Thank you thank you for the flowers...

Can't tell you how much I love these flowers, and really appreciate you giving then to me...Wanted to say thank you publicly, you lovely group of people xxx

What comes to mind when I think of Palestine now?


Harsh but beautiful landscapes broken with white-walled villas and flat blocks. Pumping melodic soundtracks and dazzling choreography. Platters of welcoming food and drink, laughing and warm embraces.


But underneath there is something much stronger and more admirable: the spirit of struggle and a resilience which is remarkable. It is a word that immediately sprang to mind when we were planning our presentation on Palestinian life and there are so many obvious areas where it is evident: the defiance of Israeli military dominance and settler presence across the entirety of the West Bank; the forging of lives which cross communities as well as restrictive boarders; the refusal to accept that Palestine must be a land of limitations.


From 'resilience' came the words 'strength', 'unity' and 'tolerance'. An interesting mixture of passion and empathy has seemingly produced a society which challenges its occupation both physically and with a positivity that brings its people together, despite the Israeli tactics of division.


Strength can be seen in all areas of Palestinian life: strength in family bonds and cultural traditions, strength in conviction and determination (evidenced for me in the bright enthusiasm of many students towards their education) but also strength in terms of an infallible desire and belief in progress.


Throughout my week I have heard many Palestinians stress that their struggles are plentiful and very real in their dangerousness. I haven't however heard that anyone has given up the hope of fully reclaiming Palestine 48 or the occupied territories, that there is no hope in continuing the struggle, and that is something I know all my students will find powerful and inspirational too.


It is what the wider world should acknowledge about this wonderful place and its brilliant people: that instead of being taught to hate from suffering, you are taught to live and to education, to learn from each other. There is an openness to their discussion that invites tolerance and a hope that may, one day, unify the peoples here.

Motherland

The minibus speeds precariously close to the edge of the steep hills, once in a while we pass motorists who misjudged the space, forced to stop and examine the damage. I can’t help thinking that this is a journey that the Palestinian driver is keen to finish. Every journey here has the potential to become a news story, everyone is keenly aware that mundanity is a luxury.   

It is easy for some moments to forget, to look at the rows of olive trees and houses perched on endless hills and believe all is well. Until your eyes fall upon the rows of soldiers pacing the hills, small against the sky but even from this distance clearly dressed for battle. Helmets, guns, hands forever ready to point and shoot. You realise then the houses were those of settlers, defying international law, knowing that they will be protected by watch towers, roads and soldiers wherever they choose to “settle.” This is the West Bank, Palestine and we are speeding from Abu Dis, near Jerusalem to Jenin in the north. In the car, myself and another teacher from the UK think ahead to what stories await us in Jenin Camp. We've already been to schools in Abu Dis and heard from teachers and students alike about how the occupation chokes them, stifles them each day, that whilst I, a foreigner can for some moments forget the politics and enjoy the hills bathed in sunshine, they cannot forget their father in jail, their uncle that was killed, their cousin taken by soldiers in the night. They cannot forget for a minute that they are not allowed into Jerusalem, that a coloured card controls so much of their life.

Beside me a lady also heading to Jenin holds a rosy faced baby in her lap. He catches his mother’s eye and gurgles-safe and secure. I cannot help but wonder how this child will fare under the occupation, how many checkpoints will he have to navigate on a daily basis? How many places will he not be allowed to go because of a coloured card in his pocket?

He is also a child of Palestine, and I wonder if he will ever feel safe and secure in his motherland. 

Walls

الجدار....أنا لا استطيع المرور من هنا...الاولاد يحشرون انفسهم من بين العمدان و بدون أية تعابير على وجهوههم... 

مرورا في برتقال يافا تدوم هذه النظرة لساعات... رامية ظلال شواهد القبور على الجوانب

ساحذ الطريق الى باب العامود... توقف!!! السيارة ذات اللوحة الصفراء لا تستطيع تحميل اشخاص ذوي الهوية الخضراء فقط الزرقاء.

