Emma Abroad

Photos from Bil’in – art according to Tolstoy

emmamcotter — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 15:30:32 +0000

Sindyanna of Galilee

emmamcotter — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 14:47:25 +0000

The women of Sindyanna are incredible, funny, warm, welcoming, and very impressive – though, you may be confused as to how I know this, given they don’t speak English and I can count the number of Arabic words I know on one hand. Nonetheless, after working with(ish) and eating with and talking with(again- ish) these 7 women for two weeks, I have begun to understand who they are, where they are coming from, and just how amazing they are. Every day, I drive an hour into work at Kufr Kana (aka Cana of Galilee) with Hadas and Svetlana. Hadas is the women in charge of Sindyanna and the one responsible for making it into the international network and local success that it is. They chat energetically in Hebrew while I sit in the back with my thoughts or a book or, usually, my eyes shut – the ride begins at 6:30am. Hadas – the closest to a fluent English-speaker at Sindyanna is very very nice and has taken me in not only at work, but also by introducing me to her daughter – similar to me in age and dissimilar to me in experience, given that she is currently deciding between Israeli military service and jail – and taking me to their pool so I can get some laps in while they do a yoga class. She will occasionally send questions to me in the back, usually about my plans for the weekend and updates on my fellow “ffippies” as we are apparently calling ourselves. Svetlana is trying to learn both English and Arabic at the moment, and will use me to practice some basic phrases, as well as force me to repeat after her some basic greetings in Hebrew – none of which are sticking well, I think due to the guttural h’s that I need to work on.

When we get to the factory, I saw a quick ‘hello’ to the Arab women who have come from the area for the unique job opportunity that Sindyanna is, before they go to work on soap, or olive oil, or spices, and then I head up to the office to do whatever little jobs Hadas needs me to take on. I’ve learned to look forward to 10 and 2 o’clock, the times when Hanan – at 19, she is the youngest woman working at Sindyanna where she is making money so that she may attend university in the fall – comes to tell me to “join us” for either breakfast or supper. Both meals are prepared by the women at home and brought in for the break, giving me the chance to enjoy A LOT of really delicious, homemade, traditional Palestinian food. While I eat with them I listen/watch them speak loudly to one another in Arabic about what I can only imagine (and usually do). Their personalities shine through language barriers, however. Hannah, Samia, and Toujan are all married with children. Hannah is loud and was the first to attempt to speak to me in English – though the gestures she included to try and help me understand sent everyone laughing and I still haven’t found out what she wanted to ask me. I have also learned, from an overly long ‘conversation’ that mostly involved staring at her hands, that Hannah is a fingernail artist on the weekends, which helps to pad the income enough that her family lives comfortably. Samia is married to Hannah’s brother and is much quieter than Hannah, though I have seen her involved in some very lengthy, serious conversations. Toujan is who I see as the heroine of Sindyanna. She is big, cheeky, and very funny. She is the one most likely to make large and (for some) embarrassing gestures to help me understand what she’s thinking and she is also the one most likely to bring up Michael Jackson in conversation. She is also the one who Hadas says needs the job at Sindyanna to survive. Her husband makes only the minimum wage which, like in the States, is not enough for a couple to live on, let alone a couple with three boys. With the addition of her wages from Sindyanna, Toujan is able to live, not much more than that, but at least she and her family can live.

I am learning a lot, Arabic words really being the least of the incoming information, and I can’t believe that I only have a week left of work. Just one more week of early morning drives across Northern Israel, which really is beautiful, and I plan to enjoy them to the fullest, though I look forward to seeing you all on the other side!

