Last few days.

We did a brief tour of Jerusalem. The city blew my mind and gave me a lot to think about in terms of the arbitrary construction of boundaries & borders, the taking of cities, the beauty of old spaces, and wanting to learn Arabic badly. I don't feel like talking about what it meant politically to me, so I will avoid that...

Walking around the old parts (i.e. pre-19th century) made me giggle when considering the idea of historicity between different places (i.e. what is "new"...19th century onward in Jerusalem versus what is "old" in the states, i.e. anything over 50 years old). Here are the walls of the old city, these ones built sometime in the 16th century, with me for scale:


Aside from the market and the general aesthetic pleasure of the city,the funniest part of our wanderings was how we would consistently stumble upon Christian holy sites inadvertently. This has more to do with the Christian worship of holy objects than any plan on our part. The best moment was when we came across the Holy Sepulcher, i.e. where Jesus is said to have been crucified and buried. So yes, "I found Jesus." We didn't know where we were, except it seemed important because there were lots of tourists. Noam asked one of the security guards, and they laughed and explained what it was. Here's what it looks like from the outside:


A few highlights of the short trip were the many vista points we went to with amazing views of different parts of the city where I could consider how random the boundaries of Israeli annexation were (like squid tentacles...). The best was the last day when we accidentally found the Virgin Mary's grave (underground) and then hiked up the Mt. Olive to look out west toward the Old City and West Jerusalem at sunset. Below is part of the view:


Now I'm back and getting ready to start packing. I have one more evening here, and then I head off back to Providence via Zurich (where I will find some way to entertain myself for 24 hours). Apparently there is indeed a "timekeeper" museum, i.e. a watch museum, and the Lindt factory tour (!!!) with free chocolate, but it is unfortunately closed the day I am there.

What a weird end to this weird trip it shall be.

Dusty change

We left Ezuz (I miss the goats muchly), and we're back in the kibbutz now, where a lot has been going on. Noam's parents' kitchen is getting a much-needed overhaul, so Noam and I helped pack things up prior to the beginning of construction. Now construction is underway and half the house is covered with toxic concrete dust.

Our plan was to go to Jerusalem today and stay there until Friday, but everything is up in the air because Noam's grandfather is in the hospital and may not come out. So, we'll see. The dust in the air does not help the mood around here.

As for me, I am coming back to the states early - I will be landing next Tuesday evening and heading back to Providence. The plan was that Noam would come about two weeks later, but now we don't know. So a lot of change in the works...

Hot hot hot.

Well, it's the desert. And it's certainly desert-like weather. It's been in the 90's the past few days, with very little breeze, and the goats have been drinking up water like it's their job. By the time the day is finished I'm usually covered in a delightful mixture of corn-bran feed, various animal excrement (shoes only...usually), sweat, and lots of goats milk from feeding baby goats and sheep. Today I even got the extra treat of having a bird shit on my head! It's certainly been fun working here, and I have officially confirmed that I love goats (and think sheep are incredibly dumb), but I don't plan on being a goat herder or keeper-of-animals-for-a-living any time soon; it's too much work!

Highlights of the past, goaty month in Ezuz have included:

• Baby Lindsey goat was born!
• Helping a momma goat give birth (with my own two hands!) to her beautiful baby boy in the middle of the desert while we were out grazing one day
• Learning how to successfully bottle feed and nurse very young and sick baby sheep & goats
• Finally understanding (more or less) how cheese is made, and feeling optimistic about making it on my own
• Getting rid of my yeast bread fears...and successfully making yeast bread on my own
  
• Knowing that although my socio-political values are very passionately different from a lot of Israelis, it's sometimes better to just avoid politics...
• Being surprised by a random Purim party (Jewish holiday that is especially exciting for kids involving ~3 days of costumes, parties, pastries, revelry, intentional drunkenness, and randomness) in the middle of our podunk village on Saturday morning, that involved lots of live music and a rather offensive theme of "AFRICA!" which was every terrible stereotype you an conjure up equating black people as = 'weird' tribal, primitive, jungle-swinging Africans. To end the the day of revelry, there was a Ghanaian drum and dance group "featuring real live Africans!"...enough said. (Have I mentioned that ethnic/political awareness is somewhat absent here?)
  
• The desert has been in full bloom (lots of wild flowers)
  

I'm still in love with all the baby goats here in Ezuz, but it's about time to head off and start working on some other new venture of...life. If all goes well and I don't feel too guilty about leaving the farm, Noam and I will probably head out on Friday morning. But, we'll see! In the meantime, as many baby goats as I can handle!

