Mar 08 newsletter

good cateress newsletter Feb/Mar 08

Looking out at the garden struggling to remind itself that the warm weather and the growing season is right around the corner. I can only muse on spending winters in a warmer climate. Los Angeles quickly comes to mind, but I have been there on a chilly gray rainy day. Somehow it is worse as we expect something different.

Almost thirty years ago, I had the same thoughts of escaping the gray of an English winter. In our group many of us had talked of going to spend a winter on a Kibbutz in Israel. Simon and his girlfriend Clare, had in fact left in October and were writing home of warmth, sunshine and friendship. Jane and I talked it over, deciding that in the New Year we would head off ourselves. We would go with a group; we applied, our money was sent. We went to London and met the rest of the group. We would be on our way on 2 January.

What to take? We knew the evenings would be colder, but were hopeful the days would all be warm and sunny. Mum always insisted I take a nice dress. I might meet someone that was getting married and be invited to attend their wedding. This always seemed very far fetched but it was easier to just pack the dress. I would pack a dress every time I traveled!

Dad drove us up to Iver to stay with Hazel and John, dear family friends from whence we launched many an adventure.

Our flight was delayed, nothing much has changed. We landed at an almost deserted Ben Gurion at 11pm. Our group was herded on to a school bus that took us to Givat Brenner, a large kibbutz outside Rechevot. As we drove up the road to the entrance we saw a chain link fence topped with barbed wire, armed guards and dogs. Silence fell as this was not what we had expected at all, but the reality was we were in a war zone.

The following day we were given a tour of the Kibbutz, it was a small town and not at all the agrarian dream we had imagined.

That night we received our first assignments, I was to report to the furniture factory at 6am! My job to bang pegs into the holes, used to hold Ikea style furniture together. Did I mention this was not what I had expected? To cap the day off, the food was awful. The vegetables had all been cooked with sugar. It was also cold and wet.

I did go on to a few other jobs, picking oranges and grapefruit, which was far more what I had dreamt about. I ended up gardening, although being on my knees weeding a lawn was also a bit excruciating. However, I was outside in public areas and the kibbutzniks started to talk to me. Because I had limited German, I could understand some Yiddish and it seemed that I was the first person many Kibbutzniks had spoken to who had lived in Berlin since the 1930’s. Men and women came to talk to me about Berlin, curious about what remained.

Also at Givat Brenner I met some older Israeli’s, intellectuals, who had arrived in Palestine to start a kibbutz around the time of the 1st World War. Buying land from Palestinians, working alongside each other to create the first Kibbutz all filled with zeal for their new lives, creating communes, living their dream.

But this was still not what I had imagined. Jane and I took the bus from Tel Aviv to Tiberius to visit Simon who was up in the Jordan Valley at Kibbutz Ashdot Yaaqov. Once we left Tel Aviv, Israel began to look how I had imagined. White villages dotting the hillside; Bedouin women riding donkeys, looking colourful and beautiful in their native costumes.

Coming down out of the hills into Tiberius with the Sea of Galilee in front of us. I knew this was where I was supposed to be.

Ashdot Yaaqov was the agrarian place I had imagined. Banana trees, date palms, farming and it was smaller. In the middle of the Jordan Valley, in fact part of the farm land was in Jordan. There are 2 Ashdot Yaaqovs, I was at Mechud, the more socialist, so poorer half; Likkud, next door was richer, so they had two movies a week, which was lucky for us. The food was better, healthier, more salads.

The kibbutz was mostly made up of small one family bungalows. Each bungalow had a garden. One garden in particular I remember well, had planted sweet peas along their chain link fence and it was a mass of blooms and you could smell the sweet peas intensely. Other gardens had different color Bougainvillea and Hibiscus. Sitting outside one afternoon I heard a rustling in the long grass and a tortoise appeared.

Ten days later I moved to Ashdot Yaaqov. We were about 60 volunteers, housed in two buildings opposite each other. There were three to a room, I finally settled with Lidija and Hannah. The volunteers were mostly European with Australians, Kiwis and a couple of Japanese guys thrown in. We volunteers had our own bomb shelter which we had turned into a bar open a couple of nights a week. Friday nights we had a dance. In the past the bomb shelters had been essential because when Syria had owned the Golan Heights they would sit and bomb the valley.

Originally my job was cleaning pots and pans, there was nothing glamorous about this but I didn’t object, this was a world I knew well. I am sure no one is surprised that I ended up running the morning dining room? I would get up at 6 and make eggs for everyone; scrambled, omelettes, fried, I learnt how everyone liked their eggs. After breakfast, when the later crew arrived we would clean and get everything ready for lunch. I never quite got used to the kibbutznik love for fish heads, but everything else was really good. Healthy and fresh.

Each evening at dusk a swarm (?) of Starlings flew back up the Jordan Valley to roost at the Sea of Galilee. It was quite amazing, you knew they were coming you would hear them, and as they flew over you prayed not to be hit by bird droppings as it fell like rain.

Some evenings we would gather odds and ends of wood to light a fire, sitting around chatting. Slowly different people would emerge from the houses, we would start singing favourite songs. The stars were shining brightly down on us all.

I happened to be in Jerusalem, catching a bus back up the Jordan Valley to Asdot Yaaqov on March 26 1979 the day that Menachem Begin, Anwar Sadat and Jimmy Carter signed the peace treaty, returning the Sinai to Egypt. I had just learnt not to put my bag down at the bus station when the biggest clap of thunder roared overhead as prelude to a huge storm. It started to hail. Everyone was muttering about it being a bad omen. Back at the Kibbutz TV’s had been rented so that we could watch this Historical moment. Most of us cried.

We all talked about moving on, maybe flying down to Mombassa; St. Tropez to sell peanuts on the beach; Greek Island to work in a bar. I decided to go home the day I walked out of the air conditioned dining room at 10 am and it was 41 degrees Celsius, it felt like I had walked into a wall of heat. The following day the Israeli army were running through the Kibbutz with loaded Bazookas as there were reports that terrorists had come through the fence from Jordan.

Easter was a few days away, it was Spring in England, light evenings and warmer weather. I packed my bags and headed home.

The daffodils are coming up, spring is on its way.