Soup & Trash

First off, a hearty congratulations to my sister, the fabulous and employed Karin, who has just acquired her first real job. The newest addition to America’s workforce called me over the past weekend, and we discussed her new dress code, which requires a collared shirt.

Karin: “But we’re allowed to wear turtlenecks.”
Margit: “A turtleneck is a collar.”
Karin: “Nah-aaah.”
Margit: “It goes around your neck. It’s a collar.”
Karin: “Whatever.”


Today was the start of “summertime,” meaning that the clocks sprang ahead an hour. In Israel. And Jerusalem. But not in the West Bank. Or in Palestinian East Jerusalem. Or in the homes of anyone whose political loyalties move them hold out another two weeks until the Palestinian Daylight Savings. You would think, with so many issues to disagree upon here, that when to change the clocks would be a battle someone would be willing to forfeit. But no. For the next two weeks I predict mayhem in concentrate form as meetings and conferences and concerts and bus schedules attempt to carry on for a population divided by one politicized hour.

To get out on the town before the clocks or minds of Jerusalemites exploded in confusion, I went out last night in the hours before the time change to what seems to be the hippie/hipster hangout of West Jerusalem. The restaurant is called Soup & Jazz, and to this marriage I say Mazel Tov. I haven’t heard of a better pairing since Soup & Taco. Smoky describes the voices and the air at this dive joint near the Old City. The soup was homemade, the décor was Chinese propaganda art and the scat held a dim candle to Ella Fitzgerald’s, so I was well impressed.


My boss is good at recognizing when I’ve reached my limit of desk time, and I was at that point by 11 a.m. today. So Mark said I could go outside and pick up trash along the fence that circles our property. I joined Khaled and Mohammed, two men who work on the grounds here, and a teenaged boy from the vocational training center that LWF runs. Picking up trash is probably one of my favorite activities, and for two hours I got to tromp around on the hillside bagging broken bottles, empty cigarette cartons and crumpled cups with Nescafe grounds stuck to the bottom.

Litter is an issue, to say the least, in Palestine, and the sight of someone picking up garbage is a rare and puzzling one. What I’d call puzzling is a bunch of boys riding down a well-trafficked road on donkeys, which happened as I was picking up garbage. They stopped and laughed at me and I laughed at them and we had a little conversation that lasted as long as my Arabic vocabulary did, or about two minutes. And then the donkeys and the boys trotted off, but apparently only as far as a point in the fence where they could hop over, because out of no where I have ten-year-olds surrounding me and shaking my hand. And then they started picking up trash with me! So it was for all of five minutes before the donkeys got revved up again, but nonetheless. I inspired children. Mark says that from now on he’ll send young women out to do the groundskeeping and we’ll eventually recruit the neighborhood. Pretty soon East Jerusalem will be overrun by adolescent donkey-riding environmentalists. I can’t wait.

West Bank cornered

Originally uploaded by margit margit.

Since I arrived a month ago, the majority of my time at work has been dedicated to the annual report, a magazine-like coverage of all that goes on under the auspices of the LWF’s Jerusalem branch. The publication should be, as Mark likes to put it, “upbeat,” but still express the current situation. The articles filling these 36 pages are coming from four different sources, and as they’ve accumulated, common themes have emerged and none of them are upbeat or even close. In nearly every article on every project is a mention of The Wall, a two-year-old ongoing construction that casts a long and dark shadow over the people of the West Bank. This wall that Israel is building in a twisting path through Palestinian land is sealing people into their towns and restricting travel on roads. It blocks Palestinians’ access to the hospitals, the schools, the jobs and the families they had once been able to reach easily. Every Palestinian living in the West Bank or Jerusalem is affected by the Separation Wall, and every program we run has to stretch to provide not only health care or education, but also travel permits for people to travel within their own land.


The hospital we run here, Augusta Victoria Hospital, recently opened the only radiation oncology department in Palestine, meaning that if a West Bank Palestinian develops cancer, he or she has one option for radiation treatment: traveling to Jerusalem. And that’s if they’re able to make it through the restrictive and time-consuming permit application process. I was at the cancer center yesterday, taking photos for the annual report and learning the inner workings of a linear accelerator machine. I was introduced to Buthaina when she was sitting on the edge of her bed, a rattling cough shaking her body as she spit pellets of phlegm into tissues, an effect of what is likely laryngeal cancer but has yet to be diagnosed. She speaks lovely English and let me photograph her while her mother-in-law sat nearby and smiled at us. Buthaina is from Nablus, a West Bank city about 35 miles north of Jerusalem, and she worked as a nurse there until she became sick. While the drive between the hospital and her home doesn’t take long, the time involving the checking of her permit and the stops at checkpoints makes a daily commute out of the question. Thus, she’ll be an in-patient at the hospital until her radiation treatment is completed. Her mother-in-law was able to acquire a permit as well, but the rest of her family—her husband, her children, her own mother—have not been granted permits and are unable to visit her.

