THE CHURCH IN JORDAN, ISRAEL, PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES
VATICAN CITY, 5 MAY 2009 (VIS) - For the occasion of Benedict XVI's forthcoming pilgrimage to the Holy Land, due to take place from 8 to 15 May, statistics have been published concerning the Catholic Church in Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian Territories. The information, updated to 31 December 2007, comes from the Central Statistical Office of the Church.
Jordan has a population of 5,720,000 of whom 109,000 (1.91 percent) are Catholic. There are three ecclesiastical circumscriptions and sixty-four parishes. Currently, there are four bishops, 103 priests and 258 religious. Major seminarians number seven.
A total of 30,595 students attend the 123 infant, primary, middle and secondary schools that belong to the Catholic Church or are run by priests or religious. Other institutions belonging to the Church or run by priests or religious in Jordan include two hospitals, one clinic, one family counselling centre, and three centres for education and social rehabilitation.
Israel and the Palestinian Territories have a population of 7,180,000 of whom 130,000 (1.81 percent) are Catholic. There are nine ecclesiastical circumscriptions, seventy-eight parishes and three pastoral centres of other kinds. Currently, there are eleven bishops, 406 priests, 1,171 religious and one lay missionary. Minor seminarians number fourteen and major seminarians 110.
A total of 43,876 students attend 192 centres of Catholic education, from kindergartens to universities. Other institutions belonging to the Church or run by priests or religious in Israel and the Palestinian Territories include eleven hospitals, ten clinics, nine homes for the elderly or disabled, eleven orphanages and nurseries, four centres for education and social rehabilitation, and two institutions of other kinds.
Saturday, May 16, 2009
one point for team maggie
Since I arrived in Nablus in March my students seem to always find a way to tell me that they want to or have or dream of throwing rocks at the Israeli soldiers. And every time I beg and plead with them not to. That I love them to much to let them die. I tell them to think about: the soldiers have big big guns and they have rocks, who do they think is going to win. They tell me that their parents think it is a good idea. This week Qamar told me that if she dies throwing rocks at the soldiers, she will be an angel in heaven. Two days ago may have been one of my proudest moments, one of the students said that she saw soldiers the night before and didn't throw a rock at them because she didn't want to break Miss Maggie's rules, "no throwing rocks at anyone including soldiers". Whether she did or didn't see a soldier is of no concern to me... they are learning to follow my rules!!!
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
It was an accident..
At long last finally we got our washing machine fix today. Samir, the academic supervisor's husband and my student's father picked me up early from school today to go and pick up the repair guy so that I could bring them all home, let them in and supervise the whole thing. On the way home I was making small talk with Samir, who speaks English quite well from living in Chicago for ten years. I was asking him about the furniture in my apartment and where it came from. Since the day I moved in i was amused that it is identical to my furniture in China. I was asking if it was made in China or Nablus. He told me that it was made in Nablus, in fact it was made in his family's furniture factory in the center of the old town. Which lead in to a long story about the death of his brother.
Samir was different than his brother because he was serious about school and figured out a way to go to Medical School, move to America and become a doctor there. His brother was a much simpler man. He barely finished high school and went into the family furniture making business, worked hard at what he did and stayed out of trouble. He was forty years old in 2003, married and the father of three children. 2003 was the time of the three month curfew.
Everyone here as told me about their experiences during this time. Everyone was forced to stay in their homes for 10 days at a time. If you were to dare to step foot outside your house, you were shot. If you even looked out your window you were shot. Every 10 days the curfew was called off for 3 hours so that people could shop. Matters were made even worse because, here a two story house doesn't have an interior staircase. If you want to go up stairs in the same house, you first go outside and then up. So for those three months people couldn't get up or downstairs in their own homes. Everyone was confined to one floor and in the center room of the house, trying to avoid all windows or openings to the outside.
The day the curfew was called off for good that year, Samir's brother went to his factory to check on things. Hiding in the factory was a soldier who didn't realize the curfew was called off. He shot Samir's brother dead with one bullet.
Samir was quite clear that this was an accident. And seemed so matter of fact about it. He decided then and there to move his family back to Palestine from Chicago to full fill his family responsibility. He needed to be the uncle, brother-in-law, son to everyone who had lost. Except to express my sincere sympathy, what does one say?
Samir's children are all American citizens and can't wait for the day that they can return to the life they left and lost.
Again and again I hear stories like this. Some people are full of pain and grief when they tell me. Others have moved on.
I have met several families who were living overseas when the father's felt the incredible tug to move their families back to Palestine and do their duty to the ones left here. So far it, it is their children and adult children that I have met who all struggle with the decision to move back here. Some of them have come to peace with it and are trying to figure out how they can move back overseas but still try to take care of their elders and maintain a good Muslim Palestinian values where ever they go.
