Rain

Today was a typical day in Nablus apart from the rain. I could have stayed at home for that! The morning had been very hot so it did cool the place down a bit. I had just one class at 3pm so I got up late and wandered around. Back to my diet of cocktails (fruit and ice cream) for breakfast and Schwarma for lunch. The class turned out to be just 3 students which I expected as the class hadn't run for a week or so. Hopefully there will be more next time but it makes it difficult to plan what to do as I still don't know most of the students and I will only be teaching them for two classes. I am sure this improves my teaching in general as I easily managed to fill an hour this afternoon with no resources and a whiteboard but no pens. The class finished early as most of the students had failed to show so I was back at Project Hope in time for a meeting that was to decide my next classes. I will be teaching an advanced class on Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday with a monster 4hr session on Saturday. I hadn't planned to leave Nablus for the weekend and as tomorrow is the end of the first week I am here I felt that I should do all that I can.

Being here this time around is making me consider the reasons for my being here in much more detail than I have previously done so. This is probably because self consciously I know that these thoughts will be used to shape my dissertation at a later date.

I know that development work is notoriously depressing and a long slog but I'm not sure if my way of going about it is the best approach. Just before I left I seem to have been bombarded with the name of an individual I had never heard of before, Rory Stewart. I first saw him being interviewed on TV about foreign intervention in Afghanistan and then I read about his work in Kabul in magazine that I picked up by chance. There are very few people that capture my attention and fawning over celebrities is something I cannot understand. Here was someone I immediatley admired and I ordered some of his books before I left for Nablus. Having his approach and way of doing things in my mind before I left is shaping what I am seeing now that I am here.

In many ways I think that the way Project Hope works is much better than the bigger organisations such as the UN and red cross (especially in light of what I heard about them in last nights talk). They have a local staff and local volunteers. The international staff fit around everyone else like they should do. The Palestinians initiate the classes not foreign donors.

How useful my being here for short periods of time I constantly question. On one hand I have a better idea than most (and certainly more than those who have never been to Palestine) of what it feels like to be Palestinian so I can put the international machinations into a real life lived context (unlike many commentators on the conflict). On the other hand I don't speak Arabic or Hebrew so can't gain a proper understanding of how the majority of people here really feel. People I work with do really appreciate my efforts and the man in charge of the centre where I taught today was proof of this. Having worked with him a lot over the summer and his daughter having told him the day before that I was in Nablus he was very pleased to see me. I was in an elevator at the time... Everyone around was a little shocked by his enthusiasm but I had come to expect it. Unfortunately my somewhat reserved demeanour didn't come close to matching his own. During my class he burst in with his laptop to show me a picture of us both with a class from last year. He was glad to see me but also disappointed to know that I would only be in Nablus for a very short time. Rory Stewart and not promising more than you can give sprang
immediately to mind.

A final thought before this post turns into a book. Going from the local to the international I regularly tell people that saying it is OK to bomb Hamas because their charter calls for the destruction of Israel is very selective. Firstly because they have later denounced this and secondly because the charter of the Likud party asserts something similar and this has not been denounced:

"The charter of Netanyahu’s Likud party expressly prohibits Israel from giving up the occupied territory that would be used to create a Palestinian state. When he was sworn in last week the prime minister offered negotiations to the Palestinians but not on the basis of the two-state principle." (from http://www.maannews.net/en/index.php?opr=ShowDetails&ID=36935 )