Since the start of the Wall, the hospital has taken on the task of working with the Israeli government to get the necessary permits for patients who need to reach the hospital for radiation treatment or ear surgery or kidney dialysis. A busing system was set up to help staff and patients in nearby towns reach the hospital without having to spend three hours waiting at a checkpoint for a fifteen-mile journey. It’s astounding to see all the effort that goes into simply getting a person to a hospital for very necessary health care, but still, upbeat is hard to achieve during an unjust time in an unjust situation.

Rapture Ready

Jerusalem lies along a fault line, a fact that I’m sure has been analyzed and symbolicized far too many times. I’m pretty sure I experienced my first earthquake last week during an excruciating staff meeting, one that stretched out for well over three hours. Our office is a single-level stone structure reminiscent of the Barney Rubble’s house, and what I at first thought was wind causing the building to creak and settle was actually the earth shaking; it takes a lot to move this mother.

Earthquakes are on the mind these days, as the Jordan Valley seems to experience a 7 pointer Richter score every thousand years or so, and apparently we’re about due. The nonchalant architect is freaking out, and therefore so is my boss. As I was informed, the astrologers are predicting March 28 as The Next Big One and the scientists have dibs on the 29th. Although what kind of scientist predicts specific dates for an earthquake, I want to know. My money’s on the astrologers. And I dreamt last night that the quake happened on a Tuesday, which, as I checked out this morning, is the day the 28th falls on this year. Hmmm.

Like I said to my boss, I suggest linking directly to http://www.raptureready.com,/rap2.html a thoroughly helpful website that has set up the Rapture Index, a numerical scale that will tell you just how close we are to the end of time, an event marked by an earthquake or two, the return of Christ, and bodies rising from their graves. Even just one of these three could throw off your daily routine, so be prepared. And for the record, we are currently well beyond the “High Prophetic Activity” range. Yes my friends, we’ve entered the “Fasten Your Safety Belts” zone, and I suggest you do just that.

water drop

A week ago I went to the Dead Sea with my boss’ wife and son. Once you drop down from the crest of hills that Jerusalem lies on, and into the Jordan Valley, water all the sudden becomes an issue. In Jerusalem you have a rainy season, but within 20 minutes of driving, the landscape transforms into a desert with clay-colored canyons and sagebrush and sand, rather than the leafy olive trees and grassy hills that color winter in Jerusalem. My friend Will here is in Israel/Palestine for three months studying water—how it’s distributed, who needs it, and who gets it. The Jordan River, then, is the sole source of water for West Bank residents and also for the Dead Sea. And in the middle of a desert, there’s not always enough to go around. Driving along the western shore of the Sea, you pass ageing spas that tout the healing qualities of Dead Sea minerals and are patronized by Danes in need of dermatological goodness. (The government of Denmark will pay for cirrhosis patients to fly to Israel and spend a month at a Dead Sea spa soaking in mud—it costs them less than paying for chemical treatments back at home. Let’s here it for socialist healthcare!) So these spas are here, lined up along the lakeshore, except the shoreline is a good 50 yards from where it once was. Beach umbrellas stand lonely in the middle of mudflats that used to be the Dead Sea; the water of the Jordan has been rerouted and dammed and siphoned up until barely a trickle reaches the Dead Sea, and the water level has been dropping consistently and quickly for years now, and is not projected to stop. Tragic, but hard to remedy as the water is actually being used for drinking water and not, say, supplying large amounts of hydropower to a chemical plant.



Trundling along the roadside in a region where water is so precious, a truck driver took a curve at a few too many kilometers an hour and, whoops, lost his entire load of water bottles on the side of the Dead Sea. So you’ve got a desert, you’ve got the most saline body of water on Earth, and this dude with a truckful of filtered, distilled, drinkable water drops it all on the side of the road where the bottles burst and water the sandy shoulder. Can you say “My bad?” People were pulling over on the side of the road and running out to try to grab a few undamaged bottles, pouring the water from leaking bottles into containers they had in their car. I stopped to get pictures, but someone handed me a full bottle anyway, which I’ve been using in my iron. Here are some pictures of water in the desert:









Here’s a picture I love, of a girl at the diabetes clinic. She had just gotten a shot and was quite proud of herself, showing off her arm to every woman at the nutrition seminar.






This is my new friend Will with a copy of Chicken Soup for the NASCAR Soul, which just goes to show that you don’t read any of the good stuff when you’re an English major.





We found a used English bookshop this weekend and I bought a somewhat sticky but very engaging copy of Sir Vidia’s Shadow by Paul Theroux, whom I love. The memoir tells about his decades-long friendship with V.S. Naipaul. They met in Uganda in the 1970s and, both being rather disagreeable fellows, took an instant liking to each other. As of page 60, I highly recommend.

Holy Land Tours

Having spent the fall absorbed with resume writing, I’m already dreading having to construct a concise description of what exactly I do at this job. I’m basically assistant to the Big Guy, which means that I pick up what Mark doesn’t have time for. In the first week that included taking notes at a meeting; helping plan the layout of an amphitheater; directing a bulldozer in its digging pattern; editing articles; pruning olive trees; organizing guesthouse reservations; taking photos of students in a metal-working shop; taking photos of an arrest that took place on the grounds; and accompanying groups on tours of the hospital.

