Happy Thanksgiving from Hebron

Happy Thanksgiving from Hebron
November 30, 2002

Hi everyone,

Happy Thanksgiving! We had a delegation here and had nothing on the table which looked like traditional holiday food. I made maqlube ('upside down') chicken and rice; Mary made grated potato salad; and John made a lentil-egg bake. We've now been eating leftovers for the past two days so that is something our team is sharing in common with all of you. This is the first close encounter I've had with a raw chicken. It didn't seem like such a tough thing at the butcher shop, but when I got home and took it out of the bag there was still a chicken head attached. This was not a happy experience for myself. Kristin looked on in horrified fascination as I tried to figure out how to prepare the bird. Fortunately, there were experienced chicken-handlers on the delegation that came to the rescue. Yesterday was my first try at boiling chicken stock. That was much easier. Later we will have maqlube soup. Overall though, I think many of us on team will be extolling the virtues of vegetarian eating while on project for some time to come.

Things are thankfully quieting down in Hebron, we are not needed to stay with families near the new settlement quite as often as a few weeks ago. Curfew was lifted yesterday in the Old City and it sprang to life. We all went on shopping spree to stock up from our neighbors. This is the team's small-scale practice of economic justice. Sure, food is available in some neighborhoods any day of the week. But we try to wait on stocking up until our immediate neighbors are open so that they have some income in order to keep their shops in the neighborhood for the long haul. Only two shops still open on the souk road leading down to the Avraham Avinu settlement. When I first came here, there were at least fifteen shops and multiple fruit and vegetable vendors. Now it is a parking lot for settlers, heaps of razor wire, and a lonely alley.

Anyway, my shopping spree totals came to nearly $200 the other day. I thought about how common this is in a week's shopping for many families in the US at the supermarket or Wal-Mart; here it is more than most of our neighbors make in a month, sometimes two.

It is just now getting bitterly cold though the sun is out today. Yesterday's heavy rains and hail dropped the temperatures rapidly. Due to the curfews, we haven't been able to get gas tanks for our heaters, and are trying to conserve our cooking gas. It will be at least another week before gas is available to us. We're laying in more emergency supplies (non-perishables, etc.) now that we've experienced such a long and intense invasion. Again, it is possible to buy food in some shops far away from the office. But other families are competing for the supply, it's a long distance for heavy items, and it takes away from our other tasks and energies. (Like going to the store for our neighbors who cannot leave the house under curfew). Most of our neighbors do have stocks of some foodstuffs to last for months, but need bread and milk for children on a regular basis. Finally now, after some three weeks, the Red Cross has been allowed to distribute aid packages, and families have had some access to fresh food.

It was a real blessing throughout the invasion that our upstairs neighbor mom sent plates of Palestinian cooking down to us. Her daughter explained this was how she was coping with the curfews, by compulsive cooking. This was great for us--we were so tired or so few in the apartment come dinnertime that sometimes it was our dinner. Otherwise it was just a good morale booster. We try to keep up the neighborly ties by filling the empty plates with things they might not be able to get--like produce when we could find it, or sweets.

Now, it is time again to make supper here--heating up the soup, and then to clean the kitchen (my chore today) and then all of us are going to curl up in the the same room around our electric heater. While the weather has been turning, I've been getting back into my cross-stitch bag and back into the kitchen where I am happy to work over a hot range for a couple of hours in the afternoon. The conversation in the evenings is good and the pace is slowed. I realize how grateful I am to experience this kind of living, which is now so foreign in the U.S. I hope I will be able to maintain it when I return. Although, I think it is a major reason I may not spend much time in the U.S. after seminary. Our hurried pace does not fulfill us, and our families and friends are lost in the rush.

I've spent a lot of time with Palestinian families from a range of incomes over the past week. In every case, the family is together all evening around the heaters. To keep their bodies warm enough, they serve hot coffee, tea, and milk several times throughout the evening. At night, everyone of the same gender climbs into the same beds, or bedroom, and shares heavy covers. It is in this need for survival that the community and family relationships are nurtured. In one home with my friends the Abu Haikals, I sat tucked in next to Hannah and Lena for hours, cross-stitching with them and catching up on two months' worth of news. It felt luxurious. Even the wealthiest families I know here do not have the material possessions we have in an average home, and the political strife hangs over their heads daily, where it barely touches us at home. But what they do have that most of us have traded in for our affluence, like patience and strong family ties--is far more precious.

Happy Thanksgiving, and encouraging reflection on where our priorities lie,

Le Anne