Lack of Luxury

One of the things of my new life here in the Westbank is letting go of my Western mindset and letting go of the Western lifestyle that I have always more or less taken for granted.
To adapt to a more Palestinian way of living means embracing (little) annoyances, lowering your standards on comfort and dealing with the fact that you can not always have things your way... Life here contains many barriers, not just the Apartheid wall Israel is building on Palestinian land. Many things here need an iron mentality of 'I can deal with it, basitta'. Otherwise normal things such as travelling (not even abroad, but from one town to the next), walking on the streets, can become imbearable.

Of course the number one reason is the sickening situation of occupation. To see how it fucks up perfectly sane people is still hard to deal with from time to times.
Travelling takes just so much more time than in the West that it's shocking to see from hilltops that Jerusalem is really so close to Ramallah. You know it, you've heard it, you've seen it on the map... but even when you see it with your own eyes, it's still too crazy to comprehend.
In Nablus you can not leave your house after 11 pm,the Israeli soldiers that invade the city every single night might shoot you, because 'of course' anyone on the street at night is a security threat or at least a bit coockoo in his head.

But even the most small and meaningless everyday things are not in your hands anymore. Just one example: In Nablus there's quite a water shortage. The water runs now only once every 4 or 5 days. This is when the big black tanks that are located on each Palestinian are refilled with water, to be able to have water when the supply has been cut off. This means watermanagement in every conceivable way, because the supply is not endless.... as is ironically the case in the Israeli settlements situated all over the Westbank, some of them even surrounding Nablus. You can not imagine how disgustingly creative you will get to safe water to stand through until the next supply. I do not really want to share all the details, but I can say that taking a hot shower is a luxury I can only dream of at this point. Instead we stand in the shower and pour buckets of water over our bodies. Unfortunately there's also been some problem with the heating of the water in the past few days... so it's either cold or mixed with water cooked on the stove. I'll save the stories about the flushing of the toilets for the true dare-devils.

Tonight I really felt greasy and dirty and my hair color had turned into a funky shade of brown, so I decided that I really wanted to wash my hair. Another volunteer Nicole had similar thoughts, so we decided to wash each others hair in the bathroom... just like true American highschool girls. We cooked some water and it felt so great. We had created our own Palestinian spa.. it felt like toplevel luxury and I think that at that point it even was.

But actually the best part of the whole experience had to do with some other barriers we ran into in Palestinian society, that are not caused by the occupation (at least not directly caused). These barriers have to deal with adjusting to a conservative (pre-dominantly) Muslim society, where there's not much privacy nor really a lot of freedom to do things as you see fit. They way you dress has to be very moderate and very covered. You can not just go with the guys, whenever they have decided to smoke shisha or drink shay (tea) somewhere, because many places are only for men. You have to be sensitive towards how you address men you know and don't know in the street, you can not become too familiar with them. You can not always walk alone, but at the same time you can not walk with a man on the street at night, without people making judgments about you. Up till now it's still okay, we knew this before we came here and we're not fed up with it yet... but it's interesting to see that certain reactions towards these limitations come into existence: coping mechanisms, ways to deal with it. One of them is that the feeling of solidarity between the girls here increases considerably. You're more drawn towards each other, because each one is dealing with the same situation. Besides you feel like having girls nights out... we've heard of nargileh/shisha places for women and going to the hammam on lady's night (even though for women it's only until 3 pm while men are allowed to spend their entire evenings there) And washing each others hair is part of the same pattern of 'us girls against the world'.

Nicole had just told us yesterday about the way Persian girls hang out with each other in private. They tend to be very affectionate and clingy towards each other inside the private area of their bed- and bathrooms, because in public life there's no room for this kind of behaviour and certainly not when it comes to men. It's funny to see how quickly we are developing in copies of these Persian girls in this conservative society. We had the best time washing each other's hair, while laughing and talking, even though the dream of taking a warm shower still lingers on in our heads. One truly good reason to visit Ramallah very soon.

But what life teaches you here that even without luxury and privacy you can sustain yourself and not only that.... It can be pretty fun too. Once the deceitful Western mindset is gone you'll see and feel the charm of most inconveniences of Palestinian life. Every upside has its downside and the other way around. The rush of luxury in the West makes life sