CPTnet
30 June 2007
AT-TUWANI BLOG: Sheep-shearing and bomb detonation

[NOTE: The following blog entries by CPTer Heidi Schramm have been edited.
To see Schramm's original entries and accompanying photos go to
http://heidischramm.livejournal.com]

22nd April

Finally, a wonderful day in Tuwani! It was time to bathe the sheep in
preparation for shearing. I'd never really spent much time wondering how
sheep were washed here, but any notions I may have had were completely
shattered today. Two men grab a sheep, flip it upside down, hold it by its
legs and take it over to a rough, flat rock. Then someone throws a bucket
of water over it and they swing it back and forth over the rock. Then they
scrub it back and forth over the rock. Then they cover it with soap (the
same soap used to clean toilets here) and wash it by hand. They finish with
a couple more buckets of water, let the sheep stand up and laugh as it
shakes itself and tries to figure out where it is and how to get out of
there.

CPT was relegated to hauling water, but we were happy with that. In the
evening, the shearing began. It is all done with hand shears and I can't
believe the sheep don't walk away bloody and mutilated. But the shepherds
are very efficient and the sheep seem to give up once they have been tackled
to the ground. I' m so glad to have been in the village for the first day
of shearing this year

23rd April

I did school patrol Monday morning before leaving. In the afternoon, the
soldiers didn't show up. Ilse and Cassandra made a number of phone calls to
the army, and were told there was no school because it was Israeli Veteran's
Day. They were also told the escort had not come in the morning--a story
they stuck to even though all evidence (me having seen the soldiers
accompanying children from Tuba in Tuwani) suggested otherwise.
Unbelievably, they actually showed up -- but three and a half hours late.

On Tuesday, in celebration of Israeli Independence Day, one hundred settlers
took a walk through Tuwani. Soldiers arrived while they were having a
prayer service; the soldiers then joined them for ice cream after the
prayers were over. And on the way back from Yatta, Ilse and Fatieh were
stopped by soldiers and made to wait while a bomb was detonated. Yes, a
bomb was found in a field a kilometer from Tuwani. It apparently fell off a
military jet passing by. That's a little too scary for me to have processed
at this point.