We have left Ezuz.
Although it was an absolutely beautiful place, it was time to move on. My intestinal track needed some more vegetables in my life, and my legs haven't looked as bruised (from moving all the rocks for the stone terrace with a dolly) since I played rugby my freshman year of college. Although physically rewarding, the work was pretty difficult and required more work (~7-8 hours) than the typical Wwoofing amount (~4-6 hours).
So, off we go to a new place. We've been stationed in the parental kibbutz for a few days, but today we head off so as to start working tomorrow in Tzippori (the blue dot on the map).
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Tzippori is a hilarious counterpoint to Ezuz, in that is relatively lush, green, bourgeois, and we will be doing very different work. The family-owned organic olive orchards (see link here, in Hebrew only, but if you poke around you can find photos: http://rishlakish.com/ ) have a big grindstone press and do their own expelling and production of olive oil. Additionally, they have a small vegetable garden and a cafe they run on the weekends. They used straw bale mud building to refashion an old industrial chicken coop into the beautiful building that now houses the expeller and the cafe, and they sometimes have demonstrations or field trips for kids.
Work should be interesting and fun; I am interested in learning more about the production of olives and related products, and what this family thinks about what it means to be an Israeli (rather than Palestinian) producer. I am curious about how they actually bought the fields and property. The matriarch of the family is a Welsh woman-Israeli by marriage, and the couple has lived and farmed in many places including Venezuela.
Our last family (and the other volunteer that worked with us in Ezuz for a week) had very, how we say, "interesting" opinions about Arab and Palestinian work, Russians, Thai migrant workers, and the role of women in society. I'm encountering more and more stereotypes as I continue to be here, many of which make me pretty uncomfortable in their assumptions. I guess that means all the more fodder for thought and analysis.
There is a huge population of Thai migrant workers that form the core of the agricultural workers, positions that from my undrestanding were often filled by Palestinians prior to the 1st Intifada. It is accepted as given that the migrant workers are here, and yet there are no possibilities for citizenship given the stated aims of the Israeli state to propagate and settle a sort of ethno-racially/religiously homogeneous state. Likewise, the huge populations of migrant care-takers, often Filipina or Nepali, have a perpetual state of accepted-presence, rejected-settlement.
I'm super curious about the patterns and attitudes of migration here, both on a policy and a social level, especially for non-Jewish/non-Aliyah and non-Arab populations. It's pretty easy to assume what sort of treatment both of those populations generally receive, but the additional intricacies of the not-wanted and not-not-wanted peoples are such a grey area. My guess is that there must be a guestworker visa policy, but I haven't had a chance to research that or its terminology. At any rate, if anyone has any good resources or reading with regards to that, send it my way!
So, off we go to Tzippori to see what else we have in store.
However, as a final parting note, for your viewing pleasure here is a little video that Noam and I made of riding in the aforementioned "jalopy" (see last photo in the previous post) down to the terraces where we worked in Ezuz. Enjoy:
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