Epilogue

Greek Orthodox Christians outside New Gate. They are refused to enter the Old City of Jerusalem. Notice the cameraman and the journalist in the middle.

Just some 100 meters from the crowd, youths are playing soccer by the city wall.

Another 100 meters further down a group of Greek Orthodox Christians have gathered after they were barred from entering the Old City through New Gate. This is my interpretation since they looked pretty depressed except for the man in the middle who was reading to them from the Bible trying his best to cheer them up. Still my interpretation, but this is what it looked like to me.

Herodes's Gate

It certainly is Easter in Jerusalem.

Last night the Greek Melkite Catholic church, which is called the Church of Annunciation - held a mass. The hostel that I lodge in, and that is run by this denomination, is adjacent to the church and right below my room. The clock tower is right above.

At midnight they started ringing the church bells, but in a way I have never experienced before. One "Doing" every minute, every now and then two "Doings", and sometimes three "Doings". After a while I decided to phone the receptionist to ask him what was going on, and if he could stop it. Obviously he couldn't. He said it would soon stop.

So there I was in bed waiting for the next "Doing" and wondering whether it would be just one "Doing", two "Doings" or three"Doings."

The church bells rung for about 3 hours.

Then about two hours later the callers from the many mosques started calling their community to prayer. They don't start calling at the same time.

The old city was so full of noise this morning that one could hardly hear the cocks craw; besides they normally get up later than all the religious freaks.

In other words; not much sleep tonight.

As I got up later in the morning, I heard drums and bagpipes playing. It made me think of Edinburough and May 17 - our national holiday with parades and everything back home in Stavanger.

Apparently, all the "Doings" and parading were taking place around the Holy Sepulchre - Jesu gravkirke - in connection with the annual ritual of the Holy fire - look BBC.com/news - go to Middle East - a ritual that is considered a miracle by the Greek Orthodox Christians.

I decided to walk around the Old city today.

Very many soldiers and security people today due to the mentionded Easter Saturday ritual.

Therefore the Jaffa and the New gates were closed - a piece of news BBC "missed;" a piece of news I believe is much more important to get across to the world public than what was actually covered - These two mentioned gates lead to the Orthodox quarter.

As you see from the bottom picture, the Herodes gate, one of the two gates that lead directly to the Arab quarter, everything was quiet as was the case too at the other gates.

Later during the day, Joaad - the taxi driver - told me that on Fridays the soldiers make it difficult for the Muslims to pass the Damascus and Herodes gates on their way to the mosque.

For the Jews, he said, there are never any difficulties.

So why didn't the Greek Orthodox Christians enter by one of the other gates then that were open?

They could have, and some probably did, but as they would have got closer to the Holy Sepulchre inside the Old City they would have been stopped by police barriers, something I experienced myself earlier this same morning.

Take a look at this clip from you tube which was sent to me in the end of April:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53vViKeUPcY

The airport checking was thorough, and professional. They looked through absolutely everything, scanned through my laptop, asked me about what I had been doing etc., but did not take anything. Not a pleasant experience, but more or less as expected.

End of project. End of monologue.

Thanks for reading my blog from Al Quds and Palestine.

Henrik

Final day in Al Quds

Strolls along the alleys and the various quarters among the many pilgrims, soldiers and policemen in Old city of Jerusalem.

Great lunch at David Citadel hotel with good friends.

Final day at Al Salayyah scool

Interesting and eventful day.

Observed two of my colleagues who used one of the exercises I showed them in the workshops. They were sporty who did them. They did all right it being the first time. Now they will know what to do to make them work.

Also, by chance, happened to join a meeting with supervisors from various school districts. Interesting from a cultural point of view.

Had one class myself that I felt very comfortable in.

Visited all of the classes I taught these two weeks to say goodbye. I'll miss them as well as the colleagues.

Back to Jerusalem.

At sunset I found myself at the rooftop of the hotel overlooking the old city of Jerusalem. Just as I was starting to enjoy the first drink in a month, the callers of the mosques, the Greek orthodoxs, the Christians and the Jews by a mixture of various types of chanting and church bells called their disciples to their various holy places.

After about 5 minutes a big German shepard in the neighborhood apparently decided that this was too much even for a dog, and therefore joined the symphony by barking loudly.

Dinner at the American Colony hotel with Ibrahim - the pastry chef-and a professor in Arabic of the university of Bethlemem - mr. Moin.

Excellent atmosphere, good food and interesting conversation.

Spring cup final

The Al Salayyah school.


The winner of Spring Cup final - Islam. He beat me too afterwards, obviously.


The new campus of Nablus university.

The Spring cup tabel tennis final was played today. It was a good match, and the best player at school won. Great fun.

In the afternoon my good colleague - Saleh - took me to the French cultural center, the Nablus Hope center, the new campus of the University of Nablus and a bookstore downtown. Met several intersting persons including a Norwegian volunteer worker from Oslo

Quiet evening at the hotel winding down after two fabulous weeks in interesting, bustling and friendly Nablus.

The departure tomorrow from Al Salayyah - students, colleagues and the principal-is not going to be easy.

