here and seen the developments and changes happen over his lifetime. so this is how we met Mohammed Rachit. Mohammed is originally from Beit Hanoun born in 1931, making him 78 years old. His family were all farmers.

I ask him about what life was like before 1948 and he tells me of some of his earliest memories and knowledge about the time:
“In 1944, I had to walk to school from here to Gaza City (about 8km), there was now, transport like there is today.” Although to residents of Gaza City these days, catching a taxi to Beit Hanoun is like driving to the outskirts of a 50km wide city. It’s like…the end of the country…
“I left school early” Mohammed continues, “because my father wanted me to work on the farm…
“It was during the British Mandate when the support for the establishment of a Jewish state was moved forward… but in 1919 it had already been planned, during the Balfour Declaration
“By 1936 Jews, Arabs and Brits were fighting, but not so much.”

Mohammed Rachit, Beit Hanoun

“In 1948 they took the land. People didn’t know what was happening… they thought they were going to return, if they knew they would have stayed here.
“The weakness of the Arab countries didn’t help [us fight]. Israel was supported and we weren’t. I remember them attacking this area. I was a part of a resistance group then, a fighter, a soldier. In May 1948 there was the fight in Beit Hanoun, we resisted from evening until early morning, but we didn’t have enough weapons or bullets to keep fighting, we had to leave to Jabaliya then.
“After 3 years, people realised they weren’t going to return, then the Jihad started.
“We knew we couldn’t defeat Israel so we were gaining support from Egypt, training, education etc. We wanted to lean to co-exist with Jews. We always kept the hope.

“Land is life. I prefer to stay on the land than to leave the land. For us, we cannot separate between the culture and the land. They wanted to remove the people to remove the culture in order to break our connection to land. But the strength of the people lies within the land. After people fled and were forced to leave, the most important thing was to educate the children about the land. A lot of old people who kept the stories were killed…

“This holy land used to be the place where many cultures would meet and exchange. It was wonderful. This land is our culture and our history. We used to live in peace, we had a free life, anyone could whatever they wanted. Why couldn’t it be like that again?
“After 1967: The Israeli government allowed Palestinians to work inside Israel and the families would take their children to their old land and teach them about their history there, they would tell them ‘this is where you’re from’. They would teach them about the area, the stories and the histories… It is still taught today so that the young cannot forget. It cannot disappear. The history and knowledge will never disappear. Even refugees living far far away will know where they’re from…

“The strength that Israel has is from the international community, if they stopped supporting them then it would change almost immediately.

“The recent offensive was a big surprise to us; we were not ready psychologically, logically, with food or water. It was much stronger than we have ever seen. They were using new weapons and everything, they keep getting stronger, but have our strength in the land. [During the attacks] we stayed inside the home, listened to the news on the radio, tried to keep in touch with what was happening. It was the most violent war we have ever known – for 23 days we couldn’t leave the house. There was no electricity, no water, no food. We didn’t want to show our children what fear we had inside. We just kept trying to tell our children that would all be okay, then we just prayed to Allah. We stayed here in Beit Hanoun when everyone was leaving, people were being forced to leave (because this is so close to the border of Israel). The number of people in our house was increasing as people just wanted to be close to their families. There was one good thing that came out of this, that was broken during the civil war, people were helping each other, just waiting for the attacks to stop.

“No one could image what happened here. We are used to Israeli attacks but not like this.

“Despite the strength of Israel and whatever they do, the Palestinian people will always be connected to their land. Actually, it just makes their strength and desire for the land grow stronger.”

Mohammed Rachit

04.06.09
this evening was HipHopKom – see previous post.
a little more from an interview with Khaled Harara from the Black Unit Band:
“One of my goals is that the people outside know what really happens here in Palestine. Most people here in Gaza believe we have brought a bad thing in from outside. They think that outside hip-hop means drugs, girls, cars, bullshit, and of course in side Gaza we don’t have all these things, we have war, occupation and my people that fight against each other. They think we have brought western culture here to delete our culture. This is why I believe Hamas shut down the show last night. Also because there was a connection with the West Bank and there’s many problems for Hamas people there recently. I think there were a few people that were killed there just this week. There’s a lot of people that resist us here, because of our style generally reflecting western culture.”

Mohammed Wafy from the Black Unit Band

Khaled Harara from the Black Unit Band

some lyrics by Khaled Harara from the Black Unit Band

Phalistine forgive me,
My tears dry, my wounds dry,
I can’t hold it anymore
I can’t stop and I can’t be silent, about everyone who has stolen this country,
I can’t stay silent, because everyone here has trodden on us, treated us like dominos, they kill us, and then they take money for it,
Hamas colour is green, Fatah is yellow,
They’ve raised the Palestinian flag and now the colours are just green and yellow, that’s what they want
We want from the united nations in the Gaza strip, for the fuckin situation, we want more corn and more soup to wash our faults that have been put on our shoulders, and the faults are now like a graveyard, it’s the freedom that’s buried in that graveyard.
The military are rich off the backs of the people, the people who are standing in the lines to take a bag of flour from the United Nations…

Palestinian Unit, Khaled, Ayman and Mohammed

08.06.09
Mond took us to meet with his uncle who is a farmer in the northern area near the sea. here is some transcriptions from the interview: but so stupidly i didn’t write down his name, i will get it soon.
“My original homeland is from over there, where you can see the city of Ashkelon today, just over the border into Israel, I can look at where I’m from everyday… My Grandfather is from Al-Gora, what is was called before they named it Ashkelon. They had 800 dunams there. I have 30 dunams here (=7.4acres). I still have the papers for our land there..
“…after the 2nd intifada the farm was destroyed the first time. I used to have honey, but the flowers have been destroyed so there can be no more production.
Every time there was a war here, the fruit and vegetable fields were destroyed. I have planted new olive trees after the last war, and they’re going well but they will take a long time to produce any fruit. A lot of the land was destroyed in the last war. This are depends on bore water; the Israelis drill bores every two hundred metres – sucking water from here, now I depend on sea water and have to buy drinking water – I use tactics to filter the sea water for the farm, like filtering through sand.
My land is my life, I cannot leave this land for one day – maybe 1 at most… I am the happiest and the most at peace when I can sit amongst the trees and make a cup of tea.
“My wife doesn’t work in the farm, she stays at home and looks after the kids, and she makes the best pickles in Gaza. My children don’t work in the farm because I don’t see hope for it in the future, but they spend a lot of time here.
“Every time my land was destroyed I go out there the very same day and plant new trees. I can give up because I have to have fun, I have to live my life. Life and death are the same to us, I have lost a lot of friends but I have to keep hope. How can I be sad when everything here is beautiful? Can you hear the sound of the birds? The only reason for someone to be sad is to be afraid of something. When we were kids we played with the simple things, like the sand. Everything in this life has an end, and no body knows when it will come.
Israel is lying to the whole world but they can’t lie to us, we know the truth, we see what happens here.
We are simple people in this area. The Israeli’s didn’t look for war here, because there is no resistance here, just the trees.

the farmer and his olives

the farmer and his chickens

the farm, one side which was destroyed in the recent attacks

damage caused by the recent israeli attacks, they thought that 'resistance' were hiding here

09.06.09

We had a demonstration today, at the Erez border, well, near to it, with 300 Palestinians and a handful of internationals to demand an end to the siege and occupation. see glimpsesofgaza for the media release we put out.

Women at the Erez demonstration

—

every day coming back to my room i am amazed and inspired by the selflessness and simpleness and resilience and hope that people hold here in Gaza – something we can learn a lot from on the outside and also making my own simple whining and whinging about money and jobs and not moving forward seem so selfish and greedy. i remind myself of these words and thoughts when i get going on that personal diatribe.

we’re leaving tomorrow, insha’allah we are allowed out. it seems too short, but also we have a lot to process and a lot to do from here. as i have the priviledge of leaving of the gates of rafah tomorrow back into egypt i take with me the knowledge that 1.5million people are stuck inside,and cannot travel with this freedom i have, they are stuck with just the bare essentials and their dignity being stripped from them on a daily basis, with the future for many looking not further than the money he makes from selling ciggaretts, and never being able to play a soccer game in the West Bank, and never being able to study abroad or smell a different climate, or simply never having the choice or freedom to do so. but we also leave with their hope and strength that it’s going to change and there will be future outside and within the walls of gaza. we leave knowing these people aren’t going to stop fighting for that, for their human rights and for a dignified life and for the choice and freedom that so many of us enjoy on the outside.
peace salaam shalom.

soccer on Gaza City's beach

kids at Gaza city beach

Mechanic, Gaza City

Gaza City streets

food sellers, gaza city beach

soccer training, gaza city sports club

more photos can be found here http://www.flickr.com/photos/jessieboylan and on my facebook page.

Tagged with: Black Unit Band, Gaza, hiphopkom, Human Rights, Israel, Palestine, Palestinian Hip-hop, Palestinian Rapperz, Rafah, resilience, siege, war, West Bank

An octave higher: The mic’s on Gaza’s youth

Posted in Gaza, Israel, Palestine by jessieboylan on June 30, 2009

ayman_jamal

30.06.09
1. I have been writing and writing and transcribing and transcribing all my notes, recordings and interviews from the trip 30 May – 10 June to Gaza, and i can’t seem to bring them all together to form a cohesive ’story’ or trail of diary entries that is both useful to someone else and gives justice to my own thoughts. so i shall do this bit by bit by bit by bit – mostly here and there, but mostly about the selfless youth i met this time around – the people who spoke with such eloquence and strength, that puts even my tiny thoughts of greed and need to shame.

21.06.09
2. As I scramble down a rocky mountain edge in the forests of turkey, just inland from the Mediterranean sea, my mind flowing with six.five months of collected thoughts, from Israel-Palestine, Egypt, Jordan, and now, my feet slipping and my sweat dripping in Turkey. It seems strange to be heading towards Europe, with all of its affluence and cleanliness and order, away from places and people and cultures and languages I had only just started getting used to and familiar with – to be honest, my heart and my mind and my thoughts and my feet seem to all be in different places right now; I hope the coming months will align them and then direct them all on the same road again.

As my feet clomp and the noise of the cicadas in the forest keeps intercepting my thoughts, and the hot sun forms beads of sweat on my arms, and the water in my backpack is warm and the goats are looking at me; and I’m thinking most of all of this freedom I have to be here and be doing this, when less than 2 weeks ago I was sitting with people my age in Gaza, talking about their lack of freedom, their inability to move freely, to leave the tiny land and prison walls of Gaza; and now, I, only some thousand or less km’s across the same sea, am walking about on different soils with the freest of freedom anyone could have, without the sound of another soul, except for my mum, around, without the concept of a wall or a border or a soldier or a gun or an extremist view blocking my exist or entry into another place, blocking my ability live without fear in my daily life.

3. so it’s like this; the evening of 04 June we were invited to a hip-hop competition that had live-streaming between the West Bank and Gaza titled ‘HipHopKom’ – the 3rd and final week of a events that were mostly kept underground in Gaza (advertised only by word-of-mouth) and quite open and free in Ramallah (an obvious sign of the diference between the Fatah and Hamas governing powers). So I’m watching these young men and women perform – the live-streaming from Ramallah has no sound until the last few acts so we’re watching these women break-dancing and going off and the mostly young boys in the Red Crescent Society hall are cheering and supporting and moving about as if they’d be moving about a lot more if they weren’t being watched by Hamas. so anyway, as i said, i’m watching these artists perform and i’m thinking, fuck, of course – i’m 23 years old, much the same as a lot of these people – I want to know what they’re thinking, how they see themselves and their lives here in Gaza, how different or similar is it from those people who are living ‘normal’ lives in totally different environments than these. so thinking and watching i am, my ethical dilemma of just visiting Gaza to see friends and show an international face of support suddenly has more grounding and solidity. i smile and let the lyrics of occupation, disposession, love, hate, pride, war and hope take me through a journey so far from my own and yet allow me wholly to place my feet on the floor….
It’s Gaza’s turn and Ayman Jamal is MC’ing; Ayman is from the second generation of Palestinian hip-hop artists, the first being a group called DAM, who originated in the West Bank; Ayman’s group, Palestinian Rappers (PR) are the first group from Gaza. Seen recently on the documentary ‘Sling-shot Hip-Hop’ shot by an American woman about Palestinian hip-hop.

“As-Salaam al-akummmmmm!” (peace be with you) Ayman yells to the audience as he takes the stage and the mic. Ayman introduces the first group, The Darg Team, they’re a group of about 5 who all have shaved heads, the same shoes and long baggy denim shorts. They get round on stage as if they’ve jumped out of an American music-clip. They get people moving, but still in their chairs. A friend Majed starts translating some of the lyrics for us ; they’re about life under occupation, how life has been growing up with war and killings and separation, how they want peace and freedom and their land and lives back, but also about love, and humanity, and hope… next is the Black Unit Band, who appear to be a favorite.

So, more people are moving and more people are cheering, even thought people are still in their seats or standing near their seats. we get so taken in the music and energy that we don’t notice that half the room has shuffled out and eventually the sound starts cracking, and dropping out, eventually it gets completely cut during Ibrahim Gho’s performance, we all get up and get shuffled out – everyone’s whispering and not knowing what’s going on, except best answer is to ‘leave’. We learn that Hamas shut the shown down for what could be any number of reasons: that they don’t agree with the embracing of western culture and events with girls and boys mixing in the same room, that the music isn’t traditional or Palestinian, in other words they don’t support it and will exercise their power in order for it to stop. We are scared for the hip-hop groups, as the smallest ‘mistake’ in Gaza can leave someone with bullet holes in their knees or no more life to live. We get in a taxi and leave the scene, later to hear that the show continued in Mohammed Wafy’s flat in a nearby neighbourhood.

The next day we organise to meet with Mohammed Wafy and Khaled Harara from the Black Unit Band, and also with Ayman to learn more about this growing phenomenom of Palestinian hip-hop and the struggles facing them internally and externally.

4. so this is where this series stemmed from and why this post goes back to them and to the young people who make up more than half of the population in Gaza; back to the hours spent walking Gaza’s streets with Ahmad (friend and translator) asking people at random if they wanted to say something to people outside of Gaza. To the people who invited us into their homes for much coffee and tea, with the sound of israelis shelling fisherman at sea in the background, it goes to those who put trust in me and to those who want someone to listen. I’ll let them do the talking

*Thanks to Ahmad, Mond and Majed for organising interviews and for interpreting them.
**after this I will post some more notes an images from our time there.
khaled_01.2
mohammed_wafy

Nasralla.2

ahmad

Mohammed_01.2

Omran_bball2

soccer_boy_01.2

mahil

sisters

rose

ola_sorani

rahaf

sami_moa3d_01

Tagged with: CODEPINK, Gaza, Hip-hop, hiphopkom, Human Rights, Israel, Justice, Palestine, ramallah, war, West Bank, youth

school’s out in ghazza

Posted in Displacement, Gaza, Israel, Palestine by jessieboylan on June 7, 2009

gaza city beach

primary and secondary schools in gaza city have finished their exams as of today, university students will follow in the coming week. the beaches of gaza are filling with families, students, individuals, lovers, elders, tents, kites, frisbees, and amass of chatter – the weather is getting hotter and everyone jumps in the med or lazily smokes shisha on the sands, eyeing this foreigner off and she walks with her camera protruding from her waist. unfortunately the mediterranean here in gaza is quite polluted, but this is the sea gazans have and thus this is the sea gazans shall swim in.
more soon soon,

still here, leaving on wednesday if there aren’t troubles at the border…

Tagged with: Gaza, Palestine

re-visiting gaza

Posted in Displacement, Gaza, Israel, Palestine, Reslience, war by jessieboylan on June 1, 2009

children's centre

and so ; after being escorted all the way to the border from cairo to rafah by egyptian police – after losing two of our egyptian compadres due to the egyptian role in the siege of gaza, many cups of arabic coffee, and too much inside tribulations we have made it in to gaza – 66 of us on a delegation organised by codepink to bring aid, children’s toys, books, and three playgrounds – to show continued soldarity with the people of gaza and to move forward in ending the siege on gaza and opening the borders..
- and again it is not something easy to write about day by day – full of visiting devastated sites, meeting different organisations, hearing harrowing stories, visiting children’s centres, watching dabka performances, eating local food, laughing, crying, not sleeping much…
i am spending much of my time thinking about my role here – my purpose here – other than the obvious support, solidarity, documentation and so on – which stories of the 1.5 million do i write down, which faces of the 1.5million do i photograph? which homes, lives, re-tellings, futures, hopes, resilience, joys, sadnesses, weddings, football teams..fishermen, farmers, women artists, craftspeople, engineers, homeless people, refugees, displaced peoples..

for now its just this – until i figure out how to write about it in the ‘right’ way – until it’s processed again a little bit – until… later.