The return to Ezuz

We returned to Ezuz last week to work with a different family than last time. This family, Celia and Dror, along with their friend Doron, founded the settlement itself. Ezuz is a funny little village - started out as a military outpost along the Egyptian border so as to establish ongoing presence of the IDF in the Negev Desert and to guard the Sinai peninsula and such (when Sinai was occupied by Israel). Later, in the mid 1980s, it was settled by 'pioneering' civilian individuals (Celia, Dror, and Doron) committed to making it their own little outpost rural home.

Now, nearly 30 years later, Ezuz has about 16 families (give or take), and is still as yet unrecognized as an official settlement by the Israeli government. Being an unrecognized or unsanctioned settlement is a predicament that is relatively rare for ethnically Jewish Israelis, but an unfortunate de facto policy that the government has toward most Bedouin villages in the Negev Desert. There is one busline that runs there (picks people up at 6am and drops off people at at 8:30pm), and buses for kids to go to public schools in other towns, but there is no state-funded real infrastructure. In that respect, it's unusual.

The residents of Ezuz are a fun bunch of friendly misanthropes, who by and large seem to think that their tiny settlement, surrounded by miles and miles of open space on all sides, is "too crowded" for their liking now. At least that's what our old hosts (Avi and Tamar) and our new hosts (Celia and Dror) believe. Aside from lots of dust, sun, and flies (and still an outpost of patrolling soldiers), there are actually several working artists in the town (apparently the main economic 'driver' aside from tourism). The town itself looks (to quote from my journal last time around) "sort of like a pirate and gypsy town...something out of my kid dreams." The local architecture consists mainly of the following: converted train cabooses, converted tractor trailer containers, and converted old public transportation buses. Most other structures are made out of or covered with local mud. We now live in an old shipping container with doors and windows, kitchen and bathroom, in the "middle" of town, i.e. across from the main square, which consists of a basketball court, small playground, a turn around for cars, and a bunch of dumpsters. But it is a good location because we get to watch everyone coming in and out!

At any rate, Celia and Dror make organic goat milk products (cheese, yogurt, etc.) and we help them. Their labor is divided along "gender" lines...i.e. Celia makes all the cheese and Dror does all the cowboy-ing. In general, they appear to divide their volunteer labor along those lines as well - women help out with Celia and men go out to shepherd with Dror. But because there is already an additional (female) volunteer helping Celia, both Noam and I are helping with the goat and sheep herding. Our normal days consist of waking up around 6am, getting down to the farm area by about 6:45am so as to help finish the morning feeding (Celia and Dror have always finished milking by the time we are there), separate all the baby sheep and goats from their mommas and bring all the grazing animals out in a herd for the morning. There are about 70 goats and 25 sheep that go out with us. We bring them out for around 3-4 hours, and then get back by 11am, when it starts to get really hot. We then go back to our place and hang out until the evening feeding and milking at about 4:30pm. And that's it!

There are, of course, many more fun details about goat and sheep herding, milking, feeding, etc, but I will save those for later. All I can say is, I had a wonderful birthday that included a bouquet of wild flowers, a homemade chocolate cake with ganache from Noam, and a newborn baby goat named after me.

And...baby goats are the cutest. In this photo, baby Lindsey goat (born to an old Grandma goat on my birthday) is on the left. And baby Noam goat (born on our second day shepherding, and whose pre-labor pains in the field that I successfully flagged, plus actual birth we watched once we brought the herd in from the desert) is on the right with white ears:

New time, new options.

So we're still at the kibbutz, still attempting to figure the immediate future out. At this point in time we have approximately four options - three of which involve goat farms, and one of which involves volunteering on Noam's sister's kibbutz with a center for mentally handicapped people.

The weather, although cold for Israeli standards, has been relatively pleasant. Much warmer than in Spain, that's for sure. And even though we've had epic rainstorms in the past week-ish (again, for Israeli standards - think as much rain in the desert in a few days as normally for a whole year). The rain here is easier to accept in many ways because it's such a dry region. At any rate, I'm focusing on reading, sleeping, and trying to feel healthier mentally and physically. Mostly we're just trying to figure out what will come next, and I'm trying to not obsess over it.

We're looking forward to an exciting visit of one Caroline M in about a week and a half, which should finally bring about my first visit to Jerusalem. Hebrew continues to be a difficult language, and Noam's relatives have decided that it's amusing that I can gurgle out some words occasionally. I think I need to be in a class or spoken to constantly in Hebrew for anything new to sink in.

At any rate, still trying to figure out what sort of work I can do here and/or in the states in the coming months. (Eek). No news on that front! Hopefully within the next week we'll go to another place to volunteer. Until then!

"Why do the cults get all the good real estate?" - Noam

So, long story short we left Spain and came back to Israel.