It is such a contrast to me from the people I am used to being around. Latino's move to other countries out of loyalty to their family to send money home for the people at home to survive. Filipinos do the same. In Korea I worked with a migrant workers community center and met people from all over the world who didn't like Korea at all but needed to be their for their families.
In Palestine, the people here feel like they need to hold their ground. If everyone seeks a better life in another country, there won't be anyone left to make claim to the country of Palestine and it will be swallowed up whole by their neighbors. Not only do the people who return feel like need to take care of their elders but also to respect the thousands of years of ancestors who lived here in Nablus not to mention their own future generations.
It is a lot to think about and ponder.
Samir was different than his brother because he was serious about school and figured out a way to go to Medical School, move to America and become a doctor there. His brother was a much simpler man. He barely finished high school and went into the family furniture making business, worked hard at what he did and stayed out of trouble. He was forty years old in 2003, married and the father of three children. 2003 was the time of the three month curfew.
Everyone here as told me about their experiences during this time. Everyone was forced to stay in their homes for 10 days at a time. If you were to dare to step foot outside your house, you were shot. If you even looked out your window you were shot. Every 10 days the curfew was called off for 3 hours so that people could shop. Matters were made even worse because, here a two story house doesn't have an interior staircase. If you want to go up stairs in the same house, you first go outside and then up. So for those three months people couldn't get up or downstairs in their own homes. Everyone was confined to one floor and in the center room of the house, trying to avoid all windows or openings to the outside.
The day the curfew was called off for good that year, Samir's brother went to his factory to check on things. Hiding in the factory was a soldier who didn't realize the curfew was called off. He shot Samir's brother dead with one bullet.
Samir was quite clear that this was an accident. And seemed so matter of fact about it. He decided then and there to move his family back to Palestine from Chicago to full fill his family responsibility. He needed to be the uncle, brother-in-law, son to everyone who had lost. Except to express my sincere sympathy, what does one say?
Samir's children are all American citizens and can't wait for the day that they can return to the life they left and lost.
Again and again I hear stories like this. Some people are full of pain and grief when they tell me. Others have moved on.
I have met several families who were living overseas when the father's felt the incredible tug to move their families back to Palestine and do their duty to the ones left here. So far it, it is their children and adult children that I have met who all struggle with the decision to move back here. Some of them have come to peace with it and are trying to figure out how they can move back overseas but still try to take care of their elders and maintain a good Muslim Palestinian values where ever they go.
It is such a contrast to me from the people I am used to being around. Latino's move to other countries out of loyalty to their family to send money home for the people at home to survive. Filipinos do the same. In Korea I worked with a migrant workers community center and met people from all over the world who didn't like Korea at all but needed to be their for their families.
In Palestine, the people here feel like they need to hold their ground. If everyone seeks a better life in another country, there won't be anyone left to make claim to the country of Palestine and it will be swallowed up whole by their neighbors. Not only do the people who return feel like need to take care of their elders but also to respect the thousands of years of ancestors who lived here in Nablus not to mention their own future generations.
It is a lot to think about and ponder.
my war on filth
I here by declare a two week cease fire on my war on filth. Not that I have attacked it enough in the past two months, but i am taking a vacation from being totally annoyed by the huge piles of dirt in every corner, stench in the bathrooms, dirty dishes and trash everywhere and floors that need to be cleaned.
Several new teachers are coming in two weeks at I need to scrub the place down before they come and run away immediately in disgust.
For now i will learn to be at peace with the situation God has handed me....
(we will see how long that lasts, i have never been very good at following through on declarations....just ask any of my dfc friends)
Several new teachers are coming in two weeks at I need to scrub the place down before they come and run away immediately in disgust.
For now i will learn to be at peace with the situation God has handed me....
(we will see how long that lasts, i have never been very good at following through on declarations....just ask any of my dfc friends)
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
student essays
Today my third grade students went to an amusement park with the Arabic teachers. The international teachers stayed home to teach the second and forth graders.
This week in the 3/4 class we have been working on Fiction verses Non-fiction. In class today I had the forth graders write me a fictional essay.
Here are a few of them:
by Bilal.
When I was a baby I lived in Nablus. I like Palestine. I don't like Israel because they kill Palestine people. I went to Israel to find Sharon. He is in Tel Aviv. I saw sharon walking in the street. I had a gun and I killed him for his body. I came back to Nablus. Sharon's policeman came to Nablus and killed Adeeb. So Adeeb's sister killed the police. The American Soldiers then came to Nablus to kill Adeeb's sister. I went behind the trash to hide. All the police shot at the garabage. The garabage exploded. So I ran to my house. The came with a tank and shot at my house. I spilled gas on the tank and lit it on fire. The tank exploded. So I lived.
almost all of their essays were like this....
I am not sure what to think of it...
This week in the 3/4 class we have been working on Fiction verses Non-fiction. In class today I had the forth graders write me a fictional essay.
Here are a few of them:
by Bilal.