Salaam,
jess

dabka

Tagged with: Gaza, Human Rights, Israel, Justice, Palestine, war

the guardians of memory – al-nakba 2009

Posted in 1 by jessieboylan on May 23, 2009

: the word ‘remember’ written on a wall in Amman

The weeks/months leading up to May 15 commemorated the 61st anniversary of al-Nakba (‘the catastrophe’ for palestinians (or ‘independence’ for israel)), the end of the British Mandate in Palestine and the 1948 war which turned much of historic palestine into the land of Israel, and it also celebrated Al-Quds (Jerusalem) as the capital of Arab culture: http://www.alquds2009.org/english.php

This is an excerpt from ‘Once Upon A Country’ by Sari Nusseihbeh, president and professor of philosophy at Al-Quds University, the only Arab university in Jerusalem, p46-7, published 2007. I thought it was interesting because it gives a personal Palestinian account of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – in this section Sari is reading his father’s memoirs from the 1948 war:

“…When the local Palestinians warned the general that their towns could fall if they didn’t get the support of the Arab Liberation Army, the general said there was no need for alarm. “Let Jaffa fall,” he told my father’s friend. “Let Haifa fall,” he added, warming up to his theme. “Let Acre fall, let Safad fall, let Jerusalem fall, let Nazareth all, these towns are of no strategic importance whatever, and we can always take them back.”

“The Jewish leadership, by contrast, knew precisely what they wanted. They had a plan, and the discipline necessary to carry it out. Counted together, the various military groups such as the Haganah and Irgun had thirty thousand well-trained men working together in coordinated attacks. Theirs was a Spartan army, steeled by the horrors of Europe. It was also far better equipped than the local Arabs, as it had access to large numbers of weapons that had been smuggled into the country from Europe or stolen from the British during the war. Small factories were making armoured cars, mortars, and bombs.
As for their plan it was offensive rather than defensive. The idea was to expand their borders and thin out the Arab population by taking the battle far beyond the UN-sanctioned partition borders. They set out grab as much territory as a fait accompli before the Transjordanian army arrived on May 15.

“In the months leading up to the end of the Mandate, while the British were still technically in control of the country, the same story repeated itself throughout Palestine. Just as Glubb Pasha had predicted, in villages and cities, organised groups under either the Haganah or the various underground Zionist organisations, attacked poorly defended Arab areas. A large number of Arab towns and cities designated by the UN plan as part of the Arab state fell under Jewish control. Jaffa, Haifa, and hundreds of thousands of Arab refugees clogged the roads heading east away from the coast. My father’s memoirs tell a grim story of an entire people fleeing out of fear.

“There was a lot of expulsion at gunpoint, though just as many Arabs left their homes willingly, as people often do to escape a battle or a natural disaster, assuming they would return the moment calm again prevailed. This was another case of people not knowing what they were up against. Ben-Gurion had come to the conclusion that expulsion was both necessary and, under the cover of war, possible. Rational political and military planners, not hate-filled thugs, ordered these expulsions. Their primary aim was to make their state demographically viable.”

—

After many sicknesses and attempted healing and more lethargy, emma and i finally made our way to the gates of the old city Petra, Jordan – we gawked mouths wide open at the immense history of the sight and cringed at the multitude of tourists in the way – ourselves incldued.

After spending too much filoos in over-priced wadi musa (village near Petra) we made our way to Amman where we trundled up and down the ‘7 hills of Amman’ being comforted by familiar sights of contemporary art galleries, modern cafes and places we seemed to simply ‘blend in’ .
- the city, quite divided, one side very rich, big flash hotels, apartments, shopping centres, tree lined streets, cafes, galleries etc., the other side more reminiscient of any busy arab city you may come across – and on the outskirts, many Palestinian refugees are still camped in tents to this day. (Ten official Palestine refugee camps are located in Jordan. They accommodate 337,571 registered refugees, or 17 per cent of the 1.9 million refugees registered with UNRWA in Jordan. -http://www.un.org/unrwa/refugees/jordan.html) – Although we did not visit these sites I hope next time I can organise some interviews.. life in exhile..

amman

welders workshop

During this lazy trundling we came across a few exhibitions as part of ‘the guardians of memory’ – al-quds week: various artists, jordanian, palestinian, international reflecting on life under occupation, life during/after war, and the concept of personal and collective histories in relation to memory. The concept of ‘memory’ and its many affiliations keeps plucking the hairs on my arms, particularly over the past 6 months in Israel/Palestine. As a 23 year old you can imagine how hard it is to fully comprehend the concept of a memory that lasts through war, let alone several wars over a lifetime – especially when the memory of my own life consists of being able to be ‘free’ as a child, having a leniant mother, and father who didn’t contest, who took us on many daring adventures in the forests, oceans and rivers, who made flying foxes for us at every sight of two strong poles/trees looking far enough apart, putting us in the back of a trailer and driving at daring speeds along dirt tracks in the outskirts of the canberran/nsw mountains – of having christmas and afterwards spending lazy weeks at the coast, of going to school and only dealing with conflict in petty child gangs – where although they remain on my mind and history – they stayed within school and only on the mind of a 11 year old who was still able to find solice in others rejected.

So how can i begin to imagine a history under occupation, a memory of not one ounce of freedom – or not knowing what real freedom is? I think artists dealing with these concepts are bringing to make it almost comprehendible…

Over Jerusalem 2009 | video installation by Ala' Younis. "Three still shots taken from the plane upon flying over Jerusalem. The three shots are animated in slow motion and installed in a panoramic view on three walls of a dark room. It reflects a dream to freely fly in my city." - http://www.alayounis.com

Aramram Interactive launch of new webTV Aramram WebTV is an Arabic interactive video platform for young people to express and shape their view of the world. It aims to represent a wide spectrum of the Jordanian and Arab society, allowing it to express itself creatively, and free of the traditional restrictions of mainstream media. The word "Aramram" may not render itself well to translation, but its Arabic root means "intense" and it could also mean "to mix". It is often used to describe an army as a large one.

these selections were on display at the Darat al-Funn gallery in Amman – http://www.daratalfunun.org

Preceeding this exhibition over the past couple of months I have seen a few exhibitions that focus their work around violence, war, history and the ways in which memory is affected or shaped by these factors. The first was an exhibition at Museum on the Seam in Jerusalem, called ‘HeartQuake‘ which “seeks to shudder and shake, identity and otherness vis a vis anxiety; to highlight and stress the process of man’s emotional contention with his environment, and also to peer through the prism of dread to examine his reactions, whether as aggressor or victim – all this with the purpose of attempting to comprehend and influence the dynamic of social and political relationships.” (Raphie Etgar, Curator)

: Giant Babies, Max Streicher, Canada, 2005

A work that forced me to stop and realise i was breathing was one titled ‘Giant Babies’ by Max Streicher (Germany), his Giant Babies sculptures, made of nylon, electric fans,
at the height of 300 cm, sat there facing each other in the gallery, simply breathing – their bodies expanding on their inhales and crumpling with their exhales – which the sound also formed as a backdrop for the other works in the room. for me this work simply re-instated the most innate of human actions – the most fundamental faction of life. also as he states “comprises notions of vulnerability, renewal, future and hope.”

Another work which i found quite haunting was one called ‘Profile, Israel, 2001′ by Yael Bartana, an Israeli artist; a 3 minute video loop which showed young Israeli female soldiers during fire practice. “The weapon is stripped down, checked and secured ma’am! The weapon is stripped down, checked and secured! That sentence is reiterated and echoed throughout Yael Bartana’s entire video work.” “..lurking in the background are acute questions regarding preservation of individuality within the military structure.”

–

During the in between time I spent in Israel whilst trying to sort out my visa and rise above the absurd Israeli security faction in regards to “my activities in Israel” – I traveled with Danya on the train to Haifa to wave her off on the boat to Cyprus – before doing this we went to the Haifa Museum of Art to see the exhibitions on at the time called “Power Games” and “A History of Violence” – which particularly resonated with me just returning from Gaza and still unable to comprehend the ways in which people deal with war and trauma in their lives. “This exhibition attempts to examine the concept of violence in a variety of complex political, philosophical and psychological contexts,” says the Curator Hadas Maor.

: Gilad Efrat ‘Ansaar IX, 2008′

The “painting depicts a detention camp or temporary prison. A panoramic, bird’s-eye view from outside of the prison area reveals a scraped-over and emptied-out site, which does not fully disclose its function. This work is part of a series of paintings based on a 2003 series of photographs by artist Roi Kuper. These photographs feature the Ketziot detention camp in the Negev, which is also known as Ansar – after the Ansar prison in Lebanon. The Ketziot prison was opened in 1988, following the outbreak of the first intifada. It was closed down during the period of the Oslo agreements, with the freeing of Palestinian security prisoners.

Disturbingly life-like the work ‘eat what you can’t’ by Sigalit Landau (left) “alludes to a state in which the idea of community ceases to exist, and the family structure or stable relationships that parallel it are questioned and threatened. It is a state in which it is no longer clear who can or should take care of whom – not only due to ego, power and political struggles, but also because of the all-consuming distress that is capable of annihilating eve Sigalit Landaun the inner kernel of the self.”

* have a look at the museum websites for more work and info on the exhibitions.

–

and so, for now we are back in Dahab and have been here for a week, being lethargic, learning more arabic, reading, sleeping, drinking lassies, still feeling belly sick, planning for the next trip to Gaza, attempting to avoid the strips of shops selling the same thing with the shopkeepers yelling the same thing and the restauraunts selling mostly the same thing; but what has given me most solice has been looking down to the bottom of the ocean floor for hours on end, attempting to breathe with fish and remain in constant awe at the diversity of species and life down there.

tomorrow emma and i will travel to cairo for a few days before meeting up with the next CodePink delegation heading to Gaza on thursday/friday. I will be writing a separate blog as well as this one for regular updates on our activities. Many delegations are traveling to Gaza around this time including; The Canadian delegation led by Sandra Ruch is in al Arish and hope to get to the Rafah border today. The student delegation led by our friends from the American University in Cairo will depart for al Arish on May 25. The New York delegation led by Felice Gelman will depart Cairo on Tuesday, May 26. Our delegation of 80 persons will depart Cairo on May 29.

Salaam for now.

amman

Rooftop Amman

Birds flying over the city

Abdullah al-Ghoul is free

Posted in 1 by jessieboylan on May 18, 2009

i got a phone call today from Abdullah in Cairo – he was let through the Rafah border crossing into Egypt from Gaza yesterday in a “rare border opening”! – Although his studies have been put on hold until next year – at least he is “free” and can continue life in Egypt.

Gaza City Port, March 2009

stuck in gaza – voice message from abdullah

Posted in Displacement, Gaza, Israel, Palestine, war by jessieboylan on May 11, 2009

This message was received on the 7th of May 2009 – Abdullah al-Ghoul, a Palestinian originally from Gaza has been stuck in the Gaza strip since March 7 2009 when he crossed from Egypt with the 60 person peace delegation organised by Codepink to visit his family whom he had not seen in 3 years. He is a student of film in Cairo and was assured a safe passage out through the Egyptian border control, however, when he attempted to leave with the delegation he was refused entry in Egypt. He has tried many times to cross the border since then and is having problems on both the Palestinian and Egyptian side.

–

See this article by Daanish Faruqi, in regards to Egypts control of the Rafah border:
Egypt errs in playing rough at the Rafah border

Abdullah al-Ghoul was assured a safe voyage into Gaza, his homeland, from Egypt’s Rafah border crossing. In order to see his family after three years of involuntarily exile in Egypt, where he is currently completing a degree in film studies, on March 6 Abdullah joined a 60-person delegation into Gaza sponsored by Codepink, in solidarity with Gazan women on International Women’s Day. Miraculously, Egyptian authorities deviated from standard protocol and opened the border crossing to our delegates. Abdullah was casually allowed passage into Gaza, after paying an additional 250 Egyptian pounds, with a promise that he’d be granted a safe return to Egypt after completing his visit.

Unfortunately, upon Abdullah’s return Egyptian authorities had reneged on their agreement, citing issues with his paperwork. Instructed to seek assistance from Ramallah to straighten out his file, Abdullah was flatly denied entry back into Egypt. His ability to complete his studies, consequently, is currently on hold.

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=5&article_id=100412

Tagged with: Egypt, Gaza, Israel, Palestine

on in-betweens

Posted in Displacement by jessieboylan on May 7, 2009

waiting at nuweiba port

there is something deeply discomforting about the feeling of wasted time. A feeling of wandering directionless in between directions, of exploring new lands, countries and cultures, growing accustomed to extremely different methods of thought and process, of cultural expectations and taboos, of trying to wave off unwanted male attention ; but of wandering through them in a semi-touristic – semi-traveler – semi-purposeful manner makes for many wonderful and free days and also many very uneasy days. Of attempting to allow myself just to travel and see and be and snap snap and wow wow. And also of worrying about not having enough money to pay the man to see the land, and instead stepping about nor here nor there. Of wanting to be working, to have a focus now I have left Israel and the exhibition is postponed until September, perhaps. of occasionally feeling free and happy to just be traveling but also knowing that I need more than that. And that in between the time in gaza, returning to Israel and spending uneasy days there sorting/not sorting visa issues – going back into Egypt and learning Arabic then meeting Em in cairo and having adventures, a lot of set backs of motorbike accidents, and gastroenteritis – and planning for the next trip to gaza at the end of may – feeling like this time in between should not be spent aimlessly, it should be spent preparing, getting work done, preparing for what we will do in gaza, for what we can do pre and post gaza, and feeling almost at a loss because I am not in my home country and I feel like I cannot be as effective through my computer, and feeling hopeless that from the last trip I haven’t achieved enough yet. And also just allowing it to be the way it is and not expecting so much of myself and others; as I am young and I am still filling in the lines, still being swayed here and there, still allowing the uncertainty to be positive and not something to resent. but still it remains, a sense of unease in these days, these days of traveling not traveling working not working spending not spending creating not creating. And so it goes this way for a little while until the bank goes $0 and the feelings write/right and we part ways and who knows, what comes through or doesn’t come through and how I respect myself amidst a feeling of not doing enough and of wasting my time and money. But I remind myself that all travel is worth it despite shittiness and setbacks.

nuweiba port

I haven’t written much since writing about gaza, so it has been a month of masr (egpyt) and of in between time and new happenings and change of pace and thoughts and all – so it almost feels redundant now to write about travels after gaza and all that happened there. But it is still part of this story and all relevant to process and experience and creating and seeing and clicking and gathering and and …

I shall attempt to write something in semi-dot-point form of the past month or so. please excuse the somewhat self indulged laments of priviledges and unsatisfactions.

April 1 – 11: spent in Dahab taking 2 hours of Arabic classes a day in another attempt (1st attempt Spanish) to not just be only an English speaker, snorkelling diving, walking, processing, writing and sleeping.

April 12-30:
Met em in cairo, we spent 5 days wandering about the madness of cairo, shops selling the same thing for kilometers on end, getting dirty feet, seeing masri art, learning to cross the road, being semi-touristy, feluka-nile – horses-pyramids…

me, giza

Bussed to north west Mediterranean town masra matruah for one night, en route to siwa oasis in the western desert. We were the only foreigners in sight, many looks, many comments. Good fish.

Next day of attempting to barter 3 hr ride to siwa in a taxi, failing through miscommunication, kateer, too much; joined micro bus for 15LE = AU$3.80 for a silent three hour trip inland to siwa. One of two wives sleeps most of the way, her hand flopping on to mine, i don’t want to move to disturb her - they don’t move, don’t leave the car. I wonder what this life is like. or if this life is just like this.

