Some reflections, and a story
Hey friends.
Last week I published my first newsletter, but I am eager to share some of the ups and downs of my first official week of service here in the West Bank. And there have certainly been both ups and downs.
First off, I want to say that no amount of orientation time, no matter how thorough, could have truly prepared me for this experience. And honestly, I wasn't really expecting it to... I knew this year would be hard in ways I wouldn't be able to anticipate. But I am beginning to see the reality that knowing that something will be hard is very different from experiencing how hard it actually is. Before coming here, I knew that I would stand out, that it would be obvious that I was a foreigner in this land. But now I know the feeling of many strangers' eyes on me as I walk the streets I am hoping to soon call home. Before coming, I knew that I didn't speak (much) Arabic... but now I know the feeling of constantly struggling to both understand and be understood. Both of these are daily experiences here, and it is draining.
But please don't take this to mean I am having a bad experience. Yes, there are challenges, but there are also moments that fill my heart and feed my soul.
Let me tell a story that happened to me yesterday. I was trying to get to my Arabic class in Bethlehem, and had gotten in a public taxi (which apparently run fixed routes like buses, I think... I'm still trying to figure out how public transit works here. Regardless, I knew it was going in the direction I needed to go and would be cheaper than a private cab). The language center where classes are held is just down a hill from the Church of the Nativity, so I tried to communicate to the driver, who did not speak English, that that was where I needed to go. Eventually I looked up the Arabic name of the church (Kinees el-Mahid, if you're curious), and he seemed to understand, but I couldn't understand what he was trying to tell me. I sat uncomfortably in the vehicle until he dropped me off on a main street in Bethlehem. It was not the Church of the Nativity. He shouted something in Arabic to a woman standing on the sidewalk, I assume something about me trying to get to the church, and she indicated that I should wait with her on the sidewalk. A shuttle came by, and she led me into it. She told the driver where I was trying to go, and another woman on the shuttle said she was going to the same place (all of these conversations were conducted in Arabic, some pieces of which I could understand, but gestures and body language can go a long way as it turns out).
So I sat in the shuttle, visibly nervous, hoping that it would indeed get me to my destination. The woman going to the same place smiled kindly at me, and told me that she only spoke a little English. I told her, in my broken and accented speech, that I spoke a little Arabic. I wanted to tell her I was heading to a class at that very moment, but didn't yet have the vocabulary. We then had a very basic conversation in Arabic, in which she asked me where I was from, and what I was doing in Palestine. I told her I was a volunteer from America working at Dar al-Kalima school and the Environmental Education Center. She showed me where to get off the shuttle, and led me to Kinees el-Mahid. She seemed very concerned when I walked past the church to get to the language center, but I didn't know how to say that I knew where I was going, and the church was simply a landmark. Hopefully my gestures and body language were enough to reassure her. As I walked to class, the joy I felt at having communicated was enough for me to shake off my nerves from before.
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| Picture from inside the language center in Bethlehem |
This is just a small peek at what life here has been like for me. I hope to share more soon.
Peace,
Harper
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