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.