Getting Grounded

Today marks my fourth week here. I never thought it would take at least 28 days to settle in. The last four weeks have felt completely groundless and unsettled. With Ramadan dominating daily life here (changes in school and work schedules, openings of business, etc, etc), I have managed to successfully avoid bringing any rhythm or routine to my life. This may have been a good thing in younger phases of my life. But with a young child, it has made my life he&* at times. The only way I've gotten through the past 28 days is just taking each day as it comes.


There are countless ways I know I am in this groundless state - dreams are one. The first two weeks I was here, I was haunted with nightmares on the subject of the packing and moving of my household goods. It was bad enough to actually live it once in reality, but to have to live it over and over again in my dreams was unsettling. Another way is my I know I'm groundless, is my inability to focus on what needs to be done, and the inability to add structure and priority to the things that do need to be done. The groundless-ness not only comes from the lack of routine, but also the lack of having a place I can call home at the moment.

In two days, I'll be moved into my new house. My 400lb air shipment arrived Thursday night with 1 box missing. My heavier sea freight (furniture and such) arrives today. And my official move into the new place will occur the day before a a week long holiday. Perfect timing!

My normal "grounding" routine consists of a daily practice of morning meditation and yoga. The addition of a strong cup of coffee mid-morning is also a help. My yoga mat was packed in the air shipment, and coffee is absent during Ramadan.

As if the climate echos the changes that have happened in the past month, the dry, summer season has ended. Thick fog, rain and winds moved in last evening and at moments this morning, I could barely see the road outside the hotel. Ramallah is on a hilltop so it enjoys a cooler climate than Jerusalem in the summer . That also means the coastal breezes regularly enshroud it with go during the winter. It also reminds me of the world outside the walled West Bank.

Please Listen to Me

It can be frustrating many times over to communicate your needs in a place where not only do you struggle with the language, but where also the culture does not recognize you (either as a woman or a westerner), as having needs that are worthy of their own value. And so, getting myself listened to can be a time-consuming effort.


Recenlty, I went to the barber to get my son's haircut. While my son had his own particular ideas about what he wanted, and I had my own ideas, I thought I might be able to have success with hand gestures and what not. So I walked in and told the owner very clearly, "Short, but NO razor. Razor only on edges" (pointing and gesturing while using my son's head as a model). They of course nodded lots of "yes, yes"es in return, and I thought we'd be OK.


Then a young man walked out of a backroom, and began to cut my son's hair. There was some communication between him and the owner, so I figured all was communicated onward with no problems. The young man soon enough started taking the razor to my son's head. It was the back, so I clarified what I meant, but at that point figured no harm was done, and just told them to keep going with the razor on the back, but keep the top and front longer. Again, this was all done with a spattering of a few words in Arabic, and hand gestures.



When the young man got to the top of my son's head, he started chopping, and kept chopping, and chopping. I realized I was getting close to being in big trouble with my son. So, I asked the guy to stop, it was short enough. He waved me off with what I thought was a, "Ok, ok, just trimming a little more" gesture. And kept chopping and chopping. I started grumbling to myself, "Why, oh why is it so difficult to be listened to!!!" I thought I'd telepathically try to communicate my needs by giving him a hard stare behind his back. Then he made a quick turn around my son and I suddenly saw that he was wearing hearing aids in both ears. Now I was the fool.


I was being so sensitive to this issue based on recent experiences of both school and house hunting - everybody had their opinions, and were trying to convince me that their opinions were what I would feel most comfortable for myself. There was no recognition of, "Whatever will make you happy." In any case, I left the barber pretty happy with my son's haircut, he was unhappy....for a day, and then he decided it was cool!

Searching for a school

I had the option of living in Jerusalem or Ramallah. The commute is not that bad between the two, but I'm all about simplicity in my life, and simplicity would mean living in Ramallah. So the most urgent task at hand was finding a place to enroll my son, an entering first grader. Public schools in this part of the world are severely over-crowded and under-resourced with out-dated teaching methods and poorly trained teachers and administrators. Teaching methods are almost exclusively wrote learning, with no emphasis on building critical thinkers. Basically, they are everything the schools where we are coming from are NOT.

So my only viable option seemed to be the private school route. But given the condition of public schools, complemented by the high value all parents place on education here, finding a spot in a private school was not going to be easy. Private schools, to my great surprise, also suffer from the same issues as public ones. I found this even more disturbing than the stark state of the public schools. In my very-American logic, if a school is charging students a large fee for attending their school, would the school not be responsible for ensuring their teachers are trained in up-to-date teaching methods and providing the best, competitive curriculum? I guess as the demand from students outstrips the supply of schools, it is not really a "buyer's" market.

