Friends,

I will be leaving for the Democratic Republic of the Congo (former Zaire) in early December with three other CPTers to be part of an experimental three month violence reduction project. We go at the request of the Martin Luther King Group in Goma, an invitation that came last year to the third Christian Peacemaker Teams delegation into that Great Lakes Region of Central Africa.

Last Friday morning as team members worked in the Jaabari hay fields across from Kiryat Arba settlement, an Israeli man stopped his car and got out. The young boys from the Ja'abari family recognized him, and ran to greet him. He was Assaf Sharon, a founder of both _Breaking the Silence_ (former Israeli soldiers who had served in Hebron who now speak out) and Bnei Avraham (Israelis who work with Palestinians in Hebron emphasizing that both are the children of Abraham)

This morning, I got a call at the orphanage, where I spent the night, saying that there was a home demolition in Hawuz. Tarek, our project support coordinator, me, an Italian woman, Giovanna, who's been staying with Zleekha and speaks almost no English, and John, a Bluffton student who wants to spend a week working here in August, went to the site and found that the building had not been demolished, but soldiers had ransacked seven apartments in the building. So we got back for a short centering worship. John went to work on editing the video

 

Well, I've kind of been fuming all day about the police telling me that basically everywhere that settlers set foot, CPTers are not allowed to go. I realize that most of my anger comes from the fact that Michael's friend Victor took a two hour bus ride from his home in Israel to meet me and learn about the work and basically had to turn around and go right back. I guess it taught him about the situation in Hebron, but it was still disappointing. We talked to the Ecumenical Accompaniers this morning after the incident and find it disturbing to hear the police

So I'm back at the Hebron apartment. I was kind of disappointed to learn I'm going to the orphanage tonight instead of sleeping in my "own" bed (interesting how fast things can become "home" here.) Marius and Tarek appear to be all right. As is the case with lots of stories here, we initially got some details wrong with the killing in Beit Ummar. It was a 17 year old boy, not a 13 year old, and one report has him painting the house with his father and another has him throwing stones. Marius said that Beit Ummar elders intervened pretty forcefully. Crap.

I wrote a blog entry on Thursday, June 26, but then a perfect storm of things that had to be attended to immediately broke out (I've actually never understood what that term meant.) I am in Rehovot right now, visiting Michael's friends from college, Victor and Sophie, and was planning to submit an amusing entry today about the chaos of several accompaniment requests. Tarek, our project support coordinator and the plumber all arriving at the same time, but I called the team in Hebron to alert them that an At-Tuwani team member was coming for a day off,

Well folks, now I have both a cellphone and a blog. No wonder people here think I'm younger than 46.

To those of you who are checking in because of my Markie letters, I won't promise I'm going to keep as up to date on this blog as I do on Markie. Right now we're a team of 5 and it really isn't quite enough to accomplish the work we need to accomplish--so I find I'm falling behind on my CPTnet postings, necessary e-mails and other writing.