Arrive siwa, check in cheap hotel in village. Shower over toilet. Bed collapses. We hire bicycles ride out to ‘fatnas island’ under the palms over some water-body-lake mountain, jamilla jidan, smoke shisha drink shay, get stories of siwian ethnic tribe from longago through siwian storyteller, more shay, fire; told about the land before borders, crossing from morocco to algeria, libya to there, settled at the oasis, had fights, stopped fighting, stayed. Rode back to funduk (hotel) in the headlights of omran-the-storyteller’s motorbike headlights. Eat good feed. More story. meet young Egyptian women and man who work with art and children. Drink more shay. Sleep.

siwa laneway

Next day riding bicycles around, we notice that the siwian women are always fully covered in traditional dress and when I attempt to ask for directions the response is an urgent “no, no”. apparently the women are not allowed to make any economic transactions in the village, they have to send the small boys to sell their handicrafts in the village, drive the donkey carts, etc. etc. we wonder, wonder as we women who believe in women’s rights and equality and self-determination, about all this, and how this view must be for these women, and we do not find out. Yet.

bicycles for rent, siwa

siwian party

After a couple of days of wandering around, being enticed into drinking home-made Bedouin vodka, attending a traditional siwian party and many failed attempts at bartering for a cheap desert trip. We hired a motorbike to ride out to one of the oasis just 30km out of the village. Emma had been riding a bike in aus for a while before coming OS and we wanted to show the men here that women can ride! The bike itself was kind of dodgy, and em was told not to use the front brake because you will (charade of crashing). So I get on the back with our picnic on my back, start making giggling happy excited noises as we head off slowly down the sandy laneways out of the village. We didn’t get more than 5 minutes down the road before we found ourselves crashed on the ground. Apparently em had used the front brake to slow down over a speed bump just doing what was natural and the bike just swerved drastically so we both came off. Em came off much worse, smacking her head pretty hard on the ground; I ran up to her to find blood coming out of her skull, saying “im broken im broken” – “no no, you’re okay, you’re okay” so we get a crowd of siwian men around us, we get off the ground and sit in some shade while em calms down. She is slightly delirious and laughing then crying, we go to the hospital and she asks how to say “anaesthetic” in Arabic, I say “anaesthetic”, and the doctor says “I will give you a local anaesthetic”, we laugh, she gets one stitch very quickly and spends the rest of the day dozing and sleeping off the drugs and the headache.

em : delerious post crash

em getting stitched

stitched

Later we spend over 3 hours in the siwian police station attempting to make an incident report so em can claim on her glasses that were broken in the crash.
The police seemed to do nothing but write the same report about 5 times in English and Arabic and spend most of the time smoking cigarettes, talking about soccer and ordering lackeys to do some photocopying.

We leave the next morning to Alexandria and spend a night and a day catching up on work before catching an overnight bus to sharm el sheikh then spend too many gineas on bad coffee on a quiet Friday morning in the resort town, before enduring a painful taxi ride with a young Bedouin man trying to get too close to me on the way to Dahab; at one point he attempted to explain that he wanted us to get out so he could pass through the police security while we walk around the border looking very dodgy and jump back in… I just pretended not to understand and we passed after some huffing and “enti mish fahma” (you don’t understand) (I think he had to pay a 10LE fine for not having the right papers or something).

dahab, sinai

Finally arriving in dahab very tired and queasy. We snooze and eat a nice dinner drink a bottle of wine, wake up the next day quite sick. I get up thinking that I’m okay and maybe we just have a slight hangover or maybe em is just sick, but after not wanting to drink my coffee and unable to walk more than 5 minutes I get back into bed and find myself becoming incredibly unwell in the coming hours. My fever reached about 40C at one point, we were unable to eat anything and were only able to move between the toilet and the bed. The next day my fever was still bad and em was feeling a bit better; I hadn’t been drinking enough because I just couldn’t, we got the local doctor to come over and he diagnosed us with gastroenteritis and pumped me with antibiotics and rehydration fluid. Normally I would just let it be, but there’s only so much toilet-bed-vomit-bed-pain-sick one can handle. After all these drugs I started to come alive again and managed to eat something in the evening.
So we spent the next few days moving slowly from bed to the toilet and around Dahab. Even attempted a quick snorkel at one point. After all the antibiotics I get an onset of thrush; laughing and crying I add it to the list of sickness and setbacks.

getting rehydrated and pumped with antibiotics

So now we have crossed the gulf of aqaba in a ‘fast-boat’, spending at least 4 hours more than needed waiting in the port at nuweiba, spending too much time being distracted and delirious to read or be productive during this nothing time, and have arrived in Jordan; we went to wadi rum, in the desert, on a “WWOOFing” program with a Bedouin family (with 10 children) business who runs desert tours and has a Bedouin camp in the desert just 12km out of town, they also have a garden that contains mostly fruit trees that we hoped to be spending our time working in. The next day we woke at dawn to find ourselves ushered into the kitchen and domestic cleaning duties with the young women of the family. Gritting our teeth at this work given to us because we’re women we hope that the next week or so isn’t going to be like this.

graveyard, wadi rum

Later we get a lift out to the desert to the camp and walk off into the mountains. It really is amazing out here, the desert just goes on and on, scattered with small Bedouin camps here and there, every so often jeeps pass by and the mountains stand ominous and magnificent. But the feelings I get when I am in the Australian desert, wandering about not knowing where I am or what may have happened here, the feelings that are that full bodied gut feelings of homeland connections don’t follow through when looking at foreign beauty. It is still amazing, but it is just “wow” and not more. Maybe spending more time here, learning about it from non-business minded Bedouins would give me some more knowledge and understanding/connection, but for now it remains unknown, still beautiful and amazing, but not inside my skin.

wadi rum

We spent a day out there cleaning the tents, beating out the mattresses after an unusual rainfall overnight; after snoozing in the noonday heat and we walk over to a mountain in sight, there are springs in these mountains, trees growing out from here and there, dry river beds reminding me of home; times spent driving in uncle kev’s car guessing where the underground bodies of water lie.. “whadyya reckon? Here?” he points to significant shrub and other plant growth…”ohh I dunno kev..could be…”

badawi music

Later we’re fed by a Sudanese cook who has left his wife and three children to come here to work for 5 months now. We hope that the rest of the days here won’t be spent so slowly; but perhaps we need to remind ourselves of our geographical location and just let it be slow.
In the evening we ask about the land, looking for some stories, about history of the people here, what connections remain, what the soil contains in the memories of the present living. But not much response from this business minded Bedouin “some questions I don’t have an answer for, the places are just like this because of him (points upwards), and that’s it”.
–
“good morning, breakfast, ok? Cook cook” mohammed sudan gives us his wake up call at 7am- we dress and move into the food tent for sweet shay, ful, tahina & halva. Once in rum village we insist that we want to work in the garden, to get the water working and bring some goat poo to use mix with some mulch to feed the trees.
The garden is located in between and at the bottom of several mountains just a 10 minute walk from town; it’s about 1 acre and consists of mostly olive trees, also some apricot trees and grapevines, also some desert herbs. The next two days there we spend trying to reconnect the hosing which is connected to a spring in the mountains that feeds the garden; the hosing is often disconnected by members of the village who go there to fill their own trucks with water. We bring out some goat poo on our backs from the village just to make us feel like we’ve actually done some ‘real work’ in this idle time of travel and exploration. The tank hasn’t filled due to poor water pressure and many leaks we can’t find so we can’t water the garden. During our day in the sun in the garden em is having constant head spins, it gets worse at night and when she wakes she can’t walk very far without feeling very sick; after seeing the doctor today we find that she has flarengitis, nothing serious, but another setback; it seems that every time we plan to do something like a ‘tour’ we are hit by constant setbacks of sickness and accidents; perhaps we are just not meant to do touristy things. So due to this minor glitch we caught a taxi to Wadi Musa, near Petra, check into a hotel with a tv so I can watch al-jazeera and feel connected to the madness in the world. While em is resting, I am typing and a rooster is crowing (it’s 4:41pm). Once em has recovered we shall attempt to succeed in minimal cost tourist activities and then attempt to make our way back to cairo by the 14th of may for a human rights in the middle east conference, before heading to gaza with another Codepink delegation in late may to put pressure on the Israeli and Egyptian governments to end the blockade of the borders, also to bring aid for the children, and continue to support the people of gaza. I am tentatively going to be in Gaza for about a month working on a doco with NY photographer Paul Park. more to come on this.

garden in the wadi

more to come when there is more to say.
x : jess

en route to petra

Tagged with: arabic, Egypt, jordan, travel

Witness To Memory: Gaza, March 2009

Posted in Displacement, Gaza, Israel, Palestine by jessieboylan on April 10, 2009

Early morning, Gaza City port

“…Once something gets left out of the historical record, that absence itself becomes a fact and not something you are free to recreate/reinstate later…”
(Ferran, 2009)

I didn’t write much while I was in Gaza. I was not able to somehow. It seemed that I should be writing all the time, trying to remember, trying not to forget. Trying to retain all that we are witnessing – somehow to give this horror a voice. However; the whole time spent there, I felt as if I were walking through a surreal section of history that could have no place in the present world – and certainly not the present world that I am to know in my waking life. I regret now not writing just for the sake of writing, just to have something to look back on how I immediately felt; I have been deliberating on how to truly and accurately reflect the gut-churning salty eye feelings that were ever-present in those 9 days we spent in Gaza.

–

I am going to attempt to back track here almost a month now, and go through some thoughts and events in a non-sequential order, and also the past and present tenses will be mixed up, so bear with me.

–

14.03.09

This day I pinched my skin, testing to see if I am awake, if I am here, if I have been present this whole time here in Gaza. This day the clots and knots of air found their veins to flow through to keep me alive. There is a mixture of feelings and emotions present whilst about to leave this nine-day lifetime: of all that we’ve witnessed, and post-witnessed, and re-witnessed, of all that people have re-lived for our cameras and pens. This day I felt overwhelmed by a type of grief of which I didn’t know how to own, unable to photograph anything anymore, unable to listen anymore, unable to explain the reasons for this, I had to walk away. We were visiting the Bashir family, who had lived with Israeli soldiers occupying their home for five years, the whole family of 10 lived in one room for five years, and yet the whole family spoke with not even a hint of malice or hatred towards the Israeli’s, they simply wanted to live side by side with them in peace… I wasn’t able to listen anymore, as if I would burst with one more story of an experience so incomprehensible; I had to go into the newly ploughed field and clasp my chest and weep and sob, a sobbing of which I hadn’t known before; of an inability and uncertainty of how to leave with all that we had gathered…and most of all, a sobbing of this reality so real of which I am not to know in my own reality, of which I am not sure if I could hold in my hands and see, feel, touch, taste or smell.

I am watching the children running down a dirt laneway, running home from school, laughing and chasing each other, glancing at me as they pass, a stranger simply crouching in a field staring glassy-eyed at their existence. I stand up and look back towards the house to see a young girl from the family running towards me and as she approaches she looks at me straight in the eyes and I notice she too is crying, and she notices I am crying, I look away and she looks where I’m looking and then sits in the dirt, we don’t speak, she takes out a pen and paper and starts writing a letter, she writes a few lines and then scrunches up the paper and throws it away. She starts writing again and I crouch down to her level, she asks, “why are you crying?” I point to my eyes and say, “because of what we see in Gaza”. She nods. I ask her “why are you crying?” “Yusef” she says, “I miss him”, then she reaches out and hugs me, we hug, and cry, and it all feels strange and awkward and comforting at the same time, she stands up and takes my hand and leads me back to the house, I am not ready to go, but I follow her.
–

View of Gaza City from Al-Awada Hospital

The minute I walked through the borders of Israel into the hands of Sinai on the 28th of February I felt a sigh of relief wash over me, I felt as if I had been tensing all of my muscles for three months in Israel, grinding my teeth, biting my tongue, and looking through a tunnel-eyed-vision of conflict and darkness. Perhaps the perpetual state of unease had been eating away at my psyche for three months, perhaps I was unable to see anything else while I was there; whatever the reason was, I needed at least three days next to sit by the Red Sea to calm my thoughts and heart-beats before meeting the 60 person delegation in Cairo that I were to join in travelling to Gaza for International Women’s Day.

Even these three simple days became a struggle; with myself, unable to focus on books, unable to focus on simplicity, unable to remove myself from the past three months in order to regain my groundedness to move forwards with this memory.

01.03.09

Today I walked for many hours along the beaches, through the remnant camps, huts, some with people lazing about, others completely deserted; Bedouins smoking hash and shisha with travellers; a Bedouin offers me tea inside his makeshift fishing hut; whilst sipping the sage-filled sugar-rich shay I mention that I want to go walking in the mountains, that they look so inviting – but he warns me not to go alone, for many people die in there. “You must be smart, sensible, it is not smart to go there alone…”
It reminds me of the plethora of times I have walked off into the desert with friends in South Australia and the Northern Territory, on no specific path, just walking towards a landmark in front of us and with a landmark behind us to return us home. I think of how comfortable and safe I feel when walking on the soils back home, of how much trust I put in the land and how so definite and sure I feel that I would never get lost. But these landscapes and these mountains are a different world to me; they feel as if they could swallow me whole.

02.03.09

I have been away from my motherland for only three months and yet I am yearning for her oceans, for her soils and her smells, to be rolled up in her comfort, love and safety; and yet I do not see a returning to her coming any time soon.
–

East Jabaliya

You can read about the beginning of the journey to Gaza in previous posts, so I will try to continue from where I left off…
–

East Jabliya Refugee Camp

East Jabaliya refugee camp

“And this very sky is a cage…”
(Darwish: Beirut: 1982)

Day four: 10.03.09

Stepping of the bus in east Jabaliya to see the one of the first refugee camps I have ever seen in my life was like stepping off a curb and being hit by a car. Here I am walking around the neatly lined tents surrounded by the completely destroyed homes of the families who are now inhabiting this camp, and I’m filming clothes hung out on the concrete remains of a house to dry, all I can hear is the sound of wind so strong as if I were listening to a recording of the wind on my headphones, and above us the clouds are so dark, and in the distance young men are attempting to break apart the remains of concrete homes with a sledgehammer. I am looking through my lens, and then without it, and then through it and then without it, and there seems to be no difference; I do really not comprehend what is before me.

I look inside the tents and all that exists is a mattress and a box, a child and some tea, of which we are offered. And the absurdity of how we can be offered anything by someone who has nothing is played over and over again in Gaza.

I walk over to a group of women and signal if it’s okay to film and photograph. They are obviously used to foreign journalists coming in asking for a piece of their memory and then leaving again, they know what to do and to take up any opportunity to speak in the hope that it will potentially reach out of the prison gates of Gaza.

East Jabaliya Refugee Camp

“We need just to live in a home on our land in peace.” Says Haleema Ahmad Dardona, an older Palestinian woman and resident of this camp, “We need some help to protect us from the raining and the cold. We need our children to be with us.” She is speaking with a sense of urgency as if she knows I too am simply walking in and out, taking with me what is most ‘essential’. “We have no bread, we have no food, we have no water. We need to be warm. The little children eat from the sand.” She says picking up a handful of sand and letting it sift through her fingers. “We just need it to be peaceful, we need it to be safe. We don’t need people to feed us, we just need our own home…” And the group pulls me away as we need to keep going, and I feel like an impostor, coming here and filming such sadness and simply leaving on a bus to witness other devastated areas.

American International School

We drive through the areas that have been completely flattened in the north east of Gaza, not far from the border of Israel, we are being told what has happened in each place and when it happened, but I cannot remember, it is all blurring now, I cannot make any distinction between the destruction, it all seems absurd, surreal. There are cement factories with trucks blown up lying on their sides, piles of rubble with men hacking them apart, breaking them down (for reuse perhaps?). Little children play amongst the remnant houses and buildings, places we used to reconstruct in our own fantasies as kids, places where we could hide, pretending to be the bad and good guys, now manifest themselves in reality for these generations. This child is but two years old, on his/her own, falling down on the discards, picking himself/herself up again, I wonder what kind of mental scars are left on the children of Gaza.

Devestated areas, northern Gaza

“What am I going to do?” Says an elderly Palestinian man from another completely devastated area in east Jabaliya. “I have to look after 10 people. They destroyed my home, and they kicked us out. They didn’t leave anything for us.” He is leaning against a makeshift concrete wall, next to his shack-home, gesturing his hands upwards as he speaks. “The Israeli’s are so close to us. They keep watching us from the mountain.” He tilts his head in the direction of the border, “Just 10 minutes they can come here. So where are we going to go now, the border is just right there.”

From this area you can see the industrial Israeli city of Ashkelon. Recently I read the article in Ha’aretz on the IDF soldiers testimonies about their actions in Gaza, a soldier was talking about how he was able to go home to sleep in his bed in Tel Aviv at night, and fight in the war by day, unlike other troops who would occupy a Palestinian home and live there for a week or more. It reminded me of the absolute removal from the reality of the situation that people in cities like Tel Aviv experience, if at night you can hang out with your mates in a bar and by day kill and wound Palestinians.

“The most important thing for me is just to live in a home.” The elderly man continues. “They keep giving us food but they should give us a home. What kind of humans can live like this?”

