Life in the Beehive

Since returning from Poland, it's pretty much been life as usual around here. However, I realize that I haven't exactly elaborated on what that means, so I want to take this opportunity to explain a little but about life in Akko.

Beginning with Akko itself. It is a smallish city (population around 50,000) located in the north of Israel, right on the western coast of the country. Our house is exactly opposite the train station, so while it can sometimes be tedious to have 30 second breaks in your conversations in order to wait for the trains to pass, it's extremely easy to get out of here (despite the unnecessarily long bridge/ramp structure that allows pedestrians to cross the tracks).

Right past the train station is a small but completely sufficient, and dirt cheap, vegetable shuk. There are mounds of fresh produce piled up, as well as beans, lentils, eggs, meat, and lots of spices. There's something about buying vegetables with dirt on them that makes life here seem so appealing (while I'm usually sarcastic, right now I'm being completely serious). All the food we eat is extremely fresh, and the men working there usually throw in lots of free food as well, in addition to letting us use our broken Hebrew.

Continuing past the vegetable shuk, you get to the bus station (about 5 minutes walk from our house) and the main drag of Akko, which hosts a 24 hour, seven shekel falafel stand (that's a little less than two dollars). About another 10 minutes walk from here will find you in the Old City and port area. The Old City is bustling with a shuk as well as many shops and restaurants. The Old City is a predominantly Arab area, and so on Saturday, when everything else in Akko is closed due to Shabbat, you can find the entire Jewish population of Akko doing their shopping and walking around the Old City.

As I just mentioned, Akko is a city in which Jews and Arabs live together. Many people are skeptical about whether or not it's a sustainable setup, but living here I can tell you that Akko is a pretty nice place to be. Though it has a reputation for being a little sketchy after dark, and granted I would agree that you shouldn't walk around alone at night, I've made several trips to the 24 hour falafel shop in the middle of the night, accompanied by others, and we didn't run into any problems.

But what exactly do we do here, you may ask, besides eat falafel at odd hours and buy vegetables? Right now we're in the portion of the program called Kaveret, literally translating to "Beehive." This name makes a bit of sense if you consider the fact that 19 of us are now sharing a house and a separate apartment. We eat all our meals together, hang out together, and work together in our messima (I'll explain it in a bit). We do our laundry together (which we hang to dry, like most other Israelis), cook together, do dishes together, decide how we're going to spend our money together, and watch the Olympics together (which sometimes gets a little tense with one Canadian in the house... right now she's running around the neighborhood yelling about how the Canadian's took the gold medal in hockey, which won't be good for our already tense relationship with our neighbors). So yeah, beehive makes a bit of sense, though it doesn't inspire much hope.

One of the most important things we do together is messima (I told you I would get to it). Messima literally means "mission" (but try not to think of the Christian kind). It's the name for the volunteer work we do, except the connotation is a little different. For the next three months, our messima should not just be something we volunteer at, but literally our life mission, if you will. There are four separate tzvatim, or staffs, from my kvutsah who work within Akko and the surrounding neighborhoods. There is one tzevet (staff) working in both Jewish and Arab schools in Akko, as well as in after school programs run by Hanoar Haoved V'Halomed (literally meaning "the working and learning youth"; it's the Israeli sister youth movement of Habonim Dror). Another tzevet works in a high school called Deshanim, which is also run partly by Hanoar Haoved. It's a sort of last-stop school for kids with very bad disciplinary track records. Another group works in schools in the Hadar neighborhood of Haifa, a disadvantaged immigrant neighborhood. And the last group, my group, does "Kium Meshutaf", or shared existence. We work in schools and after school programs in Arab villages around the Galil.

Here's the breakdown of what I do. On Sunday mornings we go to a coexistence school located in Kibbutz Eshbal. Technically this means that both Jews from neighboring kibbutzim and moshavim as well as Arabs from nearby villages attend this school. It's a bilingual school, so the students study both Hebrew and Arabic, and all the signs and written materials are in both languages. Here we work with 5th through 9th graders. We're given a block of time to do pretty much whatever we want with the kids, so this ranges from playing games and doing other random stuff to running peulot on media bias and sharing, all in English. While it's a long morning, as we have four separate classes to teach, there tends to usually be cake in the staff lounge, so we make it through.