لذلك سامشي تحت السموات الزرقاء نزولا الى مستوى سطح البحر الميت

اخر صفوف الزيتون الاخضرقبل الانحراف الى الرمال الصفراء

لكن هنا تفرق موسى عن جماعته تاركا موجات من خطوط الطباشير تحيط مدينة أريحا

قشور بدون ألوان تحيط قبره

ربما يمكننا العبور من هنا والعودة الى القدس

سأسال أول سيدة ألتقي بها على الطريق

Walls

The Wall.
I cannot cross here. Children
stack themselves into columns under
an expressionless face.

It is tall here, fixing the dusk's Jaffa
orange gaze for hours, throwing
tombstone shadows onto
their side.

I will take the road to Damascus
Gate. Stop. A gold-plated car
cannot carry a green ID,
only blue.

So, I will walk under the burning blue heavens.
I descend to Dead Sea level;
the last ranks of green olive leaves
halt before shifting yellow sands.

Here Moses parted
from his people, overlooking the chalk waves around Jericho.
A colourless dawn peeks over his tomb;
perhaps here we can cross back to Jerusalem.

I will ask the first woman I see the way.

How was Palestine?

How was Palestine?

A question I struggle to answer.

“Amazing!”

“Incredible!”

“Life-changing!”

Responses I utter, in doing so, failing to capture the depth of the experience.

How do you describe a place, a people, an experience so far removed from you own?

My fear is that people simply won’t understand. Unable to comprehend what we have seen.

Wonderful people persevering in order to live as normal a life as they can.

A piece of me has been left there and I will take a bit of Palestine around with me forever.

I will continue to answer the question. Hoping that one day people will understand.

And then I think how lucky am I?

That my struggle is that I am unable to describe this experience. As opposed to those whose life it is.

What can we learn from Haverstock's twin in Palestine?

Article for our school newsletter:

“You don’t know if you’re going to get to school or not, because you don’t know if there’s going to be a problem with the Israeli soldiers.”

“I live pretty near to the school, like 5 minutes walk, but some days it take me 30-40 mins because the soldiers and their tanks line up here and make problems. I miss my first class. Sometimes they line up outside my house and they don’t allow us to go out at all.”

“They throw tear gas at us. Sometimes in the middle of a class we smell tear gas and the teacher closes the windows and we have to go home.”

“My hopes for the future are pretty normal: a job; a family; a house; and to live in a land of my own, without having an occupation restricting what I can do.”

“We would like you to learn about our history, and what happened with the British people and the Israelis and how they occupied our land. Besides the past, we would like you to know about our culture. If you learn about us you’ll see that we are amazing people and we have the right to stay alive.”

These are the words of students from Haverstock’s twin school in Palestine, the Arab Institute. During half term I had the incredible opportunity to visit as part of a teacher exchange trip organised by Camden Abu Dis Friendship Association.

This is the start of letter writing exchanges and partnership work on human rights. We have so much to learn from the students and teachers there – about life under occupation and their inspiring struggle to keep living, keep learning, and stand up for their rights in these challenging circumstances.

You can find out more about the project here: http://teachersinaction2016.blogspot.co.uk/

Replying to letters from Haverstock students.

The 8m wall built by the Israeli government. It runs through Abu Dis, separating people there from their friends, family members, olive trees and holy places on the other side.

Mural in the school playground – can you work out what the message is?

We have olive trees

And I love sitting under the trees

But we have a problem, there is the wall

Journeys

On our last day in Abu Dis, we discovered our return flight to London was delayed, and I was devastated. I was desperate to see my family, and the prospect of another day separated from my children seemed too much to bear. Then, when I realised that I would have to wait another day to see them, it was all I could do not to cry. And finally, when this morning, there were no tubes and the taxi I had booked failed to show, and I missed yet another train home, I cried. Unashamedly. In the middle of London Euston train station. Like a child.

But then it dawned on me. This is just a tiny glimpse into the difficulties Palestinians face every single day. In their journeys to school, to work, to the shops, to their families. Checkpoints littered across the West Bank often lead to children arriving late to school, anxious and agitated, workers arriving late to work, or friends failing to be reunited; car journeys, where direct routes prohibited for Palestinians are quick, instead are often lengthy and laborious; throughout all, danger is ever prevalent.