East Jabaliya devestated areas

I walk up the street a little and am stopped by a few men who want to talk as well. One man, Hanay Abu Namus starts talking. “We live/d here. This is my home, fifty people who lived in these houses died [during the war]; now we don’t have a home. Six houses were destroyed that belonged to our family.” He starts walking towards the remains of his house and gestures for me to follow. I stop at the base of the destruction and start filming, Hanay and another man walk on to the rubble and start pulling clothes out of the concrete, holding them up then dropping them, shrugging his shoulders and looking up, as if to say “why?” The other man does the same thing; he picks up a pair of children’s trousers, maybe the size for a 3 year old, and then drops them back onto the rubble. This ceremony of unfathomable experience lasts for maybe five minutes, but it feels much longer. As they walk back towards me Hanay directs his arms to the sky and says, “I don’t have to complain to you god, because you see everything, and you are responsible to give my rights back to me.”

Devestated areas, northern Gaza

–

al-Awada Hospital

Later we visit the al-Awada Hospital in Gaza City, and we are told the harrowing stories of women, men and children’s bodies being brought here non-stop during the war; dead, alive and everywhere in between, of limbs missing, of shrapnel lodged into heads and stomachs, of any gruesome image you can relate to war, it was here on these beds, on these floors and now, forever in these minds, although I am sure the people who work here have witnessed this before. Again, it is surreal walking around the hospital on the squeaky clean floors, devoid of the images that have just been detailed to us. I feel the silence and emptiness almost as distressing as the horror it recently contained.

al-Awada Hospital

al-Awada Hospital, two new born twins, named by the same names of their grandmother's sons who were killed during the war

al-Awada Hospital

–

Of what is left for the living? Of the memories and visions and knowledge of losing your families and friends, of images and sounds and wounds to remind you day-in-day-out of what you have experienced, how can children grow with these memories, and how do they deal with what they have experienced?

al-Awada hospital

We met with some people from the Gaza Community Mental Health Program who explained to us some of the psychological effects caused by war that people experience in Gaza, and particularly the lasting effects on children.

“When we talk about mental health in these situations,” says Husam El Nounou, the PR Director for GCMHP, “when we talk about insecurity, we know people will suffer psychologically in these situations, especially the children, who are usually the most affected group in this population. Usually by their nature, by their psychological structure, they are unable to cope with these kind of situations.”

“We observe during the war, the children became more clinging to their parents.” Tel Houa states, a psychologist working with GCMHP. “They all the time want to be with their parents,” he continues, “They have nightmares, night terror all the time. The children are becoming more and more restless and hyperactive, they are unable to concentrate; they become easily provoked and cannot deal with their frustration [because of] the war; they have avoidance behaviour, [it is] difficult to talk think and even watch TV. They are unable to even talk about their experiences during the war.
“We predict that our children will become more aggressive; this desire for aggression and revenge will become internal as they have no outlet for the [anger created by the] occupation and the war/s.

“The international community has to deal with their terror, they have to support them with their trauma; the international community needs to integrate their trauma.
“We are the victims of the victims; we have to help them [Israel] to understand what they are doing.

“There is no guarantee from the international community that things will change. I think one international decision will change the impacts of mental health in Gaza, and this is to end the siege. The mental link with human rights is interlinked, and we have to raise our voices to talk about this.

“We are misled by this big lie; democracy. We are punished because we practiced our rights during this election.”

Abed Rabu homes, East Jabaliya

–

Day five: 11.03.09

Most of the CodePink delegation leave and nine of us stay behind; those who have the time, and who feel like we need and want to stay because we haven’t even scratched the surface of gathering personal testimonies, nor been able to really gain an understanding of what has happened here from the short visits and snippets of stories we have had time for with the large group.

Al-Awada Hospital

–

Red Cross sorting aid, Jabaliya

Aid, northern Gaza

Palestinian woman and grandson waiting for aid

We visit the area of east Jabaliya again, to talk to the large families that have been displaced in these areas, which are the Khader family, the Abed Rabu family and the Dardona family. Most people who have been relocated in the villages that we visited have come from these families. Most of the camps are like this across Gaza; the family you live with and the area you live in are usually one and the same, the family is the most important thing, and staying with the family after such extreme devastation is essential.

–

Looking out over devestated areas in East Jabaliya

We are standing on the roof of a destroyed Abed Rabu home; we are up very high and can view all around this area and to the borders of Israel. The area is flattened homes, streets of dirt and broken concrete, donkeys pulling food along, women, men and children walking through the leftovers. What is there to do now? I wonder. How to live day-by-day waiting for food, waiting for a home, waiting for something to change. We look back at the al-Salaam camp, recently constructed, as it is so windy they have had to reconstruct the refugee camps several times. I look at my footage now and it reminds me of how silent I was, or how silent I felt, how unable I was to speak, how unable I was to offer anything in consolation, as if there was anything to offer. Unable to express my extreme sadness and empathy with the people here, I realise I must simply have expressed it through shaking my head and looking distressed and angry.

East Jabaliya

“We were living in a house in this area,” Sabah Abed Rabu, tells me during an interview in al-Salaam camp. “When the war started, when the warplanes started flying around we tried to keep safe in our homes, we tried to tell ourselves that we wouldn’t be targeted and killed. There were 24 people living in this house. After the house was targeted, we started making white flags out of our clothes then left the house. [Then] the Israeli army started to come into Jabaliya and ordered us to leave, “don’t take anything”, they said, “just leave”. My son was injured but he is okay now. We left the area and after the war we came back to find all of our homes had been destroyed.
“We got some aid after the war, and had to go and rent a house, we are paying now $1500 a month to rent this house. After the war we had to buy everything we lost.
“We didn’t do something bad…we just want people to know this.”

Sabah Abed Rabu, East Jabaliya

After doing another interview with members of the Abed Rabu family they take us up to their former home and show us a section of a missile that they found in their house which is far too heavy to pick up. We look around at what’s left, there is a couch inside and a place for a fire, even a carpet on the ground because they were still living in here until recently, when it started to get too cold and it was raining a lot and the children were getting sick, they had to move to the camp.

A missile found in the Abed Rabu home

–

I am taken back to the Al-Za’aneen family I am staying with in Beit Hanoun, and before everyone leaves Ibdisam takes us to the end of the dirt street to where two houses were destroyed by missiles during the war, which are less than 200 meters from their own home.

We approach a large house-sized hole dug deep in the ground, but no remains are left of the house that was here. Just next to it however, is another house that was flattened. “See up there,” says Ibdisam, “that is the cousin of my husband, they have no connection with the resistance, but you can see the top two floors have been blown out, they are completely black.”

She tells us that her son filmed the houses being blown up on his mobile phone, because sometimes the IDF would give a warning to owners of the house to leave, that they had maybe 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 minutes to leave the house before it was destroyed. “This is the one good thing they did during the war.” One of our translators says sarcastically.
–

Beit Hanoun girls school

Day six: 12.03.09

This day I felt physically and emotionally exhausted, unable to go and collect any more stories, unable to process or focus on what was in front of me, I knew I wouldn’t be of much use, and it was better to re-ground myself. So I stayed around the Al-Za’aneen family household, drinking tea and walking out into the garden every so often to feel comforted by one of the (seemingly) only tree-filled area in Gaza, where even the birds chirp here.

–

Palestinian fishermen

Day seven: 13.03.09

We meet at the Al-Quds Hotel, just near the beach of Gaza city at 9am and start walking to meet the others at the port a little way along, who are waiting with some fishermen who will take us out on the sea to do some interviews about the problems they are facing and the impact of the war on their business and livelihoods. We catch a ride on the back of a Hamas police car as they see we can’t find the others. “No we’re not getting arrested, just a ride.” Paul, a photographer from New York, says laughing on the phone to the others who can see us coming down the hill. Paul has been photographing a lot of CodePink’s activities in the US, as well as anti-war protests and organisations like Veterans Against the War.

Fishermen

There are nine of us aboard this small fishing boat, maybe 3 meters long, thousands of dollars of technical gear, lap tops, cameras, etc, as we head out on the Mediterranean sea, watching Gaza City growing smaller in the distance. The fishermen with us point towards some boats on the horizon, “Israeli Navy boats” they say, and I get a shiver of doubt as I remember the stories about members from the International Solidarity Movement who accompany fishermen and get shot at by the Israeli Navy. However, we are soon distracted when we approach another, larger fishing boat with maybe 15 fishermen aboard. We stop next to them and explain what we’re doing and who we are, they welcome us aboard and we all jump ship. Everyone is laughing and joking and they feed us boat cooked spicy beans with pita bread, followed by sweet black tea and shisha. This is the first time since being in Gaza I have felt a sense of lightness and laughter, even though we are hearing about devastating events and the effects of war, this morning was beautiful.

Fisherboat, Mediterranean sea

Fisherboat

Fisherboy

Fishermen, Mediterranean sea

We stay around 2 hours on the boat with the fishermen, doing some interviews, and watching other smaller fishing boats bring in catch. We learn of the impact of the war on the Palestinian fishermen, and the laws that restrict them to go out past a certain distance, however this distance seems to be changing constantly. According to a recent article by Gaza ISM the “Israeli Navy were enforcing a no fishing zone 6 miles from shore prior to the wholesale attacks on the population of the Gaza Strip. It has been commonly reported that in the wake of these attacks, this limit has been reduced to 3 miles.
“It is unclear what the Israeli military regard as the official “forbidden” area. There are no official channels of communication open between the Israeli Navy and the fishermen from Gaza. All the information regarding this that the fishermen have is delivered at gunpoint, and is inconsistent with the actions of the gunboat crews. Experience informs the fishermen that at any moment any portion of Gaza’s territorial waters can be deemed “prohibited” by the gunboat crews, no matter how close to shore, and irrespective of what the gunboat commanders have previously decreed (the status of these decrees as both arbitrary and illegal in the context of international law should also be noted).” (http://fishingunderfire.blogspot.com/)

–

We return to shore and I am welcomed to eat fish with Abdullah, a Gazan who has been in Egypt for three years studying film, he joined our delegation to return to Gaza to see his family whom he hadn’t seen during the whole time in Cairo. He attempted to leave with the rest of the delegation, however was refused entry into Egypt by the Egyptian border control, despite the fact that Abdullah carries official papers stating his student status in Cairo, and the official papers he and an Egyptian official signed upon entry to Gaza, stating that he would be allowed out again. Since then he has tried to leave Gaza several times. His studies have been jeopardised simply because he wanted to see his family.

–

Mediterranean sea, fishermen

After lunch of fresh fish and traditional Palestinian rice, I re-join the group and we travel to the a-Zeitun neighbourhood of the a-Samuni family, who lost at least twenty-nine members of their family during the war; it is one of the most tragic stories that came out of the recent war, and I am not sure I can even really give the experience the justice it deserves. I think the photographs say what I cannot.

a-Samuni home: The writings on the wall: The words written here in Hebrew say: "Death to Arabs!", "The Givati Brigade Finished mission on 06.01.09" and "We are legends!"

Abdullah a-Samuni at the window he described as being used by IDF snipers

There are destroyed houses everywhere, some completely flattened and some with areas, floors or rooms that have been blown out, completely black, with piles of rubble everywhere. There are children everywhere, playing games, running around, screaming and laughing and crying. They rush up to us to be photographed and to see what we’re doing, and talk in the English they know and hold our hands and ask us questions.

My translator and I go to talk with some members of the family upstairs in one of the houses that was occupied by the IDF during the first week of the war. As we enter the house and walk up the stairs we see all the writing on the walls, done in Hebrew and English, stating things like “Arabs must die” and “Arabs are pieces of shit”, and other equally sickening statements. There are bullet holes all throughout the house and photographs on the walls of men, women and children who were killed during the war. We are all tired and feel overwhelmed and stressed by what we are seeing and hearing. The woman speaking to us is speaking with such intensity, re-living her whole experience of being removed from one house by the IDF, put into another and then the house being targeted by missiles, of having to run away and find safety of having to leave others behind of seeing family members dying, of now looking after children of those who have died, and more, I cannot retrace it now, for it was spoken and translated to me with such exhaustion and desperation that day, I feel perhaps only the images can speak.

a-Samuni family

a-Samuni child who lost a few of fingers during the war

Abdullah a-Samuni, a 9 year old who lost his brother during the siege, takes us around a few of the houses and re-enacts IDF snipers shooting from windows, he throws his hands in the air as if to say “I don’t understand” or “what now?” We follow him up the stairs and it is a kitchen that is completely blackened by an explosion. I stop and unthinkingly say “don’t touch anything”, thinking about the use of white phosphorous, I then realise that it has been like this since the war and many children, men and women have being coming in and out of here every day since, and anything toxic that could be inhaled, already has been.

Abdullah a-Samuni stands in the remains of a blown out home

a-Samuni neighbourhood

We walk around the streets unable to speak, I am just muttering swear words under my breath, learning how to say god help us all in Arabic, as it seems the only appropriate thing to say here, where no words can change this present memory.

Abdullah takes my hand, I didn’t realise but I had been putting my hand on his shoulders during the time he was taking us around, I just felt I couldn’t say anything and needed to show him, someone, anyone, that I care.

Abdullah a-Samuni and other a-Samuni children

A few more kids gathered around, wanting me to take their photos, but I had run out of batteries and only had my voice recorder left, so they began to sing a song about being a martyr, I record it, knowing it will bring me right back to this time and place every time I listen to it. A haunting song for children to be singing, but they are children and they have experienced what no child should ever experience.

We are the martyr’s with the military clothes
We never feel afraid inside our chests, because we are the Jihadaya
To hell for the enemy who keeps attacking us
We are the saraya coming and to hell for the enemies who keep attacking us
If someone shoots us, we will be in the Bustan (a garden in the heavens)
Our land in Palestine is full of the plants of men and the Bustan
So as the young ones in our land we can do Jihadaya to protect the olives
We are going to dress in clothes of the night…

Wounds from the war

Day eight: 14.03.09

It is early morning, around 5:30 am, I am staying with Abdullah and his family in Gaza City now, they have given me a room to myself even though they are a large family in this apartment, everyone sharing a room together or sleeping in the lounge room; everyone is as welcoming as everyone has been in Gaza. It seems, when you have nothing, you are more likely to give everything, and when you have everything you are more likely to give nothing.

I wake with a feeling of deeply entrenched tiredness and am not sure I can rise today; Abdullah comes into the room and asks, “do you want to go to the fish market with the others, or do you want to sleep?” I had been pondering the same question and am not sure, we decide to go, as it is our last day here and we would be wasting our time if we slept.

Gaza City fish market

The smell is strong of fresh fish on the street next to the Gaza city port, where the fishermen are setting up; laying out their catch on display, ready to sell. Abdullah bring us much needed strong sweet tea, and we watch the commotion for a little while; auctioneering boxes of fish with crowds of men huddled together over the boxes, once sold, quickly shuffling over to the next box, and so on. It is humorous. We catch a few glimpses of the fishermen from the day before; they give us a wave and a smile and continue to make their living.

Gaza City fish market

Abdullah and I walk down to the pier, the skies are a deep dark blanket of grey, it is sprinkling a little bit and “the sea, she’s angry” says Abdullah. It is beautiful here; we watch the fishermen bringing in their boats, or taking them out, fixing their nets and beginning the day’s work. We simply walk along the concrete pier out to the end, observing the early morning conversations between the people and the skies, the ocean and herself.

Gaza City port

–

15.03.09

We leave Gaza this day; a relatively quick and painless exist from Palestine and an easy entry to Egypt. Our foreign nationalities giving us a special privilege that Palestinians do not receive. At the border of Egypt we witness a Palestinian woman screaming and crying, hanging onto the fence, she has in her hand at least ten passports. We learn that she has been trying to get back into Gaza for months now, because she has sick family members inside and she needs to see them, but she is constantly refused. “Why is she refused?” I don’t know.

Five of us travel back to Cairo in a taxi; the sun is going down over the deserts of northern Sinai and we are all quiet for a while, reflecting on everything from the past 9 days in Gaza.

View from Downtown Cairo

We arrive in Cairo around midnight and stay up for a while chatting and winding down before having to get up early to leave for our respective places of residence, or places of temporary residence.

16.03.09

After very little sleep, I get on a bus to the Taba border crossing between Egypt and Israel. I am worried about what might happen at the border now that I have the Rafah and Palestinian Authority stamps on my passport. I am naively hopeful, as I believe I have nothing to hide, so why should I try? Having never experienced problems at a border before, this was definitely the wrong way to think.

