Good Friday

I know this is a really really long blog but there are several things i have been putting off talking about until i had time to sit and write them....

Life is amusing at times. This morning when I woke up, I had a few hours before I needed to leave for my weekend in Jerusalem. It seemed like the perfect time to blog or even journal. I got up and made myself a nice cup of tea, got my journal, a pen and my computer and snuggled myself back in bed ready to let my thoughts gush forth…. I had not a thing to say! I couldn’t think of a single interesting event from my week… so instead of using my time wisely I played tetris for two hours, an absolute waste of my time. I then cleaned my room, packed my things, and took a shower which I needed because I stilled smelled like and was covered in ash from the huge Samaritan Passover bonfires I went to the night before.
I don’t think I am as traumatized by the shower as I was the first two weeks. I hope I am getting used to it. When I first arrived, I prayed a lot before taking a shower. I prayed for hot water. I prayed that the filth of the bathroom wouldn’t somehow attack me. I prayed that I wouldn’t freeze to death on the process. I was all very traumatic and I guess being the drama queen that I am didn’t help. But then Isabel, the Scottish teacher scrubbed that bathroom and I found some Lysol and sprayed it down. It also warmed up a few degrees and mostly I accepted the situation and I don’t like showering but being clean has its rewards. I also started documenting how many seconds of hot water we get. On average it is 35 seconds of hot water followed by 2 minutes of icy cold water, over and over again. I have asked every Palestinian I know what their hot water at their homes are like and they promise that they get at least ten minutes of it at a time. I asked my housemates why we haven’t complained or obviously gotten the broken water heater fixed and they said that the apartment we are in is new. Before December they lived in a house about a mile down the street. The teachers lived there for a year and a half and all 13 of them complained nonstop for a year and a half about the hot water situation there. They complained so much that the school finally moved them to this brand new building and they didn’t feel like they had the right to utter one more word about it. Fair enough, I guess……
Weekends here are on Friday and Saturday. Friday is the holy day for the Muslims and Saturday being the day for the Jews. Christians are not as important in this part of the world, we are seen as neutral and somewhat bothersome, like a kid sister who wants to play in the war games going on. However my school out of respect for my faith has given me Easter Sunday off this year so that I could come down to Jerusalem to celebrate the holy of holies in the holiest of cities in the world. I would have come to Jerusalem anyways to work with Sudanese refugees here anyways but it is pretty awesome to run over the church of the Holy Sepulcher, the church built over Golgotha, the exact spot where Jesus was crucified and in the same church and building is the tomb where Jesus was buried and rose from the dead. Last week when I was here I spent some time researching when and where things would happen this week so I knew I needed to be here by 3pm and I from my experience I knew it would take around three hours to get here. What I hadn’t taken into account was that it was Friday in Palestine so NOTHING would be open or running AND it was Friday of Passover here in Israel so NOTHING would be open or running and that Security would be impossible.
Usually it is really easy to catch at taxi or shared taxi from my apartment or even my street. And if for some reason that didn’t work if I just walked to the main street there would be plenty of taxi’s driving by there. I had to walk for 30 minutes through the Palestinian checkpoint almost to the center of town before any taxi passed by, and lucky for me there was one seat left in it. As he was dropping everyone off I looked around and realized there was no way that I was going to be able to find another shared taxi to the checkpoint with out having to wait an hour or two. Shared taxi’s don’t leave until all the seats are full and on a day like that when there wasn’t any one around it could take a long time. So I asked the driver if he would drive me all the way to the first checkpoint and I would pay. He dropped me off and the checkpoint was abandoned except for the dozen or so Israeli guards manning it. They very politely checked my passport and visa and let me through. I then went over the “Services” the shared mini-van taxi’s to sit and wait an hour until 6 other people came through the checkpoint who all wanted to go to Ramallah. They put me in the front seat which I suspected because this has happened several times before was to make the car look less likely to have terrorist in it since obviously I as an American wouldn’t have anything to do with that and maybe it might make it easier to get through the next few checkpoints. The Israeli guards balance out being polite to the Americans and interrogating the Palestinians who come through. Maybe with my presence we can get through faster and easier, I don’t mind being used. While I am waiting one of the drivers/ guys hanging out there strikes up a conversation with me. At first I was hesitant to talk with him because it is forbidden for this type of conversation to take place between men and women. He should be respecting that I am a woman and leaving me alone. Plus from my perspective it can get old everyone trying to practice their English on me and asking tons of personal questions that they translate to everyone standing around making me even more a spectacle then I am. But his English was amazing and he spends most of the year living in New York City and we have actually a good conversation about the outrageous rents there compared to Los Angeles where he used to live. About 25 minutes into the conversation the other drivers yell at him that he is not respecting me and to leave me alone. He realized what he has done and apologizes for intruding on my space and leaves me to read the book that I have in my bag. Eventually the taxi fills up and we are on our way. Five miles later we hit the next checkpoint. Unlike the first one we can all stay in the taxi and don’t have to switch to a new one. Usually Israeli soldiers just glance into the car and do a “spot check” but because it is Passover they ask for everyone’s ID’s and permits to be in this part of Palestine. They inspect each car carefully and open every trunk and look in every box and bag before letting the next car move on. While inspecting us, someone has taken our Passports and ID’s to call them all in. We pull through the checkpoint and wait for a soldier to bring us our documents.