Lutheran World Federation, the organization I’m volunteering with for the year, owns the land here on a small hill between the Mount of Olives and Mount Scopus. (www.lwfjerusalem.org will tell you about the organization. www.lwf.org, or "Love Worth Finding" will help you "Discover the Love of Jesus.") Augusta Victoria Hospital is our primary project and has been operating since 1951, serving the impoverished and refugee communities of Palestine. We emphasize social services and humanitarian outreach rather than proselytizing, and as a result get a fair share of liberally-minded church groups on Holy Land tours who drop by the grounds to hear about the work LWF is doing over here. I’m going to wager a guess that these groups will be one of the most amusing aspects of the job.

Yesterday, Pastor John and his 37 congregants from Freeland, Washington arrived on their charter bus accompanied by a frenzied tour guide and eager to see the hospital, the chapel, and, most severely, the ladies’ restroom. With a bunch of liberal Lutherans from Washington state, I was in my element. About nine people from the group had been to Holden Village, the isolated wilderness community where I spent a summer two years ago. The fact that I had met one of their pastors from back home while he was preaching at Holden added further to their awe. They were, in short, enamored.

As we followed William, the head nurse around the hospital, Pastor John made small talk here and there, asking how I got this job, what I had studied, and whether I was considering seminary, which he assumed was the next logical step after an English degree. I assured him I was not. Ascending the steps from the basement cancer center, William explained that the space had previously been a well that was dried out and then transformed into the radiation treatment room it is today. “A well to a cancer center. Huh,” said Pastor John. I remarked that it sounded like a sermon waiting to happen.

With their guide reaching a new level of panic (“We have to get to Dormition Abbey by three o’clock!!!”) Pastor John and his friendly flock were herded back onto their bus, waving goodbye and wishing me luck as they disappeared behind the tinted windows.

“And Margit,” Pastor John said, before climbing aboard. “Seriously. Consider seminary.”

Sir, you don't know me at all.

What is this thing you call 'blog'?

I learned how to prune an olive tree yesterday, and now I'll try to learn how to blog. Patience, please.

Tomorrow afternoon will mark my one week mark in Jerusalem, and should this little experiment work out, I'll give details of my time here. For now, a report on my flights over.

Transatlantic flights have a way of making economy class travelers feel not quite so inferior. Of course we still file past the first classers in their double-wide leather seats on our way to the back of the plane, but the hot towels before dinner and the complimentary booze helps in softening the edges of a seven hour flight. I'd like to raise my few glasses of red wine to the man in first class who, as the majority of the plane was trudging slowly by for boarding, had no qualms about pulling out his magazine of soft porn and giving everyone passing on the starboard side a good look as he opened the centerfolds, gazed in admiration for a while, then flipped to the next soft-focused ample-breasted teenage girl.

On this Washington-Dulles to Frankfurt flight, a weird smell filled the cabin and became progressively more potent once we reached cruising altitude. Thank God for Lufthansa and their very blunt German head flight attendant who came up to the Italian-looking man 2 rows ahead of me and told him quite loudly to put his shoes back on and wrap the airline blanket around himself.
"Sir, you stink. Yes. Smell. You smell. The whole cabin."
A little while later, his compassionate Germanic nature shining through, he came back by to tell him that the cabin smelled considerably better now that his shoes were back on and he should not take them off, or remove the blanket.

My flight from Frankfurt to Tel Aviv I sat at the window and the two seats next to me were filled by a brother and sister, 12 and 9 y.o. Their dad was at first sitting rows behind at the back of the cabin, but the flight attendant told him he had to move close to them, so he ended up sitting a row behind. Before take-off the little krauts were really well behaved and playing together, but once we were in the air, holy crap. They were throwing elbows, pulling hair, scratching, biting, full-out hand-to-hand combat. I spoke to the girl twice, "Bless you" when she sneezed and offering to help her take the tin foil off the top of her curry lamb meal, a task that was kicking her butt. She was really shy and would just look at me in fear and give a one word response. But she wasn't shy when, as I was trying to read and ignore their little battle, she leaned backward across my lap so she could kick her brother in the face. Later on she grabbed his arm and shook it as he was trying to drink hot tea so he spilled scalidng water all over himself. He responded by yanking her hair. Dad was oblivious.

I live in the top of a tower here. It's only two stories high, but nonetheless I feel like Rapunzel surrounded by my stone walls and peeking out my tiny windows to the street below. Of course it's large utility trucks and charterbusfuls of American tourists rumbling by rather than a prince on a white horse, but I don't complain. I also have a wide terrace outside my door that has a panoramic view of the Old City of Jerusalem and the gleaming gold dome of Dome of the Rock. (If you see a postcard of Jerusalem, that's prob'ly what you'll be looking at.) Okay. Let's try a photo.


Here's my tower! It's connected to the main gate of the Augusta Victoria Hospital grounds. I believe that's one of the guards, Mohammed, sitting outside. I live on the top half and a Quaker couple lives below me, but I have yet to meet them. More photos can be seen at www.flickr.com/photos/margit.