I exited Egypt in good spirits, using what Arabic I could to say thanks and goodbye. After entering Israel’s border control and putting my bags through the security screens; a young girl, maybe the same age as me or younger who was operating the x-ray machine signals to the other girl to check what I have in my bag. Whether or not they had seen my PA stamps yet, I will never know. She gets out my camera and then my books, and then some papers I have in there that I had forgotten I left in there that had content to do with Gaza on them. I feel a deep heavy feeling wave over me. Why did I think this would be okay? Why didn’t I check properly what I had in there? The girl starts asking me questions, where have you been? Why were you there? What are you doing here? What were you doing here? Who were you with? Where were they from? What were their names? Why are you coming to Israel? What do you mean PEACE? We don’t have peace. She asks me stupid questions, over and over again, I feel that she is nervous, she doesn’t know what she’s doing, she’s self-justified and thinks I am against her, well right now I am, but the situation is so absurd I feel nothing but hopeless humility. They take apart every item in all of my belongings, they make me sit by and watch as my dirty underwear is strewn all over the tables, my computers and cameras are mishandled, I ask them to respect my things, over and over again, my humility turning to anger as I watch a 20 something year old boy reading letters from my lover that were kept in my journal, he is laughing and they are making jokes between them. I simply sit and stare with disdain. I am taken into a room and a girl, my age also says, we have to give you a ‘body check’, I’m sorry. I didn’t have to get naked, however, just take my pants down and hold my arms out.
After all this humility I take about 30 minutes putting my belongings back into my bag, then I am told by the ignorant girl to wait while “I make my decision of whether or not to let you into Israel.”

2 hours pass, and no one talks to me, another 2 and someone comes to get some more information from me, another 2… By this time I am so tired and hungry and thirsty and distressed and upset that I have been crying for some time now. After leaving Gaza and witnessing the aftermath of an extremely brutal and sickly war, and entering Israel into the hands of extremity and fascism; I am overwhelmed and unable to speak.

Finally the head of security comes over to me at 12:00 am, after I had been there for 8 hours, he takes me into his office and says, “because of your activities in Israel, we are giving you a 48 hour visa, and if you want to extend your visa you will have to sign a form stating that you will not go into the Palestinian Territories and if you do, you will pay a 20,000 shekel fine, (AU$6815), of which you have to pay up front, as insurance money.” I am shocked, I really didn’t expect this, I say, “What do you mean, ‘my activities in Israel’? I don’t understand, can you explain to me what you mean?” “I don’t have to explain to you anything,” he says bluntly, “If you want to enter Israel these are the rules.”
I try and ask again what he means, and state that I don’t understand. He doesn’t tell me why he has chosen to do this, and he simply responds with “I don’t have to explain anything to you, and if you don’t agree you can leave back to Egypt.” I would have left back to Egypt but I had belongings in Israel and negatives I needed to send to Australia for an exhibition I was about to be in, so I agreed, unwillingly. As I was about to leave, he gave me back my passports, the two that I own, British and Australian, I was keeping one clean, saving it for travel to Arab countries that have no diplomatic relations with Israel, therefore disallow anyone who has an Israeli stamp on their passport to enter. He says, “I have stamped both of them so that you know you have 48 hours.” By this time I am so angry I start yelling “thanks for welcoming me to the only true democracy in the middle east!” and about what a fascist country it is, and how wonderful it is to have a democracy that is so true like Israel, and what a wonderful country Israel is, and thanks so much for welcoming me to it, and all sorts of babble that felt right at the time.

I leave in complete distress, so overwhelmed and tired; I think about the fact that Palestinians experience treatment much worse than this, every single day, simply going to work or trying to return home, I have gotten off lightly placed in this context.
I book into a hostel in Eilat and my girlfriend calls from Australia to calm me down. I don’t know what to do and I want to leave, I don’t want to be here, and eventually I fall asleep.

I wake up the next day feeling better, less distressed, I even begin to laugh at the situation, what a totally ridiculous situation it is. I catch a bus from Eilat to Tel Aviv and along the way I call an organisation who work on the “Right of Entry” campaign, who have never heard of this before, and suggest I re-apply for the visa in the north, somewhere away from Tel Aviv, as this is where this form will be, waiting for me to sign.

So the next day I go with Elad, the Israeli I was staying with and working on a project with, to the Ministry’s office in Hertzeliya, only 30km north of Tel Aviv, by this time I have only about 8 hours left before I either get an extension or have to leave the country. We are told that visas are only processed in the mornings so we have to come back tomorrow, and never mind about staying a day over the visa.

The next day we return and wait 4 hours in the office before they take my details and simply state that they “will process it”, I didn’t mention this form, nor did they.
So I stay for 10 days without hearing from them, whilst trying to recollect my feelings and experiences of the past 2 weeks. Being in Tel Aviv, and only 70km down the coastline from Gaza, looking out at sea in that direction, I was feeling so incredibly lost and hopeless in my actions and abilities to do anything with what I had witnessed and gathered.

Finally I get a call saying I can pick up my visa at a cost of 160 shekels from the ministry; but when I go there the form about the fine comes through the system and they refuse me my visa unless I can pay the 20,000 shekels. I say firstly that I do not have that much money in my life right now and that I am planning to leave to Egypt in a few days anyway. They write on the system that I had applied for an extension and it was refused, so I wouldn’t have any troubles at the border.

–

And so, here I am in Sinai, in Dahab, I have been here for 9 days now, taking Arabic classes in one of the beachfront café’s in the mornings and going snorkelling and diving, and going through all of my imagery from Gaza, and attempting finally to write about it.
And so I am leaving here for Cairo on Saturday, to meet my girlfriend coming from Australia, to be able to talk about everything that has happened over the past four months, to begin to process it in human form.

We plan to return to Gaza in May with another delegation that CodePink are organising: on both sides, Gaza and Israel.

And so this journey shall continue, this witnessing of memories.

Peace. Salaam. Shalom.

Jess.

*PCHR have determined that a total of 1,417 Palestinians died in the offensive. 926 were civilians, including 313 children and 116 women. 255 were non-combatant police officers. 236 combatants were killed, representing 16.7% of the total deaths.

**more photos from the codepink delegation to gaza can be found here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/36807912@N02/ – more of mine
http://www.flickr.com/groups/iwdgaza/ – General
http://www.flickr.com/photos/gazadelegation/ – Paul Park

Gaza City Port

Tagged with: a-Samuni, CODEPINK, Egypt, Gaza, Gaza City, Israel, Jabaliya, Palestine, war

Beit Hanoun PA school

Posted in Gaza, Palestine, war by jessieboylan on April 3, 2009

The Beit Hanoun Secondary School for Girls was hit by random Artillery Shells on the 3rd day of Operation Cast Lead, the Israeli war on Gaza. The school is located near the border of Israel and this area was hit all the time during the war by all kinds of weapons.
No one was killed here, the school was empty; obviously no schools operated during the war; no where was safe. No where.

*Please note that the videos I am posting are not by any means a finished product of any sort; they are simply to show you what sometime i cannot explain…or cannnot explain right now.

Tagged with: Aftermath, Beit Hanoun, Gaza, Hamas, Israel, Operation Cast Lead, Palestinian Authority, war

a walk through jabaliya

Posted in Gaza, Palestine by jessieboylan on March 28, 2009

A very raw capture & edit; taken whilst walking through the streets of Jabaliya in the Gaza strip, March 2009.
—-

“hello, how are you?” every kid yells at/asks you as a foreigner in the streets of jabaliya, and the whole of the gaza strip for that matter. Walking through the streets of Jabaliya we collected a mass of children wanting to talk to us, ask us what they could in english and be photographed and videoed.

—-

Jabalia camp is located north of Gaza City beside a village of the same name. The camp was established after the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict for 35,000 refugees who had fled from villages in southern Palestine. The refugees were at first provided with tents, which UNRWA later replaced with cement block shelters with asbestos roofs.

The camp covers an area of 1.4 sq. km. The shelters, which usually consist of two or three small rooms, a small kitchen and bathroom on an area of maximum 40 sq. m, are packed closely together. Narrow alleys and pathways, some less than one meter wide, run between the shelters. The camp lacks basic infrastructure. Solid waste is collected by UNRWA’s sanitation labourers. Water is supplied by the local municipality or comes from UNRWA and private water wells.

The first Palestinian Intifadah started in Jabalia Camp in December 1987.

Prior to the closure of the Gaza Strip in September 2000, most of the refugees worked as labourers in Israel or locally in agriculture in nearby farms in Beit Lahia. Some own small shops in the camp and a few work in small businesses.

The registered refugee population is 106,691 persons.

(taken from: http://www.un.org/unrwa/refugees/gaza/jabalia.html)

Tagged with: Gaza, Jabalia, Jabaliya, Jabalya

the writing on the walls – the a-Samuni family

Posted in Displacement, Gaza, Israel, Palestine by jessieboylan on March 21, 2009

the a-samuni family’s story was documented and widely heard about during operation cast lead, (they lost 48 members of their family), yet it was at this point that everything we had seen in our days spent in gaza that had seemed so surreal – suddenly became more than real – it hit me so hard in the guts i felt sick to the bone -
it was the writing on the walls…

IDF writings in an a-Samuni home

writings on the wall in the a-samuni homes

a-Samuni home

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....

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Tagged with: a-Samuni, Gaza, IDF, Israel, Palestine

a present memory

Posted in Displacement, Gaza, Israel, Palestine, Reslience, war by jessieboylan on March 21, 2009

Children draw the war, Jabaliya, Gaza

it has not yet passed through me – it is still weaving its way through my veins, through my pumping blood, through the memory through the present through the faces, words, voices, language and lives; i am unable so far to process much from gaza; the 9 days that felt like a year – the remaining privilege of leaving…
a present memory of
the day of standing in a field and weeping to be hugged by another weeping being for different reasons
the day of visiting the a-samuni family and being unable to fathom the words translated to me in exasperation
and of being led through the destroyed homes by a 9 yr old boy who re-enacted the IDF soldiers coming through their homes
the day of jumping boats on the ocean to interview palestinian fishermen and to be fed by them and climb the mast to look at gaza on the horizon and the israeli boats on the other horizon
the day of walking in a memory
of walking in a thousand memories
of their homes and lives spread out like a jigsaw puzzle
of being unable to find a language outside of language to express the reaction, the feelings, the gut churning clenching boiling language of sadness
and also of resilience and hope and strength and kindness like no other i have seen before

and so, it will take a little while to get it all up here, but it will happen over the coming days, weeks, months, so bear with me, bear witness with me.

xo
jess

Abdallah a-Samuni, a-Zeitun neighborhood, Gaza

Tagged with: a-Samuni, Gaza, Israel, Palestine, war

with the women of gaza

Posted in Palestine, Israel, Land, Earth, Place, Dwelling, Dispossession, Connections, Disconnections, Travel, Photography, War, Peace, Conflict, Bedouin, Politics, Environment, Ecology, Deep Ecology by jessieboylan on March 9, 2009

08/03/09

March 8 marks International Women’s Day (IWD), and yesterday the CodePink 60 person peace delegation from the US, Canada, Australia, Turkey, Pakistan and Germany made it through the borders and checkpoints from Rafah, Egypt to celebrate IWD with the women of Gaza on this day.

Cindy & Craig Corrie & Alice Walker, Rafah border crossing

Leaving Al-Arish in Egypt on the morning of March 7 the international peace delegation arrived at the Rafah-Gaza border crossing and staged a peaceful songful demonstration at the gates while the authorities assessed our situation and whether they would let us through. After a short while we got the go ahead which was met with loud cheers and celebration as the gates have been closed to foreigners on and off since the last Israeli Siege on The Gaza Strip, and we had planned to camp on the border if we weren’t allowed through. This passing into Gaza from Rafah shows that Egypt has control of this border even though it claims it doesn’t.

After waiting around four hours in the Rafah passport control we were allowed to exist Egypt and enter the Palestinian territories. Greeted by a press conference with the Mayor of Rafah, Essa Ali El Nashar, and the Palestinian Red Crescent while the Palestinian Authorities processed our passports. “All the official authority buildings were destroyed, as were the food stores, the bays for the fishermen, everything…” says El Nasher. “They burned everything in Gaza, they want to drive the people out; they don’t want there to be anything left for us here.” “No matter what you have seen on TV what you will see on the ground will be much worse, so be prepared.” When asked about the remaining tunnels, and what they were being used for El Nasher replied “We are living under a siege that has not been known before in history…” “The question to you and everybody is how can a nation survive when they don’t have anything…” “The only alternative we had was to dig some tunnels as to obtain what we needed to survive…” “…We hope for the day when we will not need these tunnels.”

—

On the way to Gaza City driving through the streets of Gaza seeing for ourselves the destruction of bombed buildings and homes, fields and hospitals, schools and cement factories; the men women and children waving at us, smiling and looking hopeful, I couldn’t help but wonder what we will really be able to bring to the people of Gaza other than support, solidarity and hope, but maybe just this useful in itself.
While looking at the Mediterranean sea on our left hand side I think about the bustling lively, bright and happy city of Tel Aviv, Israel, just 70kms up the coastline, and how incredibly different the life is for people up there in comparison to life here in Gaza.

A security building in Gaza City

—

Many people from the delegation are staying with Palestinian families, organised by UNWRA, who are coordinating our program for our short time here. I and another woman are staying with the Al Za’anin family in Beit Hanoun just 3km from the Eretz border crossing into Israel. This area is very well known in Gaza for being a firing zone as well as another lockdown amidst the prison of Gaza.

Duaa Al Za’anin takes me on to the roof where she tells me stories from different parts of her life; from living in Iraq, Pakistan, Cyprus and Palestine, she has finished her medicine degree and is now volunteering in the Kamal Idwaan hospital in Jabaliya. “We were up here all the time during the [most recent] war, we did everything up here so we could see where the bombs were falling and how close the Israeli’s were. I feel more frightened in the house than outside where I can see, so we even cooked out here, using wood fires because there was no gas.” “We all slept downstairs together in the one room, because it was the safest place, and anytime we heard an explosion we would all run up to the roof to see where it hit.” She tells me of children from her school who had died, and points to houses just 100 meters away than have been completely destroyed by bombs. “I am studying a diploma in mental health now so I can deal with my own problems from the war.” Tears form in her eyes as she says this, and I feel useless, unable to grasp the realities of this life.

—

For IWD we visited local women’s organisations to celebrate with them and listen to their stories, hopes, struggles and needs to raise the quality of life for women in the Gaza strip. “We want people to know we are not terrorists, we want them to know that we are peaceful people, and we want to live with basic human rights.” Says Sarra’ Majdy El Nahal of the Bonat Al Mustaqbal Association in Rafah, Gaza. “We want to be able to feed ourselves and our families, we want to have employment and other programs, right now, unemployment is 80 or 90%, no body has any money to get anything.” “We have skills and we want to be able to use them for work, we can do embroidery, or work in the fields, we are very good at this.” “We need gas to cook with because we have none, and are using the fires, but even the wood we often cannot find.”

The women are the lifeblood of Gaza and are placed at the bottom of the pit. These organisations, run and funded by UNWRA, create programs and activities for women to have a space to teach, learn, participate and work in all sorts of different ways; from theatre to arts and crafts, to IT and bread-making.

There were over a hundred women who greeted us for the celebrations and I have never felt so welcomed in my life. They gave us food, tea, hot bread from the fire, kissed our cheeks many times, shook our hands and told us over and over again how grateful and thankful they are for us to come and meet them.

Dancing at Bonat Al Mustaqbal Association

After a play put on by the women, and traditional Palestinian dance by the younger girls, tea and conversations, I am left with an overwhelming weight and sense of responsibility to relay their plight, their struggles and their voices to the world. I feel so overwhelmed to be treated like royalty when they are the real strength of Gaza. “I have not been so happy in such a long time,” Sarra’ tells me, “we thank you so much for coming, it is so important for us and I feel like this could mean a change is coming for us, thank you so much.”

Dabka at Bonat Al Mustaqbal

We leave on the bus shortly after and I am looking out of the window trying to imagine daily life here, trying to imagine how after everything these women have been through in their lives they are so giving, kind, welcoming and thankful for us to have come simply to show them we are listening to their voices.
—

We are taken along the coast road and we watch the fisherman in their boats, unable to go more than 150 meters to fish, otherwise they will be shot at by the Israeli army, “why?” I ask, “because this is the way it is” I am told.

Tagged with: Alice Walker, Gaza, International Women's Day, Rachel Corrie, Rafah, Seige, Women

3 comments

borderlands; on the road to gaza; day one

al-arish, egypt

1. bearing witness, shahida; continued.