We drive about ten more miles to the next checkpoint and go through the same process again.
These two checkpoints weren’t in existence two weeks ago and now they are getting tighter and tighter every week. However I heard that two weeks ago they opened up completely a few other checkpoints that were even tougher. It is a strange world to live in, trying to figure out Israeli and Palestinian checkpoints.
Eventually a million and a half speed bumps later, (The speed bumps are all over and were put in by the Israeli army to slow people down and to make get-aways more challenging) we arrive at the bus station in the center of Ramallah. Usually this city is hopping and a crazy place but it has completely shut down for Friday and I quickly walked over to the bus station to catch a bus to al-quits, or Jerusalem. Again we have to wait a long time for the bus to fill up. I am so thankful for my time in china where I was trained well to wait for buses to fill up. I think my entire first year there, I was so mystified to why busses didn’t run on schedules and why we would have to wait hours in big empty stations for the possibility of people coming. I now 12 years later like that this means that there will always be a bus waiting for me, that I can’t ever miss a bus. That it gives me time to read a book. I environmentally it makes sense that busses should run full and not empty just because of following a schedule. It all actually makes sense to me now and waiting is just part of traveling. And I like that it is out of my hands. When I drive in America I feel like if I were to drive more aggressively or figure out how to beat the traffic lights I could get places on time. But here, inshallah you make it on time or if you need to, pay and take a taxi.
It is always fascinating to see who and what walks through a bus station. Palestinians have large families so it isn’t strange to see them walk through with 5 or 6 kids. The some women wear head-scarves and some don’t. Everyone has their own way of expressing their style and level of belief with their scarves. Some women wear the full thing where only their eyes show. One lady had mitten and all kinds of clothing on to ensure not a single spot of skin would show. Most wear a colorful scarf around their head. But how they style the scarf and how the coordinate it with the rest of their outfits just fascinates me. And still other women don’t wear scarves at all. Those women have the most amazing hairstyles and always look like they just stepped out of a salon. In Ramallah there are many different international aid organizations staff by internationals from all over the world. They mix right in and it can be really hard to spot them. Unlike when I was in East Asia and it was easy to spot a foreigner a mile away I can’t tell them apart from the crowd. So many Palestinians have either lived parts of their lives overseas or have family who does and sends them back shoes and clothes, that my usual tell-tale signs don’t work here. So many of them speak English or other languages well that just listening in on a conversation doesn’t always help either. But yesterday there were a few obvious foreigners wondering around the station, I could spot them because they weren’t as fashionably dressed as everyone else and they seemed as lost and confused as I usually feel here.
The bus finally took off for Jerusalem, well for the final check point. Until this point I hadn’t left Palestine. All of these checkpoints so far were to control travel amongst local people from village to village. If you really want to get around a checkpoint and have a car, it wouldn’t be impossible to do at all. The night before when I went to the Samarian village and asked my students how to get through their checkpoint after it closes at 3 every afternoon they said that you just crawl under it. I didn’t understand them so they acted it out.. they literally every afternoon crawl under the gate to get home after school. They looked at us like we were idiots not to see the obvious.
The strictest and most secure checkpoint is at the border between the West Bank and Israel. They put airport security, even at the most stringent of times to shame. You stand in a series of metal coral pens and go through revolving gates to get to the x-ray machines. If things get heated up you can get trapped in the revolving gates and have to wait inside them until everyone calms down. Then have your bags x-rayed and a very sensitive metal detector before presenting your travel documents to the very thick bullet proof windows with people with all kinds of guns strapped to them. It is intense and if you hadn’t figured out by then, you really realize that you live in a war zone. It gives all kinds of perspective.
After going through all of that, you go and get on a bus and wait once again for it to fill up. Depending on what happens at security, you may or may not be back on the same bus with the same people.
From there the bus follows the outside of the wall built around portions of Palestine for a while before making its way into Jerusalem. The first time I came through I was amazed that the two cites are only a few miles apart.
Because it took so long to get down here this time I don’t stop at my friends apartment to drop off my stuff and let them know I made it safely. Instead I headed right over to the old city to Notre Dame hotel/ church where the Legionaries have daily English mass and today, had Good Friday services. They were amazing and there was such an interesting international mix of people there. One guy and I kept looking at each other. I swear I went to college with him in Ohio years ago. And some of the consecrated Regnum Christie women were equally familiar looking from all the different times I have met them or been on retreats with them. However since it was Good Friday it didn’t seem the time or place to go and have a chat and afterwards I really wanted to get over to the Holy Sepulcher for the prayers there.
I know a lot of people are put off by that church since there doesn’t seem to be a mail alter or place of worship but instead it is winding halls with such special things in them without labels or notifications. And because the different Orthodox Catholics and the Roman Catholics can’t agree for a thousand plus years about anything in that church it is even more chaotic. It lacks all organization but I love it. I feel like I could get lost their for hours and that I can always find a nook to go and pray/ meditate in.
There is just something so special and divine about spending Good Friday at Calvary… it was worth all the effort to get there!