Spring Cup day

The Al Salayyah school.


One of my colleagues with his two daughters.

Spring cup finally got off the ground. The 7 players that showed up on Monday, also showed up today. They had a good time and completed the games that were scheduled. Tomorrow the final will be played most likely outside in the school court during mid break. That ought to be fun.

The workshop for English teachers in Nablus was also carried out as scheduled. 18 teachers showed up. I think they enjoyed what we did.

Also today I was invited home to meet with the family of one of the English teachers at school - Mr. Ahmad. He and his family live in an apartment overlooking Nablus city. From the balcony, the view of the city is just magnificent.

After an excellent dinner, mr. Ahmad, his two daughters and I went for an evening stroll in the neighborhood. We walked to a park with pick nick tables so high above the city center that we could clearly see across Israel to the Meditarranean Sea.

To be able to see "so far" gave me a very precise notion of how near everything is to each other in Palestine and Israel.

At school but no students

The road between the two villages Sarrah and Geet


My collegue Saleh and his daughter Nadeen.


Today there was a general strike carried out by teachers in all of Palestine as a protest against the poor wages that the Palestinian government pays teachers in this country. The teachers were at school, but there were no students.

Yesterday, one of my peer English teachers - Saleh - invited me to come today to his village and home. So in the afternoon we took a bus - minibus-over the hills and down the gullies to the nearby village, Sarrah, east of Nablus.

Being the last house in the village, and lying by a crossroads, Saleh told me Israeli soldiers decided to occupy this house too during the second Intifada. This was in 2001 and the occupation of their house lasted for a year and a half.


The house has two floors plus a roof top. There is a separate entrance to first floor and the roof. The family had to live on ground floor.

Did the Israelis pay rent? Of course not. Stupid question, but I wanted to know for sure. He told me the family had sued the Israeli army because it did not even pay the for the electricty it used while occupying a large part of the house. Salah does not believe anything will come out of the court case since the Israeli authorities don't bother even if they get a ruling in court against them.

Why did the soldiers leave the house? The family contacted newspapers in Israel which took an interest in the situation and wrote about it. Media pressure worked.


But Saleh who had just added these two stores to the house with the purpose of marrying, had to postpone his marriage for a year and half.


One of today's photos is taken from the rooftop. You will clearly see why the Israeli army occupied this particular house among others.

Towards the east it overlooks a road leading to a village - Geet - and a settlement. The road is blocked so it is impossible to drive to the village. If people in Sarrah want to visit relatives and friends in Geet, they will either have to walk, or make a detour that will take them about one hour by car or bus.

The distance between Geet and the settlement is about 500 meter a teacher, who lives in this village told me. Geet you see on the hill on the left hand side of the mentioned road. The settlement is on the other side of the road.

Clashes between the population in this village and the settlement have obvisously occurred, and are likely to occur, since the settlers have taken fields on the hillsides next to these villages, fields that belong to the Palestinians. To top it off, the settlers deny the Palestians access to the fields that they have stolen from them.

No wonder lasting peace is far away in the Middle East.

"Monday" but Sunday

Pastoral scene from Al Far'aa


On top of the mound with students.

Today is Sunday and first day of a new working week.

After having reflected a little over last weeks experiences, I decided to make a go for it with a couple of classic communication exercises that I think are excellent to trigger real conversation in pairs. One of them is difficult in the sense that it demands a bit of self discipline by the students.

Things worked out quite well mostly because the students are brave and curious to see what I invite them try out. Since they are not used to talking English, several of the students will communicate a lot in Arabic between them, but mostly to figure out what to do. So what?

Many of them do speak English, and let's face it: most students of English as a foreign language need a bit of time to accept the role they have to play when they engage in oral exercises as the ones I use.

Also; today was the big day with regards to the table tennis tournament - Spring cup 2010. 55 students had signed up. The participants had been broken into 4 flights, and a timetable from today till Thursday had all been laid out, something that took about 2 hours last night to put together.

At 12:30 as school ended and the competition were to start, 7 students showed up! The natives were right; only the ones who are good at table tennis would show up. I, who wanted an open competition for everybody, experienced a cultural "mini" shock typical of expatriates in an environment where they don't know the ropes.

No big deal. Instead we'll arrange a competition for the 7 that showed up on Tuesday. Since there are not more than seven, we ought to be able to finish all of the rounds maybe except the final by Wednesday.

Had all 55 showed up, it would have been fun, but nevertheless a zoo.

For the second time I was invited to the village and the home of one of the students. This village Far'aa lies some 20 minutes by car from Nablus on the road to Jenin (northwards) in a beautiful valley of fruit - lemon and oranges - and olive groves, wheat fields, and lush and green fields all surrounded by majestic mounds and mountains.

The students asked jokingly if I wanted to climb the nearby Dalsnuten type mountain something I to their surprise said I thought was a great idea. Yeah; let's do that.

Good dinner in a nearby newly opened restaurant after the hike.

After dinner we managed to post the first blog from a student at the Al Salayyah school on the blog established by students at Kongsgård called My grandparents.

Maybe other students will now want to post a blog about their grandparents too. We'll see.