New post so soon? Yes, I’m motivated to tell some tales of furthering the Rotary mission by spreading goodwill and understanding.
The next sentence, all five words of it, may get me into some trouble somewhere along the line but I think it’s worth it all things considered. I went to Palestine yesterday. I do mean Palestine, as in the area nominally governed by the Palestinian Authority, specifically Ramallah; I’m not ready to tackle all of the political issues surrounding The Conflict here in a humble blog which is intended to record my exploits as an ambassador of goodwill.
About a year ago, someone I consider something of a mentor advised me that, when talking to a large audience, I should “focus on the positive things I can say truthfully and, of course don’t be dishonest, but try not to denigrate other things.” I really liked the thought, and, thinking about it, it kind of reminds me of one of my favorite Disney quotes:
“If you can’t say somethin’ nice, then don’t say anything at all.” (Thumper, Bambi)

So, in the spirit of that advice, I won't speak about my experience at the Israeli border crossing, but I'm happy I can talk about my entire experience in Palestine, which was nothing short of amazing. I’ll explain in a later post, but I magically managed to be driving my car (my beautiful 1996 Jeep Cherokee which I need to take better care of). Trying to reach the city, which is just north of Jerusalem (known as Al-Quds in Arabic), I was completely lost driving along the separation wall. I decided to admit defeat, hang up my pride, and do the unthinkable: ask for directions. My first surprise when I stopped at a gas station was that the gentleman I asked responded immediately in Arabic, which is often not the case in Amman. Second surprise and long story short, I ended up with an elderly Palestinian man in my car showing me where to go.He got out of the car eventually, so he could head to Jerusalem, but he gave me exact directions to the Ramallah Movenpick, where I was scheduled to give a presentation to the Ramallah Rotary Club (is that the first time I mentioned my presentation?).

Driving through Ramallah 10 minutes later, completely lost, despite the precise directions my new friend had given me, I managed to get caught up in the after-school rush between the old Quaker schools, one for boys, the other for girls. I made it through, however, to my dismay, I ended up in the middle of town caught in a flood of people and stalled my car. No problem, just restart it right?...Turn the key…and no go. Immediately I am swarmed by about ten guys, who help me out of the street and started helping me to try to start my car.

First go, try second-gear rolling start. No go. Then another guy jumped in to try it just in case. Still no good. Okay, so I pop the hood and now I have about 6 guys around giving advice. One guy is visiting after some 40 years away; his current home is Florida, where he teaches English and has a family. After a while we determine the motor is overheated, which is baffling to me since I’d never had a problem before, my coolant was full, and my engine oil level was a solid “safe.” So one guy, Mohammed Muathin, a middle-age, tall lanky guy, decided to chill out with me and drink some tea. So we chat for about 30 minutes and decide to try the car again. Still no.

At that point we decide to try the Kahribajii (electrician) or find a mechanic. We roll around Ramallah in a taxi talking to different kahribajiis and nobody can help us because they didn’t have an ampere gauge. Finally we find one guy, ‘Ali, in the middle of one of the refugee camps who can help. We go back to my car with his gear, he tells me to turn the key because he wants to see if there’s a spark, and lo and behold the car starts. Go figure, bring the mechanic and the car behaves. Both the mechanic and Mohammed jump into my car and we roll back into the refugee camp to ‘Ali’s garage so he could double check everything.

The car problem has persisted, but so far I’ve been able to avoid catastrophic failure, despite some close calls. Anyway, Mohammed then drove off with me to take me to the Movenpick. At this point, Mohammed had been with me for three hours… just took three hours out of his day to help me out. Amazing.

So I go to the meeting to give my presentation. I end up only talking for about 5 minutes or so because they had a packed schedule, but I feel really good about what I got to say. Somehow the shorter time I had to speak forced me to be more focused on the message and I think consequently more poignant, thereby better achieving my goal of sharing a little about my home and hopefully bringing it closer to Ramallah.

Afterwards I took my friend, Laura, who was giving her own presentation, around (I haven’t mentioned her to this point because her journey to Ramallah had suddenly and somewhat disturbingly diverged from my own. In keeping with the positivity message, I decided to exclude that part for this blog, I'll just say she was held up at the border for almost 6 hours). I was taking her to meet her friend, a Ramallahan, with whom she was staying. We wander through the very confusing streets of Ramallah, which is spread over a few winding hills, necessitating winding streets. Finally coming into where we needed to go, at about 9:30pm, in the pitch black, my car dies again.

At this point, after all of the difficulties of the day, many of which I’ve not discussed, I’m getting pretty frustrate, as you might imagine. But along came Laura’s friend, Ahmed, and his company, who help me move the car out of the road to cool down. He then announced “Well, nothing to do now but wait then, so come have a drink with us and watch the soccer game.” So I went to hang out with them in downtown Ramallah. After about an hour, I decided I needed to get going because I was heading back over the border to get to class the next day. Ahmed then came along with me, helped me start the car, and took me all the way into the hotel where I was staying.

I woke up early to get an early start to the border. Scratch that- I got completely lost again. I drove across pretty much every corner of Ramallah and its outskirts thinking I was heading in the right direction. Finally, when I realized how hopelessly lost I was, I asked for help and ended up with another nice gentleman in my car who was heading my way again. When I dropped him off, he gave me directions to where I needed to go, I headed about 100 meters down the road, turned the corner, and my car promptly died again. Great.

So I get out, get some water and try to wait for my engine to cool down. I ended up being in the way of a small supply truck and when I told them what was up, they immediately began going through ways to help. After about 15 minutes, we decided to try the rolling start method and- surprise, surprise- it works. As I’m thanking the two guys who helped me by pushing, out walks one of the guys from the day before who smiles, we great each other, and he happily points me in the right direction to get back to the bridge.

That’s pretty much the end of the story of my time in Palestine, as far as the interesting part, anyway. I learned a lot; even things I knew beforehand and had seen beforehand, seeing it all again simply drove the lessons deeper. But since I plan on at least one or two more posts about this trip, I’ll spare more reading for this post and include those lessons later.
As always, thank you for your interest!

Respectfully,

Brennan