Settlements roll over the hills in the West Bank near Bethlehem.
When we were last here in 1996, Bethlehem - just a 15-minute drive from central Jerusalem - was a bustling, prosperous town. We could drive there without being hassled at checkpoints. Not now. Now we have to sneak in through someone's driveway.
Eight years ago the shops around Manger Square were full of tourists (despite the fact that water was regularly cut off to the town's merchants). Today most of the shops are closed for good; few restaurants are doing well.
Getting to work in Jerusalem can take several hours a day for Palestinian Christians and Arabs. And now the Wall is encroaching on the town's outskirts, slicing throught the communities. 
Wednesday, May 11, 2005
Visiting Bethlehem - a sad and desperate town
Independence Day in Israel: Fireworks
Today the Israelis are celebrating their 57th Independence Day and flags are flying from apartment balconies, from cars and taxis and from flagpoles all over the city. A few days ago, just to make sure we knew what was expected of us, our morning paper came with large free flag tucked inside.
It has been a joyful day for Israelis and tonight in my quiet apartment I hear music and cheering and honking horns float across the neighbourhood. Just a few minutes ago popping and whistling noises began outside; when I went out on the terrace to investigate I saw that a block away fireworks had started.
Last night was quite different. It was a day of remembrance, to mourn the dead of the Intifada and other wars. A horn blew for a long time and the whole city stopped.
Late last night I took David to the airport in Tel Aviv to catch a plane home to Canada for some meetings. As we drove down the mountain highway to the flat plains of the coast, we passed the shells of the tanks, trucks and army vehicles destroyed in the 1947 effort to take Jerusalem. The Israelis leave the vehicles there near the side of the road, many almost invisible behind bushes or underneath trees, as permanent memorials to those who died along this highway. Unless someone points them out, most tourists don'teven notice them as they come up the moutaiuns from the airport.
But last night these trucks and tanks were wrapped in white paper with the Israeli flag hung over each one, each brilliantly illuminated with floodlamps, each a disturbing reminder of violence.
Our months here have been quiet. The Intifada is indeed over but the tragedy is that people have not lost their fear and anxiety. They are not afraid of Palestinian attacks; instead they fear their fellow Israelis.
The settlers, right-wing, well-armed and well-trained in the Israeli army, many together in special units, have made it clear they will do whatever it takes to oppose the planned pullout from Gaza. Our close friends are expecting violence. They expect settler attacks on the Al-Aqsa mosque in the Old City. They are talking about civil war. They are even talking, very cautiously, about moving to Canada or the United States.
In the meantime, settlements continue to grow and spread in the East Bank. Last week we spent time with friends in Bethlehem; they are Palestinian Christians and invited us to share a family celebration after a little boy's first communion with a hundred other children at the Church of the Nativity. As we drove around the towns in the area, we saw vast new settlements sprawling over confiscated Palestinian land and we saw the wall being built to divide the two communities.
Another big story here is Jaffagate in which well-financed settlers are believed to be behind the purchase of some extraordinary pieces of property in the Old City's Christian Quarter, hotels and buildings at the Jaffa Gate worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
This is the gate most tourists use when they enter the Old City; this is the gate everyone knows. It seems that the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, Patriarch Irineos I, cut a secret deal with a Jewish company to sell the land, his excuse being that it proves he doesn't hate Jews or Israel and that he doesn't sympathize with the Palestinians as has been stated in the past.
An offshore company registered in the Bahamas now appears to own the land. Patriarch Irineos I has just been fired.
What Irineos did isn't new. The Armenian Patriarch did the same thing not long ago with church-owned land just outside the Old City; now it is occupied by a new, and huge, Jewish-owned hotel. The Armenian community is seething.
But you know, I do love it here. I love this country and I love this city. It makes me crazy and angry and sad but I do love it.
Thursday, April 21, 2005
This country's going crazy ... or I am
A lovely new day, a cup of coffee and David comes in with the morning papers. Danny, the grocer next door who sets aside the International Herald Tribune, the Jerusalem Post and Haretz for us every morning, has warned us to stock up on bread because after tomorrow there won't be any for another week. Passover begins Saturday and tomorrow night is Shabbat.
Sounds a bit extreme, no bread for a week, but we can always pick it up in the Arab parts of town.
Then I start reading the papers. Seems our water changes for Passover too.
According to the Post, "Jerusalem's central water supply is switching over to kosher for Pessah [Passover] tap water." The paper (www.jpostcom) says the mayor asked the city water supplier to ensure there wouldn't be any leaven in the water during the holiday.
Jerusalem, just like the rest of Israel, depends on the Sea of Galilee for its water but for the next week we'll get water in this city from drilled wells.