“I haven’t been in the sea for three years, since i last saw my family in Gaza” says Abdullah, a young palestinian film-maker now living in Cairo. “I miss the sea so much, I have to go swimming, I don’t care how cold it is.” He bends down and picks up two handfuls of sand and smiles; a smile so big i feel like i am witnessing the reuniting of two lovers separated by war.
We follow Abdullah along the beach and onto the rocks, we take off our shoes and carefully walk along a pier of broken cement blocks to the sea. “I am going in, I have to.” He takes of his clothes and climbs down then dives in, arising with a loud shriek of joy and exhilaration from the cold. “How is it?” we ask. “Freezing!” he yells, but swims out a little way and floats and paddles around in circles and we feel we are really witnessing something really special and personal; we observe and feel mesmerised by the dense mist/fog/smoke/smog covering the horizon so thick we can bearly see 20 meters into the ocean, the sun is almost down and the light is blue white golden silver, the sounds of splashes and the lights of Rafah in the distance remind us of our journey.

abdullah, Al-Arish

Al-Arish, mediterranean

2. borderlands, checkpoints; the crossing is nearly in sight.

I, along with 59 other international peace delegates arrived this afternoon in Al-Arish, Egypt, 40km from the Rafah border crossing into Gaza. We all arrived in Cairo over the past few days, most people coming from the USA & Canada; including the parents of Rachel Corrie, the 23-year-old American killed by an Israeli Defense Forces bulldozer in Gaza six years ago, and Pulitzer-Prize winning novelist Alice Walker.
The group, organised and coordinated by CodePink, Women for Peace from the US, and the UNWRA Gaza Gender Division, are a mix of activists, writers, journalists, photographers, film-makers, videographers, students, academics, scholars, teachers, doctors, lawyers, etc. etc.
We are bringing with us 1000 gift baskets to present to the women of Gaza on March 8, International Women’s Day. Inshalla we get into Gaza tomorrow, we will be spending 4 days visiting different organisations, including: The Palestinian Medical Relief Society (PMRS), The Gaza Community Mental Health Programme (GCMHP), The Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committees (PARC), and The Palestinian Center for Human Rights.

We left Cairo this morning and travelled the 6 hour bus journey to Al-Arish, and tomorrow we plan to cross the border in to Gaza if we are allowed. There were a group of 50 activists from America and Europe who were let in earlier this afternoon so we are hoping for the same ‘luck’. Also the George Galloway Viva Palestinia Convoy coming with 110 vehicals will be arriving at Rafah tomorrow night.
*just a quick update as i am falling weary to this screen in a smokey seedy internet cafe in the late hours of Al-Arish streets and i must sleep…

More from Gaza, or at the border.
* please send round.

Tagged with: aid, Al-Arish, CODEPINK, Egypt, Gaza, International Women's Day, Israel, Palestine, Peace, Rafah, war

resilience through tea; with reference to “shahida..”

between a highway, coke factory, prison and a railway; lives are lived

1. on the other side of the divide i sit, laptop on lap and dandelion tea, milk and honey in a mug on the floor next to me, sent from australia with love; a large difference this tea makes to my psychological happiness, i treasure it now, counting my tea bags carefully – one today, or one used three times today, what will it be?
oh how the difference is on this side, in the centre, in the middle of ‘israel-proper’, away from ‘it all’, but never is it far away.

i’m going to backtrack a few days, and then backtrack some more to add some photos from last week in palestine. with reference to the “shahida: bearing witness” post.
17.02.09
again we find ourselves under the cement threshold of the miklat (bomb shelter) in be’er sheva, our almost second home now; a place, now the war is ‘over’, that has returned to it’s original space, ‘dukium’ a negev coexistence forum; and we’re back here because we can stay here, and there was a talk on last night about the Goldberg Report on the Bedouins of the Negev; carefully translated through loud whispers by elad; basically i learned that the report wasn’t much good. committees upon committees talk and meet and write reports and nothing ever comes of it..
–
and now it is quiet, the hebrew-arabic class has finished and elad has gone to dinner with some friends, and as i was drifting already i chose to stay in; for now my mind has space.

it is a mixture of eeriness and comfort being ‘underground’; to be covered by so much cement, built here for times of war, used here in the reality of war; a strange feeling to wake up in the morning knowing the sun doeseth shine outside, but it’s dark in here; perhaps a feeling resonating with those living in the aftermath of war (if i may be so cliched?); those living in the aftermath of losing everyone you loved, and every-’thing’ that was ‘home’ and ‘life’, (that pen that was given to you, of which you used to write your poetry, that t-shirt of your son’s, with ‘los angeles’ written on it, that has no relation to the US, only to your son; gone now, without a choice), ; those suffering from trauma and sinking, or already sunk, into a deep depression that no words, sounds, smells, tastes or feelings can bring you out of right now, and maybe not for many bright-dark days to come.
i have never thought of war so much, never had so much conflict, so much suffering on my mind (and i have the priviledge of it to be only ‘on my mind’), as i have here in israel/palestine.. Never have i seen so many images of a one peoples suffering and life under oppression/occupation; never before have i been reminded every-single-day of a ‘division’, an apartheid, a pain being carried out every-single-day; and oh, only the smallest of things need remind me of this: like what? like being here!
and i know it is the focus of my eyes, the focus of my lens that sees this, and perhaps i have only selective vision accompanying selective thoughts; but for now this is my reality and thus this reality shall stay.

bedouinvillage002

17.02.09 contd.
today; even though slow and minimal, i feel of it of worth. Late afternoon we leave the coffee shop rain refuge and walk out of be’er sheva city into the industrial area and into the wasteland surrounding it; and there is so much so much so much trash, discards, ecological toxification than perhaps i have ever seen in an urban setting. Once were rivers now white foaming cappucinos. once was scrubland now is branches clothed in plastic, once was air now only fumes; and of course there is always coca-cola. and bedouin villages in between the railway, next to the highway, next to the prison, next to the coca-cola factory, next to the once were rivers, next to the toxicity of all israel. and here are sheep with no grass to eat and a small child plays in the dirt mounds behind a fence and our shadows on the tin shed do not distract, and of course the sun is glowing down slowly and prompts introspective thought and there is a chill in the wind and i image this imagining and imagine this image as i am directing my focus, and the memory will perhaps be stronger than the emulsion.

and all for now is sage and lemon tea, or dandelion milk and honey, two oranges and some yoga. then darwish to write me asleep, to bring me inside his words, under his pen on top of the page, into his morning coffee, into his apartment into his life under seige in beirut, and perhaps these are no thoughts to put me to sleep with, but the thousand-meaning words are what remains; and how they do dance amidst the fear and shellings, for what carries me along this daily existence, his words so full of the experience so many experiences find it so hard to find words to fulfill the experiences.
so tonight let it be myself to sleep.

near Ramat Hovav: Israel's main hazardous waste facility

2. Kaweah ; strong : i walked into the home of an amazing woman last week; her name is Umm Kamel, and her home is a protest camp in east jerusalem; earlier that week on a tour of the settlements with the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions we had been pointed out her camp, so i knew i had to go back and visit her, and see if she would tell me her story.
As i approached a man was leaving and i explained to him who i was and what i was doing, he was very welcoming and quickly explained to another man, Khaled the media coordinator, and to Umm, who i was and what i was doing; Umm welcomed me into her tent and i sat down explaining to Khaled what my project was about and what i was hoping to talk to Umm about, he was very receptive and translated to Umm in arabic what i had just told him, she agreed to be recorded and then later photographed, and as she spoke i was absolutley mesmorised, as if i could understand every.single.word. She spoke with such strength and clarity (later i learned the word for strong is Kaweah (i do not know if this is the correct transliteration)), and i could feel the history passing through her words and into my voice recorder. So as yet i have not had the recording translated, but it’s in the process of being done, and because she spoke so much and for so long Khaled couldn’t translate even 1/6th of it. So i am extremely eager to read the translation to know exactly what she was saying. A lot about feeling choked by the government, perhaps, and a lot about a false democracy, and also i asked her to speak about the land, the earth ‘el-ard’, as this seemed vital to her struggle as well as to what i am working on.

So, in brief; her story is as follows: “When Umm Kamel was evicted from her home in Sheikh Jarrah (Jerusalem) on 9 November, where she had been living with her family since 1956, it was the second time in her life she was forced by the state of Israel to leave her home. The first time was in 1948, when she and her family were forced out of their home in Jerusalem…” ““I am really a daughter of the Palestinian people, whose history is to go from place to place to place” Umm Kamel said. “I would like to know, why they [the state of Israel] took me out of my home. I can not forget what the state of Israel has done to me. […] I demand the right to return and it is not only my right—it is the right of all Palestinians” ““Is it my fault that I’m a Palestinian?” Umm Kamel continues, “this is the Israeli democracy and humanity—it is their [the state of Israel’s] policy toward the people of East Jerusalem. Umm Kamel has been living in a tent near her old home in Sheikh Jarrah since 14 November, though the tent has been demolished by the Israeli authorities three times.Since her husband, Abu Kamel, died on 23 November, however, the Israeli police have not demolished the tent in which she is living. However, as a Palestinian woman close to Umm Karmel, stated, “They [Israel] do not give up. They want to surprise us. They never give up and no one knows what will happen.” “The future for Umm Kamel is as unknown as it was three weeks ago [december], when her family was forcefully removed from their home. It would appear that the Israeli authorities are not sure how to handle the situation. They realized during the last three weeks that this case is becoming a symbol of the situation for Palestinians in the occupied East Jerusalem and that it will not vanish away. Yet Israel has not backed down and returned the family home. One thing is sure, the protest is strong and will not end, no matter how many times the Israelis demolish the protest tent.” http://www.alternativenews.org/content/view/1448/477/

Umm Kamel

: Umm Kamel, Sheikh Jarah, Jerusalem

3. and so here i sit and worry about money, about it vanishing and not having the comfort of knowing i can buy my way home if i need to; when i am learning, seeing and experiencing a world of lives of which money is not often existent, and so i shall stop with my woes; and i shall sip my tea of resilience and strength, for these small comforts are the small comforts that deviate from notions of isolation and move me on my way.
for next week i will leave this land and cross into sinai, egypt, because my visa runs out and i am really loving the excuse to leave these lands, to see the red sea, perhaps to see some ocean life through a mask and feel the salt on my skin, to sip many more cups of tea and read many more words and think many more thoughts, and then i am going somewhere after that, but i will not tell you where just yet; and i will be back at some point and i am not sure when, and where is ‘back’ anyway for a traveller far from her mother-soils? back to this land of where i am placed until june, but for now i will remove myself and set foot on my solo way for a little while and wish me luck for this solo being for now.

and below follows photographs from the previous week in palestine. very much unspotted and badly scanned.

Deheshia refugee camp, Bethlehem

Deheshia, Bethlehem

israeli settlement, palestine

road to the police

settlements-026

making sure the settlers are okay

i think you get the point

apartheid wall, near bethlehem, palestine

Hebron

Glass maker, Hebron, Palestine

glass makers workshop, Hebron

glass makers workshop, hebron, palestine

Tagged with: Apartheid, be'er sheva, bedouins, earth, Israel, land, Palestine, settlements, war

shahida : bearing witness

1. between the cacophony of different accents fighting to be heard in banal conversation outside my door and the vehicles honking non-stop an people yelling on the street outside my window of this dim east jerusalem hostel bedroom i am attempting to rest my mind and skin in ; there is no solitude for my thoughts, no place of non-distraction, no place of internal privacy amongst external happenings. of what needs are my solitude? of what practice can i make them exist in all locations? i just want to read and sleep with the poetry of Darwish sifting through my dreams. i want love to come and visit me there too. but she shall come soon.

israeli settlement near bethlehem, palestine

I belong there. I have many memories. I was born as everyone is born.
I have a mother, a house with many windows, brothers, friends, and a prison cell
with a chilly window! I have a wave snatched by seagulls, a panorama of my own.
I have a saturated meadow. In the deep horizon of my word, I have a moon,
a bird’s sustenance, and an immortal olive tree.
I have lived on the land long before swords turned man into prey.
I belong there. When heaven mourns for her mother, I return heaven to
her mother.
And I cry so that a returning cloud might carry my tears.
To break the rules, I have learned all the words needed for a trial by blood.
I have learned and dismantled all the words in order to draw from them a
single word: Home.

Mahmoud Darwish ‘I Belong There’

2. “we must step out” the man next to me says on bus #21 from bethlehem to east jerusalem, “with everything?” i signal to all my stuff. “it is best” he replies. i think of all of the pro-palestinian documentation and information in my bags, the images from a week of photographing settlements and photographing israeli watchtowers and security infrastructure within the west bank. i wonder if they’ll do what they did last time and take me through the x-ray to check everything out. but then, simply because i am surrounded by palestinians, and i have fair hair and blue eyes i am the last person they are going to harrass today.

3. “Do you know the lord?” the australian i meet in the checkpoint que asks me once we’re back on the bus. He is working at one of the refugee camps in bethlehem. “he sent me here.” he continues. “No, I am not familiar..” I respond, now seeing where this is leading. “oh…well lets pray he touches you while you’re here.” he goes on. “Well, I don’t know about that..” I say, hoping for him to get the point. “Oh, he will, he will, he’s touched me, over and over again…when i lent against the wailing wall, i put a prayer in there and then tears just started falling…” “hmm” is my response, trying not to be too un-holy in the holy land. We then get into a ‘debate’ about massacres. he begins by stating something about the army, and how it’s good because the youth get focus and discipline. “I disagree” I say “I believe it instills fear and promotes control.” – he is surprised i am contending him, “well, what do we have in australia, when the youth finish school, they do nothing..” he says. “No, they go travelling and learn about the world and the interconnectedness of the world, not how to massacre the interconnectedness of the world, some anyway.” I go on…”You are working with people who are the victims of the occupation, of soliders and of settlers…, how can you think it’s a good thing..” “well i don’t believe tht is true..” and anyway, the conversation disgusts me and i look out the window solemly waiting for him to get off.

4. “we are citizens of a non-state” i hear a voice tell me. “we have identity cards that are palestinian” but we cannot enter into israel, we cannot pass through the checkpoints without the right forms or with another identity card, and even then we will be harassed..” held up for hours maybe while the soldiers yawn and lean against their trucks, holding their guns and feeling powerful.

5. i can come and go. i can move freely, unless they feel i am too radical or suspicious, that i might spread the truth too far on the other side of the world. but the truth has already been spread on the other side of the world, the information is all there if those eyes really want to find it. i have two passports that enable me freedom between thousands and thousands and thousands of kilometers, across cultures and borders and barriers and languages. if only i choose to go. but i have the choice.

6. i want to tell you about the settlers. but i cannot form the right words; i cannot find the words right now. but they are being sponsored by the government to live here in the west bank, in palestine, they are even being protected by soliders whey they come to occupy a palestinian home; it is cheaper for them here, they have more water and more infrastructure than the palestinians, they simply have more than the palestinians. there are many who believe it is their god given right to live here. there are many who simply want to live cheaply. both categories are frightening and sickly.it is best if you watch this: http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=4752349 – it might help what i am trying to say.

settlements near bethlehem

7. i want to tell you about the wall. but i’m sure you know about it. apartheid runs strongly through these lands, it is no less than apartheid. and it is much more. it does not simply separate the west bank from israel, it does not simply separate palestinians from israelis, it separates palestinians from palestinians and palestinians from their land, from their olive trees, from their livelihoods, and in some areas, it runs straight through their backyards, and corners them on their lands. in some places it is up to 12m high. think it is best if you look here for technical and statistical and background information : http://stopthewall.org

the wall in bethlehem

8. and so, i have moved hostels, into a quiet room in a place in the old city, where i attempt to read and think and write and feel good about this process, about where i am and what i am doing, but i am slowly being touched by the sense of loneliness again, the sense that comes with too much time on my own, even though it is only 2 days now. and perhaps it’s that i need to spend more time on my very own to get used to it. perhaps i just long for her presence so fully that i cannot think so fully about this time on my own. perhaps i just need to keep moving and keep creating and not sit still for too long, too long for the thoughts to get there to loneliness. and loneliness is a hollow feeling, a feeling devoid of substance, a feeling of white walls and flourescent lights, of neat folds and orange peels.
So who knows what move is next. perhaps to sinai earlier than i thought, to sit by the red sea and take the real time to think and read and sleep without external distractions, but maybe that isn’t realistic either.. i do not know. i need not to think of the future so much right now. just to read and sleep and feel okay.

more later, with film with images, with full thoughts. maybe of sand and sea as well.
x

In Jerusalem, and I mean within the ancient walls,
I walk from one epoch to another without a memory
to guide me. The prophets over there are sharing
the history of the holy . . . ascending to heaven
and returning less discouraged and melancholy, because love
and peace are holy and are coming to town.
I was walking down a slope and thinking to myself: How
do the narrators disagree over what light said about a stone?
Is it from a dimly lit stone that wars flare up?
I walk in my sleep. I stare in my sleep. I see
no one behind me. I see no one ahead of me.
All this light is for me. I walk. I become lighter. I fly
then I become another. Transfigured. Words
sprout like grass from Isaiah’s messenger
mouth: “If you don’t believe you won’t believe.”
I walk as if I were another. And my wound a white
biblical rose. And my hands like two doves
on the cross hovering and carrying the earth.
I don’t walk, I fly, I become another,
transfigured. No place and no time. So who am I?
I am no I in ascension’s presence. But I
think to myself: Alone, the prophet Mohammad
spoke classical Arabic. “And then what?”
Then what? A woman soldier shouted:
Is that you again? Didn’t I kill you?
I said: You killed me . . . and I forgot, like you, to die.
Mahmoud Darwish ‘In Jerusalem’

Tagged with: Apartheid, Israel, jersualem, loneliness, mahmoud darwish, Palestine, settlers, the wall, travel

ode to small

1. i cannot ignore or separate my time here as being made up of merely attempting to understand the national psyche in dealing with conflict; or not dealing with it at all as it so often seems (of which is no small task- of which finds its way into my very own psyche, pulling on every thread in my brain, every atom of thought and emotion, of which to find its way into the everyday, and to swell at the bottom of the coffee mug – grains of brown raw cane sugar – like waves of sand that picked me up and turned me upside down that finds me weeks later still plucking grains from my hair). i cannot separate the daily challenges of language and navigation, of translations and ‘difference’, of finding no solitude in my dwellings, in my movements in my thoughts. and also, i cannot ignore the acts and decisions that i make, that allow me to feel light and free occasionally; that allow me to feel fully like me anywhere in the world; and yesterday, that feeling was manifested in the form of a bicycle.