It wasn't what you would call an easy decision, but it was the one we made and now we are here. After 36 long hours of travel.

At this moment, we are still fighting the bed bugs (as the giant welts on my side attest), and I am hopeful that we will kill them all. I am simultaneously terrified that we'll accidentally spread them to Noam's parent's house. As for now, we are biding our time catching up on sleep, and then we will figure out what our plan of action is for now until early February, when we hope to return to the small village of Ezuz in the Negev Desert and work on a goat farm there. Our current plan is to continue to Wwoof and look for other possible volunteer opportunities in Israel until late April (maybe earlier maybe later, depending on if we change the plane ticket), hopefully with some solidarity or peace-building initiatives as well.




The title of this post however, "Why do cults get all the good real estate?" (Noam's impeccable observation after being at our final Spanish farm for approximately 12 hours) deserves some amusing attention and explanation:

Our last farm, although also breathtakingly beautiful (perched on top of the Mediterranean Sea with direct access to a pebble beach and terraced gardens undulating toward the sea) was actually a small community of Spanish cult-ish (?) Messianaic Christians who were hardcore pro-modern Zionists and Israeli-violence-enthusiasts believing in Dr. Ryke Geerd Hamer's German New Medicine. (Also, there was yet again no toilet...not even an ecological toilet...just you, a pickaxe, and the hard earth)

[Side note> Google or Wikipedia: German New Medicine. It's a crazy following based on "5 Iron Laws of Biology" pioneered by Dr. Hamer that supposedly prove that the entirety of the current medical insitution's ideas of disease, particularly cancer, is completely wrong. It says that disease comes from emotional shock and everything can be seen through interlocking levels of our psyche, our brain, and an organ. In short, cancer is all in our head as is most disease...I was told that I just need to remember the "tragic" incident that happened to me when I was little when cats were around, stop believing in allergies because they're in my imagination, and then I would be cured of my cat allergies.]

In actuality, the people were really really nice (except for some of the moody, reticent children and what I can only describe as the older man who seemed to be the ringleader and spiritual guide of the group), but as soon as they started talking (i.e. lecturing) about anything involving politics, religion, or medicine, our views could not have been further apart. The description of the farm prior to our arrival was, of course, completely innocuous and contained nothing alluding to its ideology.

And, let's be honest, one can only take so much of preaching, conspiracy theories, (prolonged bedbugs even though you tried to treat them), and being told that you don't actually know anything about your religion or homeland (this goes for one of them speaking at Noam, not for me, although since this was a lecture in Spanish I was the only one who got the full, delightful details of the tirade) before it's time to pack up and go, no matter how nice or helpful they are in other aspects of your living situation and learning.

Add to that general mix of issues: unseasonably shitty, cold weather for Andalucia, not getting the types of learning experiences we wanted on the farms, us "hemorrhaging" money because of how expensive things were (oh Europe), the unavailability of our top-choice farms, bed bugs, and having changed locations 4 times in ~ 3 weeks, and you have the highly volatile combo leading to let's go back to Israel where there are still other desirable opps for volunteering and learning.

All in all, the situation's been rather comical. We wish we could have stayed, but it felt like it was time to leave to Spain. At least on my behalf, I can certainly say I look forward to visiting Spain's southern Costa del Sol and Costa Tropical, but hopefully next time with better times more suiting of the names!

First two weeks in Spain: a Photo Essay

Upon arriving to the Prague airport, I was arrested by a police bear for violating the European Union code of fashionable attire.

Here we are on our warm, balmy beach vacation in the Costa del Sol! (The wind was so strong we walked hunched over against it.)

Noam says: There's nothing like spending your afternoon
by the pool, catching some Mediterranean sun.

(I agree.)

This is the most perfect omelette I've ever made, pictured here with Noam and our complementary bathrobes in the hotel living room, where we spent approximately 90% of our time.

On Christmas Eve, we joined a "Family Activity" of Gingerbread House Decorating Contest. We were the only ones present not under the age of 9 or the parents of those under 9.

Here I am with our completed Gingerbread House.
(Those 6 year olds didn't know what hit them.)

On Christmas Eve, we also played a Christmas Trivia Quiz in the bar (without buying any drinks) and won this 5-pound box of Mantecados and a bottle of wine. Needless to say, we were siked (especially since we proved that being rich and/or Christian doesn't mean you know enough to win!)

Here Noam models his disappointment with our Christmas loot, after I read the labels and discovered that out of the ~100 pieces of deliciousness, ~98 of them contained pig lard as a main ingredient.

On Christmas Day we went out for a fancy dinner at the hotel restaurant (way over-priced but yummy) and then came back and drank Cava and watched Bedknobs and Broomsticks.