Journeys are governed by letters and colours. Areas are separated by A, B, C and people are divided into colours such as yellow, green or blue.  These colours determine Palestinians' journeys: where they can go, and who they are answerable to. Our children relish learning about colours and the alphabet as toddlers. The irony is clear for all to see.

And let us not forget the enforced journeys. The ones they don't choose to make. Young boys, taken from their homes in the middle of the night, transported alone in military vehicles. Held in prisons miles away from their families, their childhoods a distant memory.

And then there's the journeys some will never make. Countless refugees are unable to return, or even visit the place of their origin, prevented by a wall, and colours and letters. Jerusalem is perceived as the spiritual home of many Christians and Muslims alike, yet many will never see it; they simply aren't allowed.

So as I sit now, on a train, sipping tea, gazing out at the landscape, I remember, there are no trains in Palestine. And I am lucky. I only hope that the amazing people we have met and who have welcomed us with open arms, will one day be able to cry, but just because their taxi failed to arrive on time.

Palestinian history lessons

As a Citizenship teacher, one of the questions I was interested in exploring as part of our exchange was how young people learn about the history of Palestine and make sense of the situation in which they live.

It quickly became apparent that this learning was not confined to classrooms. Young people live and breathe the history of Palestine. It is in the names of the villages their families were forced to leave in 1948; the keys to their homes there; the scars, losses and tales of imprisonment of friends and family members; the coloured passes that control their movements; the friends and family members, views of olive trees and the Al-Aqsa mosque that they can't visit on the other side of the wall.

Our own learning began with the revelation that the place we were staying for the weekend residential, now a youth and sports centre, had been first a British and then Israeli interrogation centre, where some of the teachers we are working with had been imprisoned and tortured by Israeli security. It continued with the powerful stories of all of the amazing people we have met this week.

Visiting refugee camps also made it very clear what 68 years of occupation means. This challenged conceptions of what a refugee is and what a refugee camp looks like. Fara and Jalazone camps were not short term structures for people to stay in before seeking safety elsewhere, but now a built up record of how long Palestinian people have been hoping and struggling to return to their own homes.

Palestinian history, culture and identity is certainly a key part of the curriculum (shockingly censored in the Jerusalem schools run by the Israeli Ministry of Education), but asking about how this is taught in schools threw up a more pressing question for us – why is it not taught in our own schools? Visit after visit, we have been welcomed with open arms as people from Britain, but also reminded of Britain’s responsibility for the occupation, with the British Mandate and Balfour Declaration giving away land that didn’t belong to Britain to people who didn’t live there.

An important part of the history of Palestine is the international community not meeting their responsibilities towards Palestinian people, turning a blind eye to flouted UN resolutions, torture in Israeli prisons, the betrayal of the Oslo agreement, illegal settlements, the racist separation wall and countless other violations of human rights. Disturbingly, we have also heard that the UN Refugee Welfare Agency has been withdrawing funding from health and education services in refugee camps – as if it is giving up on Palestinian people returning to their homeland and would rather see them ‘move on’, out of refugee camps, even out of their country to Jordan.

So little is known about the realities of the occupation of Palestine in the UK. Media reports present flashpoints in a conflict rather than an occupation that has lasted 68 years. Higher profile is given to acts of violence coming from Palestinians than the daily violence of the Israeli state. With gaping holes in the UK curriculum and misinformation in the media, twinning projects such as this one are so important for making sure that people in the UK can begin to understand what occupation means and build effective solidarity with Palestinian people in their inspiring struggle for justice.

Thank you so much to everyone we have met over the last 10 days, for sharing your stories and welcoming us into your schools and communities.

PALESTINE DAY 6 AND 7 BACK TO SCHOOL

Today is the reason we've come. Past all the context and committees, failed bureaucracy and refugee camps,  today we go back to school. Still not used to the puny two hour time difference school starts at 5.30, two hours after the mosque and half an hour since the last mosquito bite. I roll out of bed through the shower to Saladin's mosque where I'm picked up with a fellow teacher to head to our twinned school.