I hit an all-low point in my search when I visited a school that had been established by an American couple some 20 years ago. I became suspicious from the minute I walked in the door. First, the windows in the doors of the first grade classrooms were covered with black construction paper, making it impossible to see what was going on in the classroom. And my requests to see the classrooms or meet the teachers were met with a firm no. Only after 1 hour of charming the administrators, did they let me briefly visit the classroom which consisted of wooden benches and chairs and a teacher standing in front of a blackboard with chalk and a pointer. One of the American founders of the school then tried to sell me on the curriculum. A web search on the curriculum revealed that it was a home-schooling, full-on christian-based curriculum which lacked creativity. Wonderful! I then learned another important fact - secular education is almost non-existent in this part of the world, even if most student bodies are mixed-religions.

I tried to remain open to the possibility of sending my son to the school until the last 15 minutes of the visit when the director repeated a half of dozen times, "I know your child will be very happy here." Oddly enough, it reminded me of a guy I recently dated who kept imploring that he could make me very happy. How can another being possibly be sure of the fact that they will be able to fulfill your happiness? And if they failed, how would they deal with that? I vowed to run from anybody ever attempting to make such promises. So, with that, I checked off this school from the list of possibilities.

After another round of visits to a handful of schools resembling that one, I then expressed to the universe at large (in the presence of a patient colleague), that what I really desired was to visit a school where children at the elementary level were seated around round tables and not at wooden benches and desks. It seemed like such a trivial request. But I was also becoming worried that I wouldn't be able to find a place where I knew my son would be safe and well-taken care of (being academically challenged in a creative environment seems a little too much to ask for here, so I'll have to provide that at home).

A colleague told me about a private school were his three children had just enrolled and seemed very happy. He also mentioned the facility had an indoor swimming pool, at which my son's ears perked up. I decided to give the school a try, even if the curriculum was mainly in Arabic. The school is located on top of a open, green hill in one of Ramallah's more posh neighborhoods. I was greeted in a friendly manner, with everybody immediately wanting to interact with my son - asking him his name, his age, etc.. My request to visit a classroom was granted immediately with a thorough tour of the entire premises. They opened the door to one of the first grade classrooms, and there sat a bunch of smiling, young faces around a series of round tables. I smiled back, and my colleague (who accompanied me for translation purposes) whispered in my ear, "They have the tables you wanted!" And with that, my decision was made!

Whose time is it anyways?

There are a few infamous episodes in my life that have to do with jetlag and time changes. I'll spare the details here, but suffice to say they usually involved either car accidents or missed appointments due to poorly set watches. So imagine my dismay, on my second day of arrival in country, when I set out a very well-timed schedule of meetings between the West Bank and Jerusalem, only to discover during the preparation of my first meeting of the day that, overnight, the West Bank has fallen back 1 hour behind Jerusalem time.

Really, the focus of this post is to describe how something so relatively insignificant can take on so much meaning here. Ok, maybe time is not totally insignificant.

Let's take the reason behind the time change first. The time change is to put the clock on "winter time" - why winter time when the 100 degree weather outside does not even hint at how cold winters can really get here? In actuality, it has nothing to do with the season, but everything to do with the holy month of Ramadan. By moving the clock back one hour, in essence, the sun sets one hour earlier, basically shortening the hours of fasting by making the assumption that people will sleep in during the bright morning hours. As somebody who is not Muslim, but not a stranger to Ramadan fasting either, this just outright feels like "cheating".

Islam has well answered questions as to how fair it is for Muslims all over the world to fast whether they are in more equatororial locations vs. the extreme hemispheres. As the Islamic calendar is a lunar one, the month of Ramadan shifts about 10 days every year, meaning in a person's lifetime, they will fast several times in winter and summer, thus "equalizing" out the time all Muslims fast across the world. That sounds reasonable to me. So....why the need to change the clock? And how fair is it when you have muslims on the other side of a wall who have to fast one more hour? But the real question is, why make it more confusing for everybody by changing the time?!<

It is certainly kind of nice to arrive here and settle in here in the month of Ramadan, or so it would seem. Things generally move at a slower pace. Then again, it can be frustrating as....things move at a slower pace. Suddenly the "it is Ramadan" excuse pops up as a response to even the most insignificant requests. But it also gives me a nice excuse to take it easy a bit!