We just left Gaa Al Qureen Developement Center in Khan Younis.
It was a very moving experience. The women were all so open to talking and sharing their lives. They were personable and warm and so interested in these strangers. Very interested in pleasing us and making us feel welcome.
Our group of 62 had been divided into 3 groups on 3 separate buses and then each of those groups was divided into groups of 3 people each.
My group went to a rural center that has been ran by a man and his wife for about the last 15 years.
Our program included discussion groups, Dabka, poetry, energizing games, group games, skits, crafts, and bread making. These were divided up into sessions. For reasons I could not figure out we would be in the discussion group, then all of a sudden someone would come to the door, it seemed to me, frantic and we would go off to another activity and then after awhile return to the discussion group. This happened 3 or 4 times.
In my discussion group there were probably about 25 women. We all set on the floor. They offered me a chair, (and tea)but everyone else was on the floor without tea. Everyone was dressed in black and had there heads covered. Only one woman was completely covered and she even stopped her participation in our group and prayed during the time we were in the room. Every one else just went about their business and paid her no mind. Many of the women were very eager to share the details of their limited and oppressed lives. . One older woman said she was very unhappy to not know how to read. She said she had traveled somewhere once and could not know where she was or what to do because she could not read the signs.
A vivacious, cute, precocious women told the moving story of how she had been force to quite school, which she loved and was very good at and get married when she was 14. She was unable to have children for several years and because of this she lost her status in the family. She did have 2 children later and said that now at the age of 24, with the help of the development center, she is finally happy.
The center is a huge part of these women's lives living out in the middle of a very rural area. Many of them had no contact with the world outside their village until the center opened.
That same 24 year old asked me later if I was just there to look and then I will go back home and they will again be forgotten.
My insufficient answer to what I could do about this huge injustice being done to this group of imprisoned people was " I will not forget you. I have come to visit and to listen to you and I will go back home and talk about you and tell everyone what I saw until they are tired of listening to me and still I will continue to tell them of what I can attest to is happening in Gaza because I saw it with my own eyes"
The resilience of these women and all of the people I met in Gaza was truly amazing and inspiring. Their joy when they welcomed us and shared what little they had with us. Their gratitude to us that we would even think to visit and care about them.
The center also included a sports center with exercises machines, a computer lab with a special program to learn how to drive, a craft center and a library.
The women took us upstairs to a room filled with the craft items they had made. They served us chocolates from a basket and had candles lit around on the floor. One girl got too close to one of the candles and her long dress caught on fire. She was very calm, bent over and smashed it out with her hand and waved off my sympathies with a "Oh don't worry." There was a hole the size of a quater and I wondered how she would afford to but another dress or if she would have to wear this burned one for a long time to come.
We went up on the roof right before lunch. Several women were baking bread on a small hand made mud stove. I was told they had used these for baking bread many years ago and have to return to using them since the siege. They seemed to think it a rather funny joke that they were hurting the siege because of their cleverness in knowing how to make and use these primitive stoves and called it their "siege buster".
At lunch we had skewers of barbecued beef and chicken with a few vegetables. Also yogurt, bread (of course) and bottles of soda. At lunch another woman told us her story of having lived in Jordan . Her husband and daughter were killed in a fire at heir home. She moved back to Gaza to bee near the rest of her family. She said she lives in fear every day because her 2 remaining children can be taken away from her any time by her brother in law because she no longer has a husband. She has a gentleman right now who is interested in marrying her but she can not because her children will be taken from her for sure if she remarries. Even though, she states, she is a very good mother and loves her children dearly and her brother in law does not care for them at all. Never sees them or even talks to them. She also stated she can not just move away because her family is all here and she needs them.
We were entertained by a skit with all the parts played by women. I did not understand it all but the just of it was about a young girl being forced to get married at the age of about 14. She begged her mom and aunt to not make her quit school and get married but they could not go against her father's wishes. When the father came in the room all the children ran away in fear.
My favorite part of the visit was the music and dancing. What seemed like reserved, quiet women became quit the opposite while dancing and singing. The 24 year old who told her story earlier was singing and dancing like crazy. She could also do that belly dancer yoddle with her tongue which she did often and loudly.
Then on Monday, March 23, 2009 this article appeared in the paper:
Israell Opens Fire on Gaza
Gaza Strip, 23 March, 2009-(The PT) The Isreali army launched several air attacks on the Gaza Strip. KhanYounis City, mid of the occupied Gaza Strip, faced heavy Israeli bombings from the naval forces in the western part.
I may have only known those women for a day but I feel they are my friends and I care about them and what happens to them. I wonder if any of them were hurt in those attacks. I wonder if they were afraid. I wonder if they had their children next to them or if they had to worry and wonder if their babies were hurt or if they were even alive. I wonder if they still have homes to go to. I wonder if they are living in tents. I wonder if they still have a center to help them cope with the injustices and struggles of their everyday lives. I wonder if they can still laugh and dance and sing.
I will try to think only of the dancing. The laughing. The singing.
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