Why? Well, it seems the Ultra Orthodox are worried that crumbs from fishermen and people having picnics by the Sea of Galilee would contaminate our water with leaven. Can't take that chance. So the pure water rolls in tonight and it also goes to the taps of the 230,000 Arabs who live in this city with the rest of us.
There's another great Passover story in the Post today and it's about gorillas in the Safari Park Zoo in Ramat Gan getting constipated on matza.
They won't get their normal breakfast of bread and cream cheese during Passover because their keepers can't touch leavened bread; instead they will get one or two matza a day. Any more and their digestive systems act up - that matza is just so binding.
My day is made. But the paper has more treats.
Did you know that there are about 40,000 little boys who work as jockeys in camel races in Quatar? Boys as young as four are routinely kidnapped or sold by their parents to camel owners in the Gulf states like Quatar and the United Arab Emirates.
Camel racing, controlled mostly by wealthy sheikhs, is a huge sport in these countries and rights groups are campaigning against the practice of using these kids as jockeys. So a Swiss businessman, Alexandre Kolot, working for a robotics company, has designed a 27-kilogram robot to take the place of children.
It's not only equipped with a global positioning system satellite beacon and shock absorbers, it's been spritzed with the same Arabic perfume riders use. The idea is to make the camels think their robotic passengers are their regular riders.
A driver racing along beside the camel (who can get it up to 40 km an hour) controls the robot with a laptop remote that has four commands: forwards, backwards, sideways and whip action.
Looks as if this might take off and the abuse of the children could end.
And finally, there is the story of the Israeli consul in the Hague who was arrested this week for planning to sell 150 passports. It's a nice little yarn about sex, money laundering and death threats.
It all makes a happy change from staring at Gomery headlines on the Internet.
Sunday, April 17, 2005
A working holiday in Sri Lanka
My husband David, working with Bob Rae, has visited Sri Lanka many times in the last three years to assist in the effort to build a lasting peace in this beautiful and troubled country. They are there under the auspices of the Forum of Federations, an international organization based in Ottawa; Bob is the President of the Forum and David is a board member. This time their plan was to run a two-day seminar on federalism and hold meetings with officials but the trip developed into something more when they brought Arlene and me. We wanted to see the country, something Bob and David hadn't really done before as tourists. Their previous trips had been all business.
What an astonishing country it proved to be for all of us. The hotels were spectacular and beautifully run with some of the nicest people I have ever met making sure the rooms, the service and the food were perfect. Except for almost non-existent internet service at most places - probably just as well for a group of internet junkies - we couldn't have been happier.
Our guide and driver, Rex Samarawira, was the single person who made the trip work for us. He was erudite, funny, proud of his country's history, easy-going but at the same time a demanding slave-driver, flogging us along hot sandy temple paths in our bare feet and pushing us through two-hour walks in the steaming heat before we got our suppers. Rex educated us, entertained us, turned out to be a master magician, found us the best food in the country, the best shops, the best of everything. He's been at this for about forty years and he retains the enthusiasm of a beginner.
Everyone knows Rex and when you're with him the best seat in the house, the best table, the best view are yours. He packed his big, air-conditioned van with cold water and fruit; he stopped often for fresh treats, he explained every animal, bird, flower or bug we could find. Rex knew the wages of the tea pickers, their benefits, their troubles.
A devout Roman Catholic, Rex had great respect for the Buddhist sites we toured and I think he knew their histories as well as any of the monks.
Now when you travel a guide like this, and most people do, you wonder where they spend their nights. Rex explained that the hotels had guest houses for the drivers. It wasn't until the end of our trip that we discovered - on pressing him - the guest houses often had thirty men to a room. He wasn't complaining; it was just the way it was.
Arlene and I asked him, at the end of our tour, to take us to Galle - and you will see more about this towards the bottom of the Sri Lanka pictures. This trip was, in many ways, the one we will most remember. Rex brought his wonderful wife and we stopped to see the SOS Children's Village near the Samarawiras' house south of Colombo. Thanks to a suggestion from Michael Ondaatje, money from the World Literacy of Canada goes to these Sri Lankan branches of the SOS villages.
The four of us stayed in the same hotel in Galle; of course, Rex knows everyone and had arranged special dinners beforehand.
If any of you ever want to go to Sri Lanka - and I urge you, with all my heart to go - call Rex and he will make your trip one of the most memorable of your life. (E-mail me and I will send you phone number and e-mail address.)
This country desperately needs tourists. People have cancelled their trips since the tsunami and the country is reeling. It depends on tourists and we didn't go into one shop or one hotel or one restauarant where the message wasn't clear: please tell your friends to come.
For us, seeing Galle was more important than anything else we saw. We saw a gallant people struggling in the aftermath of tragedy and setting an example to the world of courage and dignity.