2. i think the simplicity of dot points will highlight what is needed for now
wed 03 feb:
* ate smoked tofu burrito, drank 2 x banana, date and pecan soy smoothie in tel aviv
* read chapters about honey-hunting in nepal (honey and dust, piers moore ede)
* went to jaffa to seek 2nd hand bicycle of my dreams
* sun setting, old man shutting shop, does not speak english, i spot dream bike
* i test dream bike, it’s o.k. but not perfect
* i have to make a quick decision and i bargain him to 220 shekels = $73.00 – which is by far a rip off for this bike
* but i purchase anyway
* i get on, steady, i aim for the sea.
* i feel new found joy and freedom
* i pump up tires
* front one bursts out of it’s rim
* i fix
* chain comes off
* i fix
* comes off again
* i fix
* feel light still
* lock bike, jump down rocks onto sand, take of shoes and socks, stand in sea, it’s cool but beautiful, i wash grease off hands, i look at sunset, feel newness impending.
* listen to arabic prayer through loudspeakers throughout jaffa serenading sun set over the med.
* feel slightly tacky, but enjoy it regardless
* get back on bike thinking I will ride along beachside before meeting danya
* chain comes off again, i realise it is truly busted
* soldier tries to help, another man tries to help but really just wants phone number, i say “no, don’t have one”
* roll to other bike man in jaffa, he is near closing, he’s arabic and much nicer than earlier man, we charade about bike problems, eventuating in me leaving the bike with him to come back the next day at noon, when he will have fixed it for very little money. I thank him and drink beer with danya in cute alleyway-turned bistro.
* next day i am sleepy, dazed and slightly seedy. although i had not over-drank.
* remember cute coffee shop we saw night before, make my way there just after 9am, it’s arabic run, coffee and book shop combined. chef is nice, i order museli with date honey and fruit and yoghurt, and coffee, delicious coffee of which i understood darwish’s words ‘of coffee being the first words of the day’ – or something like that.
* sat at coffee shop for 2.5hrs, finishing ‘honey and dust’, looking at chef’s laptop, he is also a photographer and we talk about palestine and the occupation and finding me a job and a place to live and he tries to help but to no avail today.
* finish book, purchase mahmoud darwish ‘memory of forgetfulness’ – which i begin later, find beautiful and grasps me, grasps my searching for words and content, prose and poetry, of palestinian experience and existence of ‘present-absent’, of beruit 1982, but of something march larger, more historical, more contemporary than that ghastly seige, that sickly massacre.
* go to nice bike man in flea market, past bustling laneways of people selling 5th-10th hand goods, old boots, electric items that should not be plugged in, carpets, clothes, books, language and laughter.
* we charade some more, using only the words “no good” and “yes, no good” – i steal a passer by to translate that i will go and demand my money back from not nice man down the road and come back to nice man to buy bike, he likes this idea, i go down to not nice man, demand money back, make a fuss, get money shoved in hands and pushed away.
* return to nice man, purchase beautiful old raleigh racer, in good condition, for the same price, well 250 shekels, he gives me borek, says come back any time, i’ll fix it – i feel joy again, a real joy, of a bike that works and takes me all the way along the seashore where telavivians are sunning themselves on a warm winters day next to the ocean and people are chatting and consuming and all has a tune of lightness this day, and i ride all the way to ra’anana, via a few wrong turns, a scary deathly highway experience and a joy of using my body for transportation and love that i love. it’s 31km’s but seems to take all afternoon, which i love some more. arriving back at the rabinovich’s late afternoon to warm up some dhal, eat fruitsalad and drink chicory tea, and open the pages of Darwish which touch my vessels so articulately i feel like some sort of opening in this work i am making, in these thoughts i am thinking and learnings i am having, and in the output which will be coming soon.
an ode to the bicycle.
the small joy of two wheels and freedom.

i shall call her 'yaffa'

Tagged with: bicycles, Conflict, Israel, jaffa, mahmoud darwish, Palestine

the tear gas of apartheid

Tear gas fired at demonstrators by Israel army, Bil'in

1. before we had even reached the fence people were retreating back down the hill in Bil’in last friday the 30th of Jan. The army on the other side of the apartheid fence had begun firing tear gas early this time; normally allowing demonstrators to stay at the fence for a whole five minutes before using the gas.
After inhaling small amounts of the gas and getting some in my eyes; i realised how normal this all seems for people of the village of Bil’in; i have never experienced/participated in a demonstration where an army of any sort has fired tear gas at the protestors. This happens each week in Bil’in, and also at other places along the apartheid wall/fence in Palestine/the West Bank. The army also uses rubber coated metal bullets and live bullets of the type 0,22.

The demonstration begins after the morning prayer in the village and hundreds of villagers and several outsiders (israelis/internationals/media) march down the road towards the separation fence listening to arabic music, “Waving Palestinian flags, and banners calling for solidarity with the people of Gaza, and called for the prosecution of war criminals and leaders of the Israeli occupation soldiers, as well as slogans calling to national unity. The march drew a crowd of cadres and members and supporters of the Palestinian Popular Struggle Front, hoisting banners and chanting slogans calling for unity and the removal of settlements and the wall and lifting the siege on Gaza.” (http://www.bilin-village.org/english/articles/testimonies/Dozens-suffered-teargas-inhalation-during-the-Bilin-Weekly-Demonstration)

Bil'in

2. As the fence goes in a kind of U shape around the olive groves, the army were positioned on both sides of the demonstration, making it harder to know which direction the shots were coming from and which way to run.
Palestinian youths using slingshots were throwing stones at the army from the road and within the olive groves, further provoking the army and making it harder to reach the fence. So most of us stayed back behind a small wall, some sort of comfort of saftey?
There were also quite a lot of women at the demonstration, which apparently is unusual as they are not normally allowed to attend.

bil'in

3. my first real visit into Palestine since I’ve been here and it was a real example of how apartheid effects the everyday lives of people living in the West Bank. Army checkpoints everywhere, not really worrying about israeli’s in yellow number plated cars – apartheid roads that palestinians can’t drive on, soldier prescence everywhere you look. and i don’t know; it’s all so surreal for me, still, everything seems surreal, its a life i cannot imagine. a life i have never had to live; a life i cannot compare to my own in any way.

A Palestinian woman covers her mouth from inhaling tear gas

throwing stones

affected by tear gas

tear gas

4. On saturday, returning to Palestine, we visited a palestinian community in the south Hebron Hills called Suseya (not the jewish settlement), where Noam, a guy Danya knows through family friends is working with the village installing wind power and solar energy to power their fridges which keep their dairy products, in order to sustain a living. see: villagesgroup.wordpress.com
Although this community are not Bedouins the style of homes and their village is the same as the bedouins we have been visiting around Be’er Sheva. Tent like structures (with concrete walls inside; because they are not supposed to look like ‘real’ homes from the outside, because they are ‘illegal’), simple layouts with carpets or matresses. sweet sage tea and giggles from the young ones.

inside a tent in suseya

5. As I step outside needing to releive my bladder for the umpteenth time due to all of the tea i am consuming, a young woman comes out after me and leads me towards another tent; me assuming she knows i need to pee. Inside the ten are other women who welcome me in and ask me to sit down; i try and explain i need to go to the toilet first and will come back, but they do not understand and i do not have the simple word for toilet; which i learnt later is “ha’mam”. So after much giggling and actions describing what I needed to do, finally i was led to the toilet.

6. Later we visited Yatah, a Palestinian city, with a population of about 80,000 or 90,000 in section A (under full palestinian control, unlike B which is joint palestinian and israeli, and C which is fully israeli). We went there because the group were looking for a local welder who would construct the new wind turbine in Suseya. During their meeting with the welder, danya and i met a woman, Fatma, who does social work with woman against violence in neighbouring communities. She has been through the education system so speaks english well and can tell us a bit about the situation in palestine. Asking us if we saw the real footage from inside gaza; with children being mutilated, limbs removed and destruction in the full bloodied war. I said yes, we saw. but what was done? many israeli’s believe it was justified- many people don’t care; many people are living inside their bubble, attempting not to feel guilty at all costs.
and so, she taught us a few words in arabic: i am very sad: a na a’hazeen jutdan
i understand: a na fhemet
useful things to know how to say.
So we might go back once a week to continue learning arabic from Fatma. a language which I am more and more yearning to learn. I find i am somewhat removed from everything that is happening, because i am not from ‘here’, and i do not speak the ‘laguages’, so – yes languages break barriers and i hope i can learn a little bit.

Suseya

7. leaving with a overabundance of sugar in my teeth and the need for much sleep we pass through a checkpoint on the way back into israel; they stop us, ask for our id’s and are asked to park, take our bags and step inside the processing room, where they put our bags through a checkpoint, take our details and keep my phone for longer than needed – probably to download all of my names and numbers within there. even though I asked why, the response was “because you’ve come to israel, we need to check” – and this was all. They searched the car and did not find Noam’s hamas Kaffiya given to him as a gift – “not what a normal nice law abiding israeli carries in his car” says noam.
Well; it’s good to experience the brunt of the occupation, says noam. you need to have the full experience. but next time you need to get arrested!

so; i am on another journey now; the one that is going to lead me into more places within Palestine/the west bank – to see if i can meet people and go beyond the politics of the situation, go beneath it somehow – to something more….well i’ll let you know later.

Tagged with: Apartheid, Bil'in, Checkpoints, Israel, Military, occupation, Palestine, Suseya, West Bank

reference: of place and dwelling

al-Grein, bedouin village, negev

the images for ‘of place and dwelling’
film – 6×4.5

160109_algrein_02

160109_algrein_06

160109_algrein_07

Ali

Ali's fatherland

Mahmoud

Wadi Na'am

Mahmoud's straw bale mosque demolished

new mosque - old mosque

Wadi Na'am

wadi na'am

140109_wadinaam_10

Gaveot Bar

150109_gaveotbar_03

Mitzpe Ramon

190109_soldier_02

190109_soldiers_01

Ezuz

iloveyou

Qaliya - bombed out home

Tagged with: bedouins, desert, dwelling, Israel, land, negev, Palestine, photography, place

a military state

190109_soldier_04

http://www.newprofile.org/default.asp?language=en

http://www.couragetorefuse.org/english/

Tagged with: Israel, land, Military, negev, Palestine

of place and dwelling

Al Grein, Bedouin village, near Be'er Sheva, Negev

1. eight weeks now of attempting to understand new soils, lands, cultures, conflicts and trying to gain my own sense of place among a landscape that emphasizes a sense of war.
I returned yesterday to ra’anana after ten days in the negev; meeting with bedouin peoples, seeing their villages and resilience amongst the demolishing orders and chaos, seeing ‘remote’ jewish villages where people wish to be individuals, not of the kibbutzim or moshavim style and jewish settlements and ‘forests’ built upon arab-bedouin land so they can never return. Seeing landscapes that feel open and breatheable – learning only seconds later that the majority of it used for military training and is therefore outofbounds; but most-of-all gaining a feeling that we have now something in our hands, thoughts and guts that we have something that could-be of worth if we do it right.
So if you don’t mind i will transcribe my diary entries here from the beginning of this last chapter:

13.01.09
i am sitting in a bomb shelter in be’er sheva, there is an arabic class in hebrew going on in the next room; just ate falafel from a street-side vendor (which elad refused to eat from) and am attempting to grasp the history of the bedouins here in israel.
We are staying here tonight as no where else came through, it’s free and we did not wish to pay 300 sheqels for a seedy smokey motel, and, as artists, it’s a much more creative and interesting experience. It’s acting as a bomb shelter during the war in gaza, as some of Hamas’ missiles are falling here in be’er sheva; schools are off and children are looking for things to do amongst the sometimes-desolate streets.
Apparently even if the sirens go off no one will come here anyway, it takes longer to reach than the time it’s supposed to take for the missile to ‘arrive’. It seems most people are just carrying on as normal unless it sounds really close.
So when the shelter is not acting as a shelter it is a Jewish-Arabic community centre ‘Dukium’ (http://www.dukium.org) – as the negev is home to some 76,000 bedouins, most of which are living in unrecognised villages with no electricity, sewage, roads and demolishing orders from the israeli government.
Met up with Josh (joshberer.wordpress.com) who is working with the Regional Council for Unrecognised Villages primarily as a translator for people who come from abroad. He speaks Arabic, Hebrew and English and organised for us to meet some people in nearby unrecognised villages to talk with them about their connections/disconnections, removal, displacement from the land here and the struggles they have been facing since the creation of the state of israel.
And so; it is strange to be sitting here in a public bomb shelter where people might come if missiles are to land nearby; and thinking about peoples connections/disconnections to the land and what might be going through peoples thoughts as they drop bombs, blow up buildings and murder innocent civilians in the name of…? I wonder what global mental shift is needed to change this madness- is it possible to change this madness? or will it continue until earth’s resources are depleted beyond the last speck of mineral wealth and can longer provide the war machine with what it needs to create this madness; but that, again, is only the physical component and disregards the much larger, much more complex and deeply sitting mental component that needs urgent attention. The hugeness (yet banality) of these questions scare and overwhelm me; no wonder people are so mentally, ethically, emotionally and spritually disconnected in this world.
so; this ‘adama’ land-earth journey takes its pencil and begins another chapter- one i hope will bring together some of the concepts, understanding and hopes we have for this work, as well as personal connections, relationships and understandings that will foster new thoughts and ideas for hereafter – beyond this act of physical time and space.
It is how i hold myself, my strength and passion, love and yearning that will determine the direction of these next pages. i must remain grounded…

There is a vaccum of sound coming into the bomb shelter, i cannot tell if it is wind or rain or a helicopter flying over head – the air is blowing into the plastic bags stuck over the ventilation pipes creating an almost pattern of breath – of ‘the outside’ – this shelter reinforces ‘the inside’, the protected, the almost claustrophobic if it weren’t for these sounds.

Al Grein

i’m reading a chapter from ‘before philosophy’ which Zeev (the curator of ‘adama’) has passed on to me; and some lines are resonating with my current processes:

- realm of nature and realm of human not distinguished
- speculation = development
- man/woman part of society, society embedded in nature and dependent upon cosmic forces – cannot stand in opposition – or different modes of cognition
- ancient – modern – thou – it
- subject and object = dualistic thought/existence
- when ‘I understand another living being’
- fear and anger – share with animals
- impression = direct = emotional = inarticulate
- intellect = emotionally indifferent, articulate
- Thou reveals itself – an individual made only known as thou reveals itself.
- Thou = experienced emotionally in a dynamic reciprocal relationship.
- inanimate world
- Thou = life confronting life.

