Best laid plans go awry......

I finally got away for my placement visit to Jayyous on Saturday and was to be picked up by Muawya in Ramallah, but unfortunately, he got picked up by the Israeli police the night before, arrested and eventually, 8 hours later, was released. However, his taxi, So Far So Good, was not released and kept in prison. Apparently, there is a discrepancy between what his paperwork for the car says and what the Israeli computers say. After he had been hand-cuffed, leg shackled, paid a 2000 NIS fine ($556.00), produced all the required paperwork, he was let go but his car was not. He can ill afford the fine and the loss of income while his taxi is in prison. He takes all this in his stride and with good humour – he said that the worst part was he couldn’t smoke for the first 5 hours. Then the policeman invited him outside for a cigarette, so he showed how he waddled across the floor with his legs bound. He said when they gave him his phone back to call Sewar, his brother, to bring him the money, he first took a picture of his feet! He later told me that he will be secretly very worried until So Far So Good is back home.



I can’t imagine how it must have felt to be treated like this for some kind of alleged traffic infraction. A little overkill, I think!

I continued on my journey by taking a service to Tulkarm and visiting a friend, Samar, who I missed the last time I was there. Muawya borrowed his brother’s taxi and drove me to Jayyous about 7 p.m. One of my colleagues, Sophie, cooked a vegetarian Thai dinner – the last thing I would have expected in Jayyous – which was fabulous! She had invited two of the locals, Noor and Mufaq, to join us but they had great difficulty with the spicy-ness. It was quite funny to watch them trying to be polite, as we are often called on to do in Palestinian homes.

As I sit writing this with my headphones on listening to John Mayer, I keep turning up the volume to drown out the Muzeen hollering from the mosque and a very loud donkey outside my bedroom window. Needless to say, I did not sleep very well last night. There is no glass in the windows of my room, just a screen and some type of plastic shutters. Between heavy rain and wind, thunder and lightening, Muzeens and donkeys, sleeping is just one of the many West Bank challenges we EAs face.

Today, I went with Sophie to the South Gate in Jayyous, which opens between 8:00 and 8:15 to let the farmers get to their land and tomorrow, we will go to the North Gate. David, the other Canadian EA and I left for church in Nablus about 9:00 arriving late in Nablus about 11:00, missing the sermon but just in time for communion. Of course, we followed church with lunch at the Yasmine Hotel in Nablus, an activity which I loved doing during my first stay. On the way back, we got out of the service at the village of Azzun to visit Afaf, a lady who is a good friend to EAs. She insisted on feeding us more but I was able to convince her I was very full from lunch and only had room for dessert, which Sophie had already warned me about – some brown wobbly stuff of unknown origin. David obliged by eating nearly another whole meal.

Tomorrow, I will go back to Bethlehem – not sure how I will travel. Today was the Jewish holiday of Purim so all the CPs from the West Bank to Israel were closed to West Bank ID holders. Not sure about tomorrow!