On Sunday afternoons we go to an "after-school program" in Sha'ab, an Arab village about 25 minutes from Akko. I put it in quotes because it's really just 20-30 9th grade girls gathered in a classroom in the high school in Sha'ab. The program is run by the Arab sector of Hanoar Haoved, and we have an hour and a half every Sunday afternoon to do whatever we want with the girls. We usually play games and run peulot. The energy in the after-school program is much higher than in the schools, as the girls have actually chosen to be there.

Tuesday mornings we tutor at an elementary school in Ba'ene. We join the school's young English teacher, Reem, and go into classes with her (we work in a 6th grade class, a 3rd grade class, and a 4th grade class) where we each work with a small group and guide them through whatever activity or worksheet Reem has arranged. With younger kids, their English isn't as good, so there's a lot more miming and drawing pictures. Also, the younger kids are convinced that we actually do speak Arabic, and we're just lying when we tell them we don't, so they insist on jabbering away to us in Arabic and become very frustrated when we don't respond.

On Tuesday afternoons and evenings we have Yom Tzevet, translating to something like "Staff Day." This is when all twelve of us (six of us from Akko along with six Europeans from Karmiel who are doing similar work) in addition to our melavim (coordinators, advisors, etc) meet up in order to discuss the week, have a quick Arabic lesson (so far my Arabic vocabulary consists of things like "My name is Morriah" and "pants"), spend a little time planning, eat dinner, and usually have a peulah on some aspect of the formation of Arab identity in Israel, or pertaining to educational methodologies.

Wednesdays find us in the Arab village of Sakhnin all day, first in the morning teaching at the Taha Hussein Junior High School, and then in the afternoons at a Hanoar Haoved after school program. Our main challenge in Sakhnin is that we usually only get a few kids after school, even though we recruit as much as we can from the Junior High School in the morning. But we still usually tend to have a lot of fun, as our regular members consist of Majde, who speaks not a word of English but that didn't stop him from introducing himself as 72 years old (for the record, he's 14), Salem, who speaks fluent English due to a year spent as an exchange student in Virginia, and Hala, a bubbly 15 year old girl who loves talking about Nick Jonas and asking us questions about "the emos" in America.

So that, technically, is what we do. However there are lots of anecdotes and experiences that have gone along with that basic rundown. Some experiences are extremely rewarding just as others are incredibly frustrating. Since the times of frustration pretty much boil down to blank looks and noncompliance from angsty adolescents, I'll only give you a story of an experience that was more rewarding.

Last week, Reem (the English teacher we work with at the elementary school on Tuesday mornings) invited us over to her house for lunch after we finished at the school. She drove us home and fed us an incredible traditional meal of hummus, vegetables, pita, rice, and meat. We also had the pleasure of meeting her three children (ages 3, 6, and 3 months) whom she all dresses up in identical outfits. I thought about making a comment about how they will all rebel once they realize that she dressed them in the exact same outfits for their entire childhood, but thought better of it. (The day we went, they were all wearing matching gray and green tracksuits). Nevertheless, they were three of the cutest children I've ever seen, especially the 3 month old.

During the meal, Reem asked us about our lives in America. We talked about how the culture surrounding living in your parents' house and getting married is much different, and she shared with us her thoughts on life in a traditional Arab village. A fairly modern woman, Reem shared that she didn't think women should marry so young and should instead take time to develop their careers. After eating, Reem served us coffee (the traditional kind in the tiny cups) and told us about her children and how she met her husband. Then she drove us back to the school where we got picked up and taken back to Akko.

That's pretty much that for messima. Today in Sha'ab we received a dinner invitation for next week from one of the girls who comes to our programs, and it's been rumored that in a few weeks we'll be going on a tiyul (hike) with all of our chanichim (translates loosely to students). So, until next time!