We're greeted by rows and rows of classes stood in excited conversation about the start of the day. A teacher fiddles with a microphone and strides before the pupils as we watch from the ramp leading down to the playground. The counting begins: wahad, tithnain, talat. Wahad, tithnain, talat. Students' arms rise and fall in confused unison and the day's exercises begin. I am reminded of a friend who once told me how it was the small differences in roads that phased them the most about new countries. School is school as pedagogy is what you make of it but a week out of the UK system isn't enough to stop me checking for behaviour strategies, safeguarding issues, and all manner of jargon that's thrown at us in our day jobs. Palestine is more laid back than the UK, there is no data meticulously poured over in staff rooms, no schemes of work to plan from and by the looks of it no marking outside of lessons, though I'm sure this changes the higher the year. Students are not rigorously checked for understanding and scaffolding and differentiation are practiced only by the minority. The result? It's inconclusive. What impression can two days anywhere give you except for fading sketches. But the teachers seem relaxed, smiling, welcoming and keen to show off their students. And from this their students can feed. Like schools the world over there are some classes which cannot sit still or focus fortunately here they are in the minority. The students are engaged and enthusiastic. They brim with inquisitive desire and questions follow us wherever we go.

We observe lessons and practices, inform the students about our pupils in London and they write letters to send back to them. They are thoughtful and focused. A rare charm.

Rolling through the desert we spring out overlooking Jordan and the dead sea. The air threatens to turn pink as the sun prepares to dip down behind the West Bank and tell us our times up. But until then we cover ourselves in mud, laugh and float on with our contraband friends - the sad fact that our Palestinian or hijabi friends would usually be turned away is emphasised by a surprised Israeli couple who ask us how we managed to get in. But we did. After our mud spa we chew up and spit out our sunflower seeds and plans and set a course south for the world's oldest city.

Jericho has been on the lips of a few history teachers since its name was whispered in the queue for the plane. The ants had brought the night with them to the beach so Jericho was just a constellation of lights. We found a veranda from which you could make out the boarders of three countries and mulled over the intricacies of our trip so far, the small tragedies which people from Abu Dis face every day, the harassment because of their race. We've all been shocked about how normalised the residents here have been, many stories of being tortured in Israeli prisons, family assassinated and only slight indicators of pain.  For many this is a part of their story and they have come to accept maltreatment as usual. The girls at the UNRWA school don't even mention the wall until asked directly, the decidedly discriminatory barrier between people who once lived side by side, and you can only feel a sadness that these students will grow up feeling separate, different and inferior from people who live 20 minutes walk from their school gate. But this is also a testament to the optimism of many, that things can change and will change and we agree that we must look optimistically on our time here and the future of the colleagues, students and people we've met.

Jericho is now miles behind us, our van rides dusty through the sand-scowered valleys as another Arab power ballad sweeps us past the ghosts of hills and the future is on our lips again. This time: Jerusalem.

It's the little things

R you ecwvr
A community so tight that it is sufficient to give a driver the name of the area and family name.

Palestinian civilians entering an ex-interrogation centre as free people and sleepirng we are e young in the same rooms previously occupied by those who had tortured their people.

A culture where imprisonment of young people is normalised as part of the struggle, and where the estranged receives a classic heroes welcome for daring to throw stones.

A class of students learning about the benefits and uses of  trains with the full knowledge they have never seen one on their land.

A people so generous that as well as showing us around their city, they ensure we are well fed, well rested and relatively safe.

A father who witnessed his son's gun riddled body deprived of emergency medicine and then made to needlessly wait hours before being allowed to bury him.

A typical morning line up where students pray together and pledge allegiance to their country and Palestinian cause.

A small 12 year old boy orphaned before his time - yet to meet his imprisoned father, then also made to live through the imprisonment of his mother.

Students so driven to learn they are leading the learning in their classrooms having prepared all their own resources and activities.

Being shown around an interrogation centre by the very people made to kneel for days until the moment they agree to free themselves into prison with a false confession.

Women adorning themselves with beautiful clothes and make up in preparation for weddings and engagement parties.

