recruitment

on a windy monday morning i woke up at the crack of dawn. literally, the sky outside my window went from dark to light during the 15 minutes it took me to drag myself out of bed, throw on some clothes and pack my wallet, notebook and an apple in a bag.

at 6am i was waiting at the bus stop with zohar, fareed and hassan. 3 buses and 2.5 hours later we had met up with renana and arrived at the denmark high school in west jerusalem where the weather was rainy and cold. the security guard at the gate of the school made us wait, shivering in our wet shoes, while he eyed fareed and hassan with suspicion and radioed the office to see if we had permission to be admitted.

once given this security clearance we entered the school where we were ushered into the teachers lounge to dry off, warm up and be warned that there are some difficult students/classes. when zohar noted that the soda machine in the hallway was protected by iron bars, we started to wonder what kind of kids we were about to meet.

these 4 (out of 6) commune volunteers were on a routine recruitment trip to talk to high school students around the country about sadaka reut and try to enlist potential participants for the arab-jewish youth groups, and i had tagged alone for the ride. after 15 or so minutes in the teachers lounge the 9 o’clock song rang (israeli schools get little ditties rather than bells) and it was time for us to give our shpiel in the classrooms.

originally on the phone, we had been told we could talk to 12 classes- all of the 9^th, 10^th and 11^th graders. but once we were there they remembered monday is a bad day schedule-wise and actually, there were only a few classes available. in the end we spoke to just 3 classes, received a decent dose of high school student bravado mostly in the form of snide or sarcastic comments, watched one kid get kicked out of class and got the name and phone number of one young man (out of almost 50 students we spoke to) who was possibly interested in joining the jerusalem arab-jewish dialogue group.

just over an hour after our arrival at the school, we left and began making our way back to yafo on another 3 buses. we treated ourselves to pastries at the central bus station and by noon we were back in the office. even two days later, im still not really sure how to evaluate the success of the trip.

now that the holidays (jewish and muslim) are over, things have kicked into overdrive at work. in addition to recruitment trips all over the country, some projects are actually starting and everyone is planning and programming in a frenzy. my work at al-rabita finally began this week as well and i am co-teaching an english class designed to help high school students prepare for their bagrut (matriculation exams). the other teacher is going to take care of grammar and that fun stuff so i get to do conversation and be the token american. the program is sponsored by the u.s. embassy and it is supposed to cover american “culture and values” in addition to language. so somehow ive ended up working (albeit indirectly) for the government.

and speaking of americans, bill clinton is scheduled to speak this saturday at kikar rabin (rabin square) in tel aviv as part of country-wide commemorations for the 10^th anniversary of rabin’s assassination. i dont think this country ever rests.