First week in Sha'ar Hanegev (#3)
Hebrew in other post
On Friday morning we decided to go on a hike in the area. We drove south to Be’eri to check out the big famous bike store. The store was closed, but we did see some people there. We met a father and daughter from Be’eri – and after chatting with them about good hikes in the area, and the fact that the bike store was closed (what ?– you think kibbutzniks will work on a Friday??) we discovered that they not only know our friends from Be’,eri , who are currently in Boston, but they are good friends and had just received pictures from them. Small world. They also were very interested in how we decided to leave Boston with the snow and come to Sha’ar Hanegev.
We went on a beautiful hike with fields of wild anemones – the whole south of Israel in this season is called “Darom Adom” or ”red south” since there are red anemones flowering all over. We went on a hike but did not see any other hikers or people on foot – we did see cyclists, motorcyclists, jeeps, ATV’s and horses and many picnicking couples and families.
We spent the weekend in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem with our children, and my parents, which is such a bonus that we are so close, on the same continent.
On Sunday we spent the morning on errands in Tel Aviv and then drove south to Kfar Aza for our first full week on our new “job”. We had another packed car with additional things we collected for our house – to make it homier. Sunday afternoon is our time to be together as a group of volunteers. We did some interesting things and learned more about each other. Noni and I suggested a game – since we were curious about the ages of the other participants, we assumed they too were curious about that. We suggested that we try to organize ourselves in our age order. Each person should get up, in a random order of how wee were seated, and place themselves on the “age” line as older or younger than the person or people already on the line… after everyone had a spot – we had the oldest person start and check if the next person was in the right spot… we continues until everyone was in the right order, we did have a buch of people that guessed themselves younger or older…… and our age range is 56-72. Noni and I are in the middle – younger half.
On Monday we started our first week of volunteering in the schools. I am in the elementary school Alonim, supporting the students in English. Noni is in the high school, supporting the students in math. My days were quite full as I met the students in 4th to 6th grade. My work began with small groups of the stronger students, and then small groups with all students and we worked on getting to know each other. In my role as supporting English, I only speak in English to the students, to a point that they are not even sure if I speak Hebrew. In our first meeting they told me about themselves, what they wanted to share – like where they live, what they like to do (a lot of video games, scrolling and annoying their siblings…) . I also told them where I live – in Kfar Aza. Some of the children responded that I must now be in Ruhama – which is where all the displaced families from Kfar Aza have been relocated to. I confirmed that I am in Kfar Aza. Some children said that they thought it was impossible to live there as all the houses had been burned down. I assured them that most of the houses were not burned and that there were other people living there too. Some asked if I was scared to live there. I said that now there is a cease fire so I am not scared. I did not share that I am not sure how I will feel if and when the cease fire ends.
Some other fun interactions I had with students, was when I took out a small group of girls and it was clear by the sour face of one of the girls that she did not want to be there. (The teacher introduced me and my work as a gift and that I should not deal with behavior problems and anyone who didn’t want to be with me did not need to go…). During the “getting to know you” chat this girl slowly participated. Later that day I was in the same class, ready to take a different group when that same girl raised her hand and said: “wait, we didn’t finish our discussion with Karin – we want to continue now!” So I took them out for a few more minutes.
On Thursday, as we were driving into Kfar Aza, I saw two girls walking on the sidewalk , and as we drove past I realized they were my students and they also recognized me – and we stopped to chat for a minute … as soon as I started speaking to them in English they said: “Karin, can we please speak in Hebrew – we are not at school now!” so we chatted in Hebrew.
Our evenings have also been quite busy, starting with Sunday evening in our group activities, and the following day we went to a talk given by the curator from Yad Ben Tzvi (a research, culture and education institute focusing on research of Eretz Israel, Israeli communities and Jerusaelm) and the archivist from Kfar Aza, who are working on a project of Trauma Objects that they are collecting from the kibbutz – from homes that underwent trauma. We watched a short film showing their process of collecting and preserving these objects. In the first days after October 7th the focus of everyone was on saving people and no one really thought of the objects. They right away realized the importance of preserving the objects as they really show the trauma that the people suffered – documenting the extent of the devastation in the homes and on the kibbutz. Even now, as we walk on the kibbutz we see signs of the devastation – bullet holes in houses, shattered windows, broken doors and more. Since this is a big project they are always looking for more volunteers and mentioned that if we have extra time we could also volunteer there.
On other evenings we had dinner with other people from our group, went on walks (and I even went on a run) around the kibbutz. One evening as we were walking into our house, a couple walked by and asked who we were and we explained… They were very excited and said they had heard about our group.. we were just sharing that we were excited that our gas had been connected so we would be able to cook – and they said: “We have warm soup at our house – come join us for dinner!” We couldn’t refuse such an invitation so we went to their house for dinner. They are a local Kfar Aza family and moved back into their house a few months ago. We discovered that we have many things in common – we like cycling, running (she invited me to join her running group), we both have adult children around the same ages (they already have grandchildren), and they lived abroad with their family for a few years. They told us about their experience of October 7th. Everyone in their family is OK. They were not on the kibbutz, and had friends staying in their house. Their daughter, who also lived on the kibbutz was in the safe room for over 20 hours with two young children. She refuses to enter the kibbutz since then. The couple were following the events closely through their connections and said the war was being conducted on Whatsapp – people were sharing what was going on, where terrorists were, how to locate people and other instructions to stay safe. At a certain point there was concern that terrorists had infiltrated the Whatsapp groups – the instructions given didn’t make sense or the language was weird – so they closed the groups and reopened them with identification. They also told us that one of the neighborhoods was not infiltrated because of the bravery of a few people that managed to hold off a large group of terrorists for several hours. At the end of the dinner they gave Noni a road bike to use while we are here!
Another story of October 7th from one of the teachers at school. He lives on a kibbutz that is a little farther from the border. He slept in on Saturday morning and woke up to a long list of messages and missed calls – this is how he learned about the terrorists. He does not have a safe room, so he shut and locked his door, blocked it with his refrigerator, and lined the hall with canned goods (to throw at anyone who might try to break in) and hid in a room. He read in the family Whatsapp group that his brother went out to fight terrorists at other places and they did not hear from him until very late at night when he returned to the kibbutz after saving many lives by fighting many terrorists. This teacher also said he has a cat, that likes to go outside all the time, but for the whole day of October 7th and the following few days the cat did not move or go outside at all.
Thursday was a difficult day in Israel with the return of 4 hostages that were taken alive and brutally murdered in Gaza, including Shiri Bibas and her two children, Ariel and Kfir 4 and 9 months and Oded Lifshitz (84) and they were returned to Israel in coffins. These children were red – headed and the color orange has become their symbol. We received orange tulips on our first day and they are in our windowsill – pictured below. I was lucky to be at work all day on Thursday so did not read and follow the news, The children in the elementary school were busy being children – thankfully.
We decided to stay in Kfar Aza on Thursday night , to relax and wind down from an intense week, We also went to Sderot to pick up a Microwave that was donated to us. The woman who donated it had recently moved to the area and invited us to join the study group they organize once a week with people recently moved to the area.. they discus various topics and eat soup and bread… Maybe we will join them some time.