A poster drawing attention to child marriages and the subsequent meeting of a 15 year young bride concerned about community gossip.

Relaxing on a beautiful beach on the dead Sea then finding out our hosts had attempted to go the previous year but were denied entry as Palestinians.

Prostrating at al aqsa mosque, recognising the multi tiered system that permits us to do so but has prevented others.

Knowing it's olive picking season, when we see the fruit, as well as the line up of armed soldiers on the roadside in anticipation of the farmers.

Countless cups of traditional coffee and sweetened tea served in every office and house we enter.

A boy too young to be join a trip to London, but old enough to be arrested and given a prison sentence.

Palestinian children in the occupied territory of East Jerusalem studying a censored curriculum that denies them basic access to their history, geography and citizenship.

Passing three layers of armed soldiers before entering al aqsa mosque for asr, humbled by the magnificence of a space built for peaceful worship yet acknowledging how empty this mosque has now become.

The strong women of Palestine

Finding an affinity across cultures with people is challenging in most contexts and you look for similarities to prompt conversation, to feel comfortable together. You hope to connect in deeper and more significant ways.

I didn't expect that on a trip which focuses on setting up international links in education (an opportunity to discuss pedagogy, swap resources and find ways to educate young people across boarders about lives which are wholly different to their own) that I would confront a depiction of reality that would challenge my perceptions of how people can suffer the limits of an occupation - whether of territory or over the mind and body- with a dignity and strength that is overwhelmingly inspiring.

The belief that everyone is deserving of equal human rights is at the root of our finding ourselves thousands of miles from home, working and exploring from dawn until dusk. This trip would be exhausting and without reprieve if it was not for the tireless work of the strong, resourceful and positively feisty women who surround us with food, drink and the warmest company.

Their personalities shine through, pervade the awkward silences and dominate the masculine reticence to discuss anything beyond politics and polite intrigue into our differing family structures. They are unafraid of the language barrier: whether continuing in Arabic for three sentences after it has become clear that the content is impossibly obscured from the recipient or joyfully experimenting and laughing raucously when we've all tried tongue twisters across English and Arabic. 

Since arriving in Palestine it is not the women's bravery and ease in social situations or their amazing ability to host and attend to all the real and imagined needs of guests without a flicker of surprise that has struck me. It is that they have managed to forge for themselves an existence that in its familial centric boarders can be both fruitful and fun. 

I have laughed, listened and learnt from their stories and experiences: tales of child marriages (which are not uncommon), repeated difficulties with birthing, limitations in education with a lack of physical education and single sex classrooms, perceiving latent and unspoken violence . . . along side close-knit and female orientated celebrations which come in all forms - simply shopping and dressing yourself, your house or your friends in opulent and luxurious looking decoration, organising huge and raucous pre-wedding waxing rituals in which dancing is compulsory (as well as the many excuses for private and public solely female attended parties).

I know that I came here concerned about the human rights abuses that take place in a country which has been both condemned and forgotten by the global community and I will take away with me the sense that people in Britain have more to learn about and from Palestine than just the national crisis of identity. That there is a far more complex, gendered and difficult problem within communities and the education system here is clear. It is the comprehension of and acceptance of divisions and barriers that will help us come closer together as nations and people and for me the women and girls I have met in Palestine will be the driving force behind my desire to create stronger links across our cultures and schools.

Starting the residential

Beautiful to wake up to soft sun and friendly faces today, and we did so much this morning. Explored the grounds and looked at the olives and the area. Ate a big breakfast and began our workshops.  Started to share and learn and collect questions...so far, so very good

Separation Wall at Abu Dis

Thanks for your welcome

A really big thanks to our teacher friends for their great welcome to their homes and for the very delicious food - what a lot of effort but it was so much appreciated! Yesterday Rudaina and family and today Kefah and family.  This picture was after an unforgettable feast!