Al Grein

14.01.09
after notmuchsleep due to sounds of plastic bags breathing big lungs of air – sounds of doors shifting, people talking – thinking someone will come in – and due to the mind and it’s way of being and thoughts that, these days, i am normally happier letting them be present and being with them rather than when i am trying and shut them out, but sometimes that mode doesn’t work and they just irriate the shit out of me.
So anyway, after waking up looking tired and talking with Haya from Dukium about JNF and their criminal plantations over arab villages and on bedouin lands, attempting to hide history and prevent bedouins from returning to their ancestral lands – we go to the RCUV office and josh takes us – via an arabic share taxi to a recognised village where we meet Mahmoud and his mother living in a tent-structure next to a stove fire and spinning thread on a stick. Mahmoud doesn’t shake my hand as i offer temporarily forgetting cultural differences – and so after some tea and some translations we go to the unrecognised village of Wadi Na’am where Mahmoud also lives – and we see where his straw bale mosque had been recently demolished by Israeli authorities and where he is building a new mosque, this time not straw bale. So we walk and talk and listen and photograph the village/encampment and try to imagine what life would be like here; ‘normal’ for those who live here and interesting and novelty for those that don’t- like myself.
After sitting down and hearing his story, of land, earth, god, government, politics etc. which i have to later get translated again by josh. Finding most important that no matter how much the government tries to remove him from the land and destroy his mosque and home, he believes in something much more powerful that allows him to remain calm, grounded and strong within himself. I also learn that he put thousands and thousands of his own money time and time again into building the mosque/s and yet, it still doesn’t worry him.
We then get a ride to be’er sheva and eat hummos ful then visit another unrecognised village ‘Al-Grein’ where many houses have been demolished over the past 20 years and many more to be demolished, including Ali’s home-turned-education centre; and what more, is that they, Ali and family, are supposed to demolish their own homes! and if not, they will get a further fine!
The feeling here is more political, less religous, and more..populated? right across the highway (which was actually built right across the village) is one of the 7 ‘recognised’ towns where the bedouins are supposed to move to; which remain to have low quality standards of living, bad education, high unemployment, bad healthcare, crime and poverty. why, why would they want to move off their land to these overcrowded towns?
Ali is very honest, speaking mostly in hebrew to elad and josh, i get various translations, but want to know more. We are invited to food and it comes on a large communal plate – rice and chicken – we all take spoons and dig in. Then tea, very sweet tea – in order to feel full – and laughter – of learning that what Ali really loves is to see the children in the education centre, his home, learning and being active and hoping for their future – although he says he knows they will suffer and it breaks his heart.
We return to the miklat (shelter) and a small meditation circle arrives shortly after and we join – even though my thoughts are active – they are calm and breathing.

I realise i have not written about the description of the villages – this is probably because i put too much emphasis on the photographs that will appear in the coming week (after i process my film) – and of the digital photos i am posting now – and because i am a photographic artist and hope the images will explain some of what i am seeing as well.

Al Grein

15.01.09
- not much sleep due to thirty x 17 yr old pre army youth movement crashing bomb shelter just as i am about to lay myself to sleep. they are volunteering in the shelters while the war is on and doing activities for kids etc. but yeah – way too much spray deoderant in a confined space.
- visited an ugly new (4years) Jewish ’settlement’ in the negev, called Giveot Bar, walk around feeling sick knowing it’s being built by sons of men and women whose land it was for a thousand years before. Walk back along the beeping highway alone to Rahat junction – only now i can think – attempt to say hello to the land around me in a less disracted way – of interpretations, translations and a reinforcement of not being from here. I turn around and look directly west – which appears to be Gaza, as smoke is billowing high high into the sky and army jets and helicopters are flying to and from that direction

Gaza - i assume

- we dinner in an indian restaurant with Abigale – a woman from Dukium who has offered her place for us to stay in nearby Omer. We drive past and stop to gawk and photograph a place in Ramot where a missile from Hamas had landed two hours before – blowing up a car – shrapnel damaging a 7 year old boy. the footpath had already been filled in – it was a big hole – the concrete all messed up, tree damaged – very surreal feelings, unsure how to feel or what to think – mostly about what gaza looks like through the images we are receiving – and i know i shouldn’t because all war is bad – but how minscule this is in comparison.
i sleep well.

Ramot missile aftermath

ramot_missile022

ramotmissile_tree2

ramotmissile04

16.01.09
get up late after a long talk with em, wishing her presence as usual; she bought a motorbike, i am so jealous – i dream of hooning across into africa and downwards.

We visit Ali in Al Grein and he takes us to his fathers land where they were removed in 1948. there are masses and masses of birds flying in the distance and scattering the sky- the photos here cannot even bring them justice. the image needs to be metres by metres. It feels like the most ‘remote’ place we have been so far – hills, sandy windy desert, semi unpopulated. even though i cannot understand what ali is talking about as elad is trying his best to listen and film let alone translate i can understand Ali’s connection here and the deep sadness he feels from the removal and the current government actions against bedouin peoples.
We return to Al Grein where we are invited to a big family dinner in memory of Ali’s father passing away two years ago. I sit with the women, maybe 20 or so, and elad sits with the men. We drink coffee, tea, and eat traditional Maqlubbeh with cous cous – again communal plates each with a spoon. It feels really warming to be amongst such a large group of women who are laughing, chatting, welcoming and sharing their traditions and culture with me, something i have never had in my own life in the same way – and yet feel comforted by their connections with eachother and the emphasis on bringing the family together.

- return to abigail’s and i read the news – think of the madness and succumb to it; return to the feelings of not knowing what to do or where my passion lies – what my most strong desires or wants are, where to put my energy, what imagery to really make and where to show it, where to get it ‘out’.
When does this become no longer questionable? when do you just follow what you know is right? I feel like such an amateur in times like this…
what to do with a heart, a conscience and a camera? run to gaza? run away? – talk about the conflict through ‘other’ imagery? other stories that link to ‘why’ this is happening in the first place?
go diving? do a fast? go running? drink a beer? go south? go north? think beyond israel/palestine? stay focused? join ISM and get ‘involved’ more? continue questioning everything i do and say and think? follow no-path? take off my shoes? go to sleep?

birds_negev01

birds_negevdyptich

this is actually from near jerusalem (Netiv HaLamed-Hey) but i forgot to post before and thought fitting now

18.01.09
attempting to sleep before 10pm tonight in the faux bedouin style tent turned hostel – very tired after lots of walking toward people/places that didn’t work out – but for me – apart from not eating much and getting frustrated at directions/dead ends – i love the exercise – and walking around out here, this country, near Mitzpe Ramon is really amazing – even on the main roads. I feel like i can breathe deeply again – there is space! although a lot of it used for military training, it still feels precious; mountains, hills, sand coloured desert landscape – not sure how to explain – different from the red earth of australian desert.

Went to Jaffa last night for an anti-war rally – some 3000 turned up to say ceasefire now! whilst the discussions on the ceasefire were taking place. powerful to be here at this time. even with the security and police presence – holding guns hiding in the shadows, helicopter flying over head beaming its ohsopowerful spotlight on the demonstration – intimidating.
Supposedly a ceasefire has been called in gaza – lets hope for real eh? 1300 dead and israel claims they’ve “won” – what is the win i wonder?
So many fighter jets, helicopters, booming sounds, guns firing and military practices all around out here. beautiful landscaped tainted by perpetual war and division.
jaffa_antiwar_01
jaffa_antiwar_02

jaffa_antiwar_03

jaffa_antiwar_04

20.01.09
And so; again we find ourselves in the miklat in Be’er Sheva; it’s becoming so familiar now i could stay for a while! Yesterday we made our way slowly to Ezuz from Mitzpe Ramon – not far (2km) from the border of egypt. The land out there is beautiful – for lack of a better descriptive word – reminding me of sandy versions of places in outback SA – but no connectivity can compare those places for me just yet; especially when almost every where that isn’t inhabited in the negev is used for the war machine.
So after arriving at this out of the way place at around 3;45pm on a bus with one child on it coming home from school, we wandered around for a while, taking photographs, i spoke with some young soldiers on duty “stopping drug smuggling from egypt to jordan and the west bank” and also “helping the Sudanese refugees” who are often shot by the Egyptian army at the border trying to cross into Israel to find a new home, fleeing their own country in perpetual war – “we are the good guys here” they tell me. And so i take their photos as i do -
I am amazed by the magnitude and the effect of the military in/on this land – military bases scattered all over the negev – bumping into machine guns on public transport and leftrightandcentre. – explosions, jets, helicopters, radio transmissions, “missions” 4wds and army vehicals trawling the place day and night – i wonder why people think it’s peaceful out here. it all feels to me like a virtual reality; a world they’re living in within the real world – that i have no part of and never could imagine being a part of this mandatory war machine.
“You photographers didn’t do a very good job in gaza..” a soldier tells me. “only showing the bad things [we're] doing, not the positive things…” what do you mean? I ask ” only showing the bad side, like palestinians dying…we’re just fighting terrorists….” and beacuse it’s been such a nice day and the sun is glowing down in the desert is pinkish orange and i do not feel like getting into an argument with a young man with a machine gun right now, so i smile and “uhmmm” and walk away nicely down the hill.

So today; after not much sleep again, even though sleeping under the stars which i love, and smelling the campfire i tended to endlessly for hours (due to bad burning wood) – the first real camp since leaving the soils i know so well in australia – - got in to bed very early – very tired – yet my brain switches on and then it gets incredibly cold as it is winter in the desert and i cannot get comfortable on my incredibly thin foam sleeping mat and not made for this cold type of sleeping bag and all the army 4wds driving by and gun firing sounds in the distance – but all in all it does not bother me too much even when the sun rises and i wonder did i sleep at all? – i walk up a hill to feel the space around me.

Later we meet Celia and Dror, two of the ‘original’ people of Ezuz who came here 26 years ago – they tell us of their Zionist dream to do what no one else was doing in israel – create a place where people could have their individual plots and lives and not have to do everything together like in a Kibbutz or Moshav and live away from the populus and work ‘with the land’ and do things that in the 80’s appeared crazy to the government but now seems normal – i.e. living without too much impact on the land. – strange feelings and conversations here – not really sure where to sit or what to say – just listen to their story is all i really want to do anyway. They offer us food and a place to stay – we eat as we are starving but leave to get back to Be’er Sheva to sleep.
jess_ezuz

after i arose

22.01.09
So elad left yesterday back to raanana and i felt like i needed to be quiet by myself for a few days – i got on a bus to ein gedi and then Kalia on the dead sea – stayed in a moroccan place in a big tent with no one else in it and felt sleezed upon – and floated in the dead sea and felt strange and looked over at jordan and thought of conflict and then didn’t feel quiet and washed my clothes in the notsoclean bathroom sink and then decided being quiet right now wasn’t so useful for me – so left and returned to raanana yesterday to a real bed and a hot shower and a jewish mother where there is plenty of food and plenty of hebrew bickering and… so here i am at a cafe telling you all of this and wondering much as i do – and well it helps me to reflect. and so. here you go.
xo
jess.

Tagged with: bedouins, Conflict, dwelling, earth, Gaza, Hamas, Israel, land, Missiles, negev, Palestine, Peace, photography, place, war

a place and time unlit; part one

kadita_fog0221
in a year that began in darkness
of war, of death, of disconnect
a woman says to her lover
“take this breath… this life
“illuminate it”

her lover replies
“I’m scared…you know…
“of this world and what its people are doing to each other
“and to the earth”

they, together
do not know how to grasp the absurdity
of this reality
like the many millions before them
and the many after them
also

we’ll carry our fear with us
and learn to shake it
or rear it’s nasty head when shaken

so instead we are able to
carry our strength with us
we’ll nourish it
feed it
clothe it
or let it be naked
bathe it
lay it down when it needs rest
and make coffee for it when it wakes

we’ll carry our fear like arteries carrying our blood
we’ll learn to direct it away from our heart
into our intestines perhaps
to digest it perhaps

then we’ll
sit on the composting toilet
and throw sawdust over it
and in one – two years time
it will be changed, decomposed

picked up by the wind
like silt
like dust
tbc

….

danya and i walked around in the fields at the base of the south Jerusalem mountains yesterday morning
and on this walk
we heard booms! Booms! Booms! One After The Other; resonating in the not so far away distance;
resonating almost through my skin, touching my skeleton
we stop
and say
this is real
is this real?
and point in directions north south east west to understand where we are and what is near to us
then murmurs
we’re here

and although i am here with what is happening
and I can hear it, feel it
i still feel disconnected to it
it feels close
but it still feels
far away
like in the media

maybe it’s just because it’s just absurd
too absurd to be so close
too real to be real
and all of those roundabout ways of saying
maybe i’m a little scared,
not for myself though
scared maybe is the wrong word
sad
sad seems too empty too small
angry
angry is true

sad and angry
useless
hopeless
maybe
i get this gut feeling that almost creates the salt and water to fall
i could never be a photojournalist
my heart likes to weep and shed it’s skin

emulsion; of a wintry north

winter sky north israel, near Mt. Meron

Gush Khalav after rain, north israel

Kadita wanderings

a lot of time spent looking at the clouds
looking at the skies transforming into grey characters having conversations
of light diffused
of cows unmoving
of silence and thoughts
of footsteps and mud

just the prologue i suppose

birds skimming, kadita

Gush Khalav, North Israel

outside Gush Khalav

Gush Khalav

fog, near kadita

a forest for a bin

packing fruit and veg

nazareth

in a moshav near gush khalav

hand gun in hand

1. i realise i wrote with such enthusiasm and hope when i arrived – in a way that was all about “the new” “the hope-full” “the unknowing” and as i have only been here now for only 5.5 weeks things have begun to turn a little bit more real in this land i stand on; and am to walk, eat, sleep, shit and cry on – where i am, now, really here. i am not back there although still in my thoughts and blood. i am here now. i have arrived, and there is a certain uncertain unsettling reality that comes with this. the one that is war – although i am perfectly safe and can drink as many cups of coffee and tea as i want today, there is still the knowledge of all that is happening – and only to begin the question: what do we do with this knowledge? i do not know.
Another reality is the one I am living – that includes not facing war, only conflict in my mind and heart. It includes the reality now that i really have acknowledged the time needed for this work to be made “wholly” “completely” “fully” – in the way it really can if i let my impatience aside and allow it to happen. In his still relevant “Zen & The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” Pirsig states: “Impatience is close to boredom but always results from one cause; an underestimation of the amount of time a job will take. You never really know what will come up and very few jobs get done as quickly as planned. Impatience is the first reaction against a setback and can soon turn to anger if you’re not careful…” (which is exactly what happened)
“…Impatience is best handled by allowing indefinite time for the job, particularly new jobs that require unfamiliar techniques; by doubling the allotted time when circumstances force time planning; and by scaling down the scope of what you want to do. Over all goals must be scaled down in importance and immediate goals must be scaled up. This requires value flexibility, and the value-shift is usually accompanied by some loss of gumption, (enthusiasm, desire, love, passion, energy), but it’s a sacrifice that must be made…”
And so this is what i am working on – Impatience also feels like you do not really care about something if you just want to rush it through. But of course everything is multi-faceted.

2. as i walk the opposite direction to my destination i notice past the train station, everyone’s looking suspicious at everyone looking suspicious and the security guard holds his hand gun tightly in his hand as if ready to shoot – the army boy slings his machine gun over his shoulder and bumps a passer by… and later we’re stopped in the road to allow a police robot to blow up a suspicious bag in a public park – and i’m told to remember the normality of these things for people – and yet – even if it’s normal…

“One does not build an election campaign over the dead bodies of children!”

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1. Some 10,000 protesters showed up in the streets of Tel Aviv last night, a really powerful demonstration against this war.

2. Just to make Abundantly clear; people protesting against the war include people from all over Israel/Palestine! (and the world!) They are Israeli’s, Jews, Muslims, Arabs, Christians, Women, Men, Children, Dogs, Cats, Cows, Sheep; do not waste your breath with anti-semitic statements as you are completely missing the point!
The point is there are thousands of people within Israel that DO NOT SUPPORT THE WAR or the government- and that they are all standing TOGETHER to let this be heard – that just because they’re Israeli or Jewish does not make them pro-war!
okay.
peace.

http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/events/1231029668

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2. He fell passionately on his land, smelling the soil,
kissing the trees and grasping the precious pebbles.
Like an infant, he pressed cheek and mouth to the soil
shedding there the pain he had borne for years.
He listened to her heart whispering tender reproof:
You have come back?
I have, here is my hand.
Here I will remain, here I will die, so prepare my grave.

Nida’ al-Ard (The Call of the Land) by Fadwa Tuqan