When I was a baby I lived in Nablus. I like Palestine. I don't like Israel because they kill Palestine people. I went to Israel to find Sharon. He is in Tel Aviv. I saw sharon walking in the street. I had a gun and I killed him for his body. I came back to Nablus. Sharon's policeman came to Nablus and killed Adeeb. So Adeeb's sister killed the police. The American Soldiers then came to Nablus to kill Adeeb's sister. I went behind the trash to hide. All the police shot at the garabage. The garabage exploded. So I ran to my house. The came with a tank and shot at my house. I spilled gas on the tank and lit it on fire. The tank exploded. So I lived.
almost all of their essays were like this....
I am not sure what to think of it...
Monday, May 4, 2009
Sand Storms
You see them in movies or read about them in books, but today was the first sand storm I had ever been in.... The wind picked up late last night and blew out the electricity for a few hours but it was back on by the time we woke up. From our apartment up on the top of a hill up on the seventh floor it sounded like the rapture was upon us with all it's howling winds. Just walking the 20 feet to the taxi was a bit painful, the wind had a bit of a bite of sand in it and I immediately felt dirty. As the the progress and I would look out the window across the valley of Nablus viability decreased to the point were I couldn't see across the street. Walking the half block to the shop for the chocolate I promised my good students reminded me of the Santa Ana winds back home in LA. Eventually it got a bit better.... Walking home wasn't too bad. The only two things that bugged be when I got home is that the wind and sand blew out our satellite dish and we aren't sure how to get it adjusted so there was no TV at all. AND the new water heater we got is solar powered. Turns out that sand stops the sun from feeding power to the solar panels leaving us with another day of cold showers...
Saturday, May 2, 2009
does it pay to complain????
I finally made a mental list of everything broken in the apartment… and then waited for the right moment to tell our landlord who happens to be one of my bosses and the mother of one of my students about the problems. She called her husband to have it taken care of and he came round a few nights later with his son and several fix it people. Which was great except that the place is a mss. There are four of us who live here and the two of us girls go back and forth on whether to pick up after the guys or not. They refuse to do anything at all: to pick up their trash, wash their dishes, taking out their trash. We sometimes have a lady who cleans for us. She is incredibly cheap less than 15 dollars a week but the boys complain that they resent having someone coming and cleaning up after them, although they don’t mind us girls cleaning up after them.
So the main issue isn’t that the boys are slobs and it sucks to live with them but that the repair people and landlord came by and couldn’t believe what a dump the place was and even though Isabel and my room were very clean they still kept looking at us girls and judging us…
He in the Muslim world we live in it is the girl’s responsibility to keep things clean. I can deal with that if we were playing by Muslim rules because I wouldn’t be living with someone who wasn’t a family member. If these guys were my family members and not my direct boss than I could tell them or expect them to help out in other ways even if they weren’t cleaning.
Here it would be a man’s job to call the repair people and get that organized and then when they show up to help them out or point them in the right direction. When I asked them a few weeks ago about how to get everything fixed they told me they were leaving in a month and it wasn’t their problem. So not only do we get judged about the house not being clean enough and rumors are spread all over school about it but then I had to come home every day for the past four evenings and sit around while the repair people come and go. Mean while the guys are annoyed that I am not at sitting in the office or hanging out after school doing what ever it is they think I should be doing…
Good news for me, today I found scouring powder in the market and bought a dust pan for sweeping… and a whole store filled with all kinds of cleaning supplies that I can’t wait to get back to after pay day!
Despite all of these frustrations, yesterday I got a five minute hot shower and today I think there is hope for another one. They switched us over to a solar powered water heater.... I have hope!
So the main issue isn’t that the boys are slobs and it sucks to live with them but that the repair people and landlord came by and couldn’t believe what a dump the place was and even though Isabel and my room were very clean they still kept looking at us girls and judging us…
He in the Muslim world we live in it is the girl’s responsibility to keep things clean. I can deal with that if we were playing by Muslim rules because I wouldn’t be living with someone who wasn’t a family member. If these guys were my family members and not my direct boss than I could tell them or expect them to help out in other ways even if they weren’t cleaning.
Here it would be a man’s job to call the repair people and get that organized and then when they show up to help them out or point them in the right direction. When I asked them a few weeks ago about how to get everything fixed they told me they were leaving in a month and it wasn’t their problem. So not only do we get judged about the house not being clean enough and rumors are spread all over school about it but then I had to come home every day for the past four evenings and sit around while the repair people come and go. Mean while the guys are annoyed that I am not at sitting in the office or hanging out after school doing what ever it is they think I should be doing…
Good news for me, today I found scouring powder in the market and bought a dust pan for sweeping… and a whole store filled with all kinds of cleaning supplies that I can’t wait to get back to after pay day!
Despite all of these frustrations, yesterday I got a five minute hot shower and today I think there is hope for another one. They switched us over to a solar powered water heater.... I have hope!
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