PALESTINE DAY 5 BACK TO SCHOOL

Saladin's minaret wakes us up at 4 to pray and the mosquitoes follow not long after to berate us for staying in bed. We've grown sluggish in the heat around Jerusalem but fresh falafel and a walk through down town Abu Dis wakes us out of our dreams. Today we have the pleasure of tours around the towns schools,  our group heads to Abu Dis Girls School,  Abu Dis Boys School,  the Nehru School (all state run single sex establishments) and the Arab Institute (a boys private school).

We wait in the headmistress' office of Abu Dis Girls School for the French teacher who excuses her perfect English before translating her stern director's greetings. We hear the same forgettable facts: population, subjects studied, curriculum, pathways, achievements of the students whilst we all pine to see some teaching. We are not disappointed. As we slip in and out of classrooms, down corridors, up staircases we see eyes widen in shock at the rare sight of international visitors, lips mouth muddled greetings in varied languages, guessing our nationality. The lessons we do disturb are a joy to see as a teacher. Polite, engaged students who are excited to greet visitors but also keen to continue their lessons and show their teacher that they are on task and hard working, attentive students. Before our jealousy had time to settle we were whisked into computer labs and libraries as well as into one of our host's biology lab, full of what can only be described as taxidermy misdemeanours. Our visit was epitomised by our visit to the outside canteen furnished with coloured stools made out of tyres and children surrounding their English teacher singing gleefully in all tones and shrieking like some sequel to the sound of music as we approached. The English teacher smiles proudly as she greets us as the song comes to an end. We leave full of optimism about teaching in the shadow of the wall.

Abu Dis Boys is another world. We begin our tour in their 5th Grade, 11 year old stare our at us, ask our names and show off their knowledge of ordinal numbers. Their command of English is impressive and the class seems positive and enthusiastic. As we progress down the corridor and up the years the class sizes increase and the behaviour becomes wild. By the end of the corridor we are at the 9th Grade. 50 boys in a room, or are meant to be. Some wander the halls, some sneak out of the front gate. Order is nowhere to be seen. It's sad to see the difference in education for the boys and we leave feeling deflated.

We stroll over to the the Arab Institute, a private boys school with accommodation for orphans and absent (often imprisoned) parents. We meet the headmaster and an 11year old boy with both his parents in jail before meeting some of the students who have prepared a presentation about the various Palestinian Ids. The boys here are so articulate and passionate that the Abu Dis Boys School has fallen out of our thoughts. It seems like it's fallen out of the thoughts of the educational authority as well.

After our lunch at Al-Quds University we plan twinning links with our Palestinian colleagues through broken English and cod Arabic. We hear about broken promises and ignored letters and make assurances that we will be better. Over dinner phones buzz with pictures and plans and we settle in to long conversations and thoughts for the future.

Playground at the Arab Institute

Sweet boys (said the teachers who gave them flowers) and a tear gas cannister (a new type we were told) that the Israeli army shot into ye playground a few days before.

Sebastia...

A long day today but that didn't stop us accepting the invitation by Abu Yasser to breakfast in Sebastia... and so glad we did. A memorable breakfast with everything tasty and good, and then a look at the Roman ruins.

Tom was the most excited! Or maybe I thought that he must be as he's a classicist.  But all of us loved being there and in the dreamy Palestinian hills in the autumn sunshine.

And then confronted with the current occupation reality: settlements. GROWING. EVERYWHERE.

PALESTINE DAY 3 CONTEXT

The days are melting into each other in the levantine sun. As we roll through another valley of olive trees and past another armed checkpoint to another town covered in posters of murdered youths - some with guns, some without - the normalisation of violence begins to sink in.

For us this is a shock. For our guides this is their life. We meet a man working for the Educational Authority in the Jalasa refugee camp whose son was shot dead by Israeli soldiers in Nablis whilst working two years ago. Every day a new story of violence and death. Yet the men in the refugee camp do not call for blood, but understanding and peace. They want their voices heard, voices frustrated by consecutive United Nations resolutions which have been ignored (181 - the partition of the two states in 1948 - and 302 - that UNRWA was to continue to help the Palestinian people until they had returned home or their issues had been settled - to name the two stuck in my mind).