Our gingerbread masterpiece post-Christmas.

Then we magically transported through the rain to beautiful sunrises in Torrox at our first farm in Spain.

A partial view from our little trailer in Torrox out around us. (Imagine the black under-exposed area in front is actually a view of magestic, centennial olive trees. )

Our first Wwoof task in Spain (as previously mentioned) was building a shit teepee, i.e. something covering our outdoor bathroom.

In search of better opportunities and bathrooms, we then left Torrox and came to Orgiva, a town in the Alpujarras. Now we are greeted by 11 of these guys every day.

A partial view of the farm in Orgiva (tons of orange and olive trees).

We celebrated the New Year and our new Wwoof farm with our German farmer and his Swedish guests. (We did not catch on fire.)

New Year's Day (Hi 2010) consisted of a road trip to Granada, where everything was closed and/or dead.

Our life since has consisted mostly of homemade bread, French cheeses, wine, (bed bug bites for me) and lots and lots of rain.



And as for tomorrow...we head off to a new farm and new hopes!

Happy New Year from España!

So, we indeed are in Spain and having a nice time although we are not exactly where we expected to be at this moment in time.

After an uneventful arrival to Madrid and 7 hour bus ride to the beachside "resort town" of Marbella on the Costa del Sol (Sunny Coast), we were greeted by 6 straight days of pouring rain.

Thankfully we arrived the day beofre the hurricane-windstorm-all-out-weather-disaster struck all of Europe, because otherwise we would have been trapped in an airport somewhere for a day or two due to all the flight and train cancellations. At any rate, our beachside stay consisted largely of cooking delicious food, watching tv, marveling at the sky's capacity for letting out water, and running between the raindrops to the indoor pool and exercise rooms at the hotel timeshare. We managed to go for a few walks in between the stormy parts, but all in all we stayed inside.

Then last Saturday morning we set off for our first Wwoofing experience in Spain, to a small village in the coastal mountains called Torrox. We purchased a cell phone (you may now call us if you wish), got rained on, and finally arrived, after many gruff miscommunications, to the village and eventually into our farmer's car and to his house. As per usual since we arrived to Spain, it started raining, so we just had a minute to set our stuff down in our camper and head back to the farmer's house to eat our late lunch. The farmer was nice enough, but he was quite gruff and explaining tasks to be done was not exactly his forte.

However, the location was absolutely beautiful. We were perched on a mountainside with additional mountains behind us, looking out toward a lush green valley leading out to the seaside town of Nerja and a large expanse of the Mediterranean Sea. And we got to watch sunrise for each of the precisely three days we spent there.

Why three days? Well the work was enjoyable enough, but our accommodations just weren't cutting it. A very cramped, moldy mobile home with a woodstove installed and a rickety, movable gas range. No electricity, and the bathroom was an ecological toilet about 50 meters down a slippery hill. It should be mentioned that our first task on Wednesday was reconstructing out of reed, plastic, twine, and rocks, a teepee around the ecological toilet (hole in the ground) to shelter us from, you know, everyone on the mountains around us seeing our bare butts as we went to the bathroom. The caravan was kind of comical in that on the one hand, it seemed cozy, but on the other, the wind and rain entered through various unseen entrance ways and at any minute the wind seemed like it might just blow us off the hill. And although the shared meal was delicious (when we had them), it was completely at random.

But, it was so beautiful there. Seriously, my words do not do it justice. However, as soon as the night struck (those 14 hours of the day it was dark with our Czech Soviet-made kerosene lamp) and possibly the fleas (?) or some other rash or small bugs hit, we decided it was time to go. So we began calling our other choices, only to not get ahold of the right people, and eventually in circles we went until one farmer we had chosen recommended us another farmer named Constantine.

After a mysterious journey through several different towns and getting picked up by car in another, we were finally picked up and brought to Orgiva by our new farmer, German expat former-priest, did-I-mention-German?, very erratic, pedantic, forgetful and kind Constantine. And here we have been since. We are helping with odds and ends around the house and land and enjoying our time very much, although we weren't exactly itching to be with expats. Since before we arrived Constantine has had house guests of a family of Swedes (a couple and their 12-year old son), and it has been quite amusing here all around.

We had a lovely New Year's Dinner with all of them which involved lots of seafood (Noam lost out on that one), and we have been hoping for southern Spain's famous Mediterranean weather to kick in sometime soon. In short, aside from yesterday and this morning, it's been pure rain, fog, and icy wind since we arrived (and by icy I mean the likes of 40 degree temperatures not including windchill...). Now we plan on being here for probably another week and then taking off to who-knows-where, although with a little luck the sun will finally come out to stay.