Crashing down
Trip Start
Nov 13, 2006
1
74
80
Trip End
Oct 21, 2008
Arava,
Israel
Friday, August 1, 2008
I walk about 400m (past the horse that bit me) to work. It's already getting hot and there is an offish smell in the air, but I'm soon in my nice air conditioned office where I say hi to Sarah - the intern who works in my office - and continue my analysis of the APC alpha site, where they are testing solar panels. Before long I am life coaching Sarah, who is telling me about her latest agonizing decision
kibbutz Ketura
. We go to lunch about 12.30. The dining hall is full of 16 year olds in tour groups who are piling food with a kind of enthusiasm that only people who haven't had the same lunch 10 times can muster. The vet who wears dungarees and a cowboy hat complains about people in his way, the woman who shuffles when she walks is getting a drink, and the 100 or so regular diners are sat in their usual groupings.
I work until about 16.30 when I go to the pool. Udi is sat on a chair with a book in his usual spot, as is Danielle, but Mya is lying on her front. The life guard is playing Sheshbesh and a tour-group is splashing about in the water. The tour group leader tells them that the coach is leaving and suddenly the atmosphere is quite tranquil. That is until the sound of "its raining men" starts up on the music system. Middle aged and slightly overweight American women are happily bobbing up and down in the pool - the 5pm water aerobics class has started.
At 6pm I go for dinner - a dairy meal consisting of left over dishes from the previous few days regurgitated into something which on occasion can be surprisingly tasty. The dining hall is much quieter now; there are no tourgroups and most kibbutz members eat dinner at home. Aliza walks in with her kids trailing behind her like a Mother duck with ducklings. "clean up the volunteer area or I'll keep your deposits" she snaps at the volunteers -abrasive like sandpaper, to the point like a compass, and yet with the bluntness of a well used pencil.
Walking out the dining hall I see Joel with Hesi and a couple of others sat on the bench outside the shop, the Thai workers are sat round their wooden table eating beetles, dining hall Jeff is sat out with a book and some chilled out music, while the volunteers are playing music which is anything but chilled out, and drinking out on the grass.
I sit in the quieter area to study some Ivrit or read a book. Sometimes I lie in the hammock. It overlooks the basket ball court and the Jordanian mountains, which by 7pm are glowing red as they reflect the setting sun.
I might go join the volunteers, or I might go the guest house café to continue my studies. They don't like volunteers coming in (even though volunteers clean their rooms), but they don't seem to mind me too much. On other nights I might play football with the Israelis, or go for a run. Three nights a week the pub is open. Its not very busy and the drinks are cheap.
It's nice to have a routine. Everyone on the kibbutz seems to have a routine. What is scary is when you start to know other peoples routines. The longer you stay here, the more you become part of an integrated whole, who all know the most intimate details of each other's lives, like one collective, bickering, and yet united, whole.
It looks like my future is not to become a part of that whole. The APC don't want to pay me for the work I am doing and I am not willing to volunteer indefinitely. I will leave the kibbutz in just over a week. Even though I had planned for this outcome, and in many ways was relieved that I would not be living in this eccentric place in the middle of the desert for the next 6 months, it is unsettling. Suddenly I started doing something I hadn't really done for the last 6 weeks; I started trying to plan my life. I started worrying.
The West cherishes freedom so much that it will fight in its name. Given the choice most humans will naturally put themselves in situations where they have more options, and over the last century the options have increased exponentially. Have humans evolved as quickly as those options? I doubt it. Perhaps we should all go back to communities like the kibbutz where decisions are taken as a whole rather than left to relatively primitive individuals.
...then again I'm looking forward to choosing my food.