Love, Emma

Yad Vashem

emmamcotter — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 22:21:01 +0000

This week of orientation has been absolutely crazy (as well as beautiful, powerful, painful, tragic, and impressive) and even though it ends in two days, it will not slow down. We started by exploring the complexities of the city of Jerusalem while living in a hostel in the Old City. The situation with the occupation here is different than anywhere else in the country – which I have found to be a theme in most of the different areas where Palestinians live. No two Palestinian stories are exactly the same but they are incredibly sad, complicated, and wrapped up in bureaucracy and imperialism outside of their control and sadly outside of mine as well. I would love to/ probably will at a later time go into the details of this as well as other reactions/feelings/insights, but at the moment it is late, we are waking up early to go to Hebron and Bethlehem and stay overnight in a refugee camp (and by camp I am referring to the semi-permanent housing that some Palestinian refugees have been living in for the past 40-60 years. So far we have also traveled to a few villages in the West Bank: Anata, Bil’in, Bar’em, as well as some communities of Palestinians who are technically within Israel and considered Israeli citizens, such as Sakhnin (where we stayed in homestays last night) but who still suffer from discriminatory laws and a full perimeter of Israeli settlers that do not acknowledge that they or a problem exists. And then today we drove around Galilee and then saw Akko (Acre) and Haifa, which is where I will be living for the coming month. I would love to go into more detail about everything, but time and battery power are limited. So if you desperately need more, I have below a reflection I wrote about Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum in West Jerusalem. Good Night!

Love, Emma

YAD VASHEM- The names of the two mountains flanking Yad Vashem, Mount Herzl and the Mount of Remembrance, was enough to convince me that what I had been expecting of the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem would most likely be true. This was to be a museum that commemorated, quite appropriately, the immeasurable tragedy that was the Holocaust and a place to give faces, voices, and stories to the millions of Jews (and anyone else not of the Aryan race) who were senselessly, pointlessly, and horrifically massacred. It also seemed that this was to be a museum strategically placed in the lives of the Israeli people and in the training of the IDF soldiers so as to be a reminder of what the Jews have been through, and more importantly, why they need a Jewish State.

If you just look at what the Museum was – what the content of it was – not the ending and not the dozens of young Israeli soldiers that filled it up – it is easy to feel the intense emotion that was and continues to be tied to this atrocity. It is really quite impossible not to feel it as you watch videos of men digging their own graves, or see the gentiles who risked their lives to help, or even more tragically, the millions who didn’t. Being reminded of the hopeless and oppressive situation the Jews were facing almost everywhere, it is possible to see where the desperation for an accepting homeland – for a place where you don’t have to live in fear or as a second class citizen.

By the end you are almost ready to continue with the thinking of the Yad Vashem by jumping unceremoniously to the obvious creation of the Jewish State of Israel on the land that has belonged to the Jews since the beginning of time and which may or may not have been occupied by another people previously and unimportantly.

At that point I was ripped from the heartbreak of the Holocaust and could only see the tragedy that was occurring with the establishment of a new state with a new population where one already existed. The politics that surround it all came rushing back into focus and I found myself completely confused by the juxtaposition of so much sadness and betrayal of human dignity – by everyone involved – and unable to see any way out of the conflict without a mutual respect for the strong beliefs and sensitive, emotional backgrounds and upbringings of the people on all sides of the violence.

Hello!

emmamcotter — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 00:13:06 +0000

Hi all,

So I am going to be spending a little over a month in Israel/Palestine doing an internship and getting a closer look at/ learning about the conflict and the possible path(s) to peace. Until yesterday, I had no idea of the details of that ‘work.’ What I know right now is that I will be working at Sindyanna of Galilee. It’s a fair trade olive oil non-profit that was start by a coalition of Arab and Jewish women, farmers. That’s about all I have at the moment for that blurb, but I will hopefully be updating you more when I’m actually there and such. I will be living in an apartment in Haifa with three other interns from my program – but I do not know/ do not think that they are going to be working with the same organization as I am.

I have been reading up on the conflict: overviews of its entire history, but focusing primarily on the developments of this decade. So I am really curious to see how it looks outside of books and news headings, but as a collection of people with a lot of history and turmoil, but beauty between them.

I think that’s enough of a head start on this blog. I’ll be keeping it updated (hopefully) as I go along on this adventure. See you on the other side!

Love, Emma

PS – If you are interested in checking out the org I’m working for, they have a website: http://www.sindyanna.com/8190/