We arrived in Anata late. Today was also the first time we have seen the wall. It's shocking. A 20 foot high wall pressed right up against Palestinian towns villages and refugee camps whilst on the other side spacious, green settlements flourish. The sheer display of inequality would be enough to shock most but the fact that these settlements flagrantly contravene the Oslo agreement and international law is baffling. Here is a barrier put up to allow the Israeli government divide the Palestinian people and to cut up the land which they are allowed to live on. It makes it more difficult to visit relatives who live in the different areas (A, B and C) and even more so Palestinians with their different coloured IDs (blue - Jerusalem: you can travel anywhere in Israel or the West Bank; green - West Bank only; orange - Gaza Strip only) who can be cut off from travelling to see friends and families.

And this is where children are brought up. Inside a cage where you are a second class citizen from birth. No opportunity to contact or even meet with your neighbouring counterparts. As we go to sleep after a long day of meetings, tours and discussions and we hear what may have been a few bullets in the background you can't help but feel helpless. What can you do when a wall stands so firm against any positive building of relationships? What happens if that's our guide's son?

A moment to reflect

Staring into the glowing screen of my phone at 1am and writing my first blog post of the trip, and indeed first ever blog post, I pause, repeatedly struggling to find the words. 

It's partially exhaustion from a busy schedule in the last three days: the meeting of so many incredible people who overwhelm with their generosity and open-hearted conversation, the climbing around and over Roman ruins for an hour too long, the exploring of the British-turned-Israeli-prison-turned-residency building for the CADFA team and the learning about its complex and disturbing histories, the three hour long lessons on the intricacies of life in Palestine over the last one hundred and fifty years, the sharing of dorms with brilliant new people and wanting to know them better but also needing to sleep, the hurried eating of yogurt with breads, rice dishes, hummus and the plethora of sugary treats before returning to presentations simultaneously in English and Arabic on our variable school lives, and those long drawn out and very nerdy teacher themed games on the bus. . .

But actually I think it's the mental exhaustion of trying to digest and fathom the lives of the Palestinian adults and children that I have met that gives me pause. I know that somewhere the stories I have heard might be reflected in print and that I could look up the historical facts of the growing Israeli dominance over Palestine and decipher just how the population of Palestinians in the West Bank has forcibly dwindled into patchy blots of green, annexed and broken by red boils across the map. But I could not recreate the experience of seeing the passion in people's eyes for a country they once fully occupied and called their home.

A place they determine to still call home, even when they are generations apart from touching soil in the township or village their ancestors lived in.

I could not fathom a life without freedom and one with enforced borders. That is, until the 3 metre, miles long wall stretched out in front of me, rude in its disruption of an otherwise seamless landscape and insensitive of the peoples it divides. 

Tomorrow we are visiting the schools in the local area of Abu Dis and I hope to see how, as with their general positivity and powerful rhetoric of hope, the teachers and students here continue to battle with and overcome the many problems and injustices they are facing.

مدير المدرسه عدنان حسين نرحب بالمعلمين من المملكه المتحده .طلاب فرحون بمدرسه تم تجديدها بالقريب من الساويه

تط

Waiting waiting

When we eventually got through the airport at Tel Aviv, three hours had passed and our electronic slips wouldn't open the exit gates. "Why were you so long? " asked the man at the gate. "You'd better ask them that," we said, referring to the security. We don't know what they had in their mind. During the three hours, we'd seen some people denied entry and others had waited 6 hours; we'd seen one young woman really stressed by being on her own, interviewed for ages; we'd been shouted at in an unnecessary way by security; and we'd been asked to promise we wouldn't be going to any demonstrations (as we aren't,  that bit's easy).  Then suddenly the passports came back - just after we took this picture - and we met our bus and set off into the dark and into Palestine.

Amazing work going on

Today teachers from the UK and Palestine are comparing their work in their countries (after lots of presentations over 2 days). Amazing stuff going on, so interesting... How do you manage without many computers... Talking to the kids about meeting soldiers in the street... How do we plan our lessons? ... How do children cope with the arrests of their classmates? ... Real excitement in the air... What a brilliant group of people, sure they're all great teachers (lucky students). Looking forward to the work on school twinning.