Rex Samarawira, our guide
NB: To enlarge the pictures on this blog, just click them
Things aren't going so well...
The Pinnewala Elephant Orphanage
After supper at the Pinnewala Elephant Orphanage it's time to go to the river for a bath, but here a couple of babies just want to play
Although she's tethered, one orphan baby finds that if she drops on her knees and stretches forward, she can just grab some leaves for herself
The littlest elephant has had her bottles and is heading towards the leaves; the toddlers are tethered and can't reach them...
At the Pinnewala Elephant Orphanage there are nearly 100 young elephants wandering around; the babies, like this one, still get bottle-fed milk along with their big bunches of leaves. They can finish a bottle in about three seconds
The Temple of the Tooth in Kandy
The entrance to the Temple of the Tooth. I made a lot of fun of it until I actually got there and was gobsmacked into silence and awe
This is a ceiling in the famous Temple of the Tooth in Kandy, where the country's most revered Buddhist relic, the Buddha's tooth, is kept. (There is much speculation about its provenance.) Real tooth or not, the site is without question the most spectacular place we saw in the country. In 1998, Tamil terrorists blew up a major part of the temple so security remains very tight. And here again, we find more elephants holding up roofs
Tea plantations and tea pickers in the Hill Country
The Tea Factory - a splendid hotel in the heart of the thousands and thousands of acres of tea plantations
A tea-picker at the start of her day. Along with their wages, the pickers get rations of food each week: so much tea, flour, sugar and rice and they have a free room to live in with their families in what are called "lines" - a low row of modest buildings. They have electricity and many have television sets which receive one or two channels, but there is no running water and of course, no modern toilets. Drinking water comes from barrels. They do receive free health care and their children do go to school, but most leave after elementary school to go to work.
A tea factory - this one is from the Heathersett Gardens in the Hill Country near Nuwara Eliya, an area you'll know from Michael Ondaatje's wonderful memoir, Running in the Family. These are the hills where well-to-do Sri Lankas go to escape the worst of the heat and humidity
A worker in a tea factory. Most of the tea workers, inside the factories and out picking the leaves, are women; most are Tamils. Although the northern Tamils have been in Sri Lanka for centuries, most of those working on the tea plantations began arriving from India 150 years ago. It took many years before the government granted them citizenship; in fact some of their descendants only became citizens, with benefits, two years ago.
A tea picker in the hill country. These women must pluck enough of the top two leaves and tip from branches of tea plants to make 17 kilos of leaves a day and they carry the leaves in the bag hanging down their backs from their foreheads. For this they are paid about 200 rupees a day - $1.60 or so. They get a few rupees extra if they pick more.
A visit to a Spice Garden and an introduction to Sri Lankan Viagra - a potion called Kamayogi Bom Bom
Kandy: Batik, gemstones, temples, gardens
Women in Kandy making traditional batik designs on cotton with a traditional hot wax process
The world's largest tree - a ficus benjamina in the Botanical Gardens in Kandy which spans over 2,000 meters; its branches are held up by thick bamboo logs
An elephant safari, with diplomas to prove it
Now this lady has a very large rear end and we discovered that elephant poop, which we saw a lot of, makes excellent paper
A Sri Lanka water monitor gulps a fresh fish whole. These little creatures look like baby crocodiles and their danger comes with their razor sharp tails that they slap around when they are angry
A king's palace in Polonnaruwa
The King's septic tank at Polonnaruwa, which held something like eighteen layers of clay bowls. Sewage poured into the top bowl and then gradually dripped through one bowl after another until it had turned into in clean, clear water - or so the story goes
Schoolgirls visiting Polonnaruwa, the 12th century capital of King Parakramabahu. Schoolgirls all over the country look like these girls - always impeccable in crisp white uniforms, always willing to say hello
Sigiriya: a long steep hike up a mountain to a palace
My travelling companions troop ahead without me, on the way up Sigiriya
At the top of Sigiriya, a rock fortress built at the top of a mountain by a king's son. It takes two hours to climb to the top ... fortunately my bum knee gave me an excuse to stay below and read a novel in the shade
The Kandalama Hotel
The Kandalama Hotel, designed by the country's most revered architect, Geoffrey Bawa, is now legendary in Sri Lanka - both for its beauty and for its ecological awareness. It's near Dambulla, the what is known as the country's Cultural Triangle, and is built on rock faces in the middle of a jungle. It overlooks the Dambulla Tank, a huge man-made lake that is reservoir for the area, and elephants roam below our windows.
To learn more about Geoffrey Bawa, see:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,3604,966649,00.html
Inside our room at the Kandalama is a sign imploring us not to feed the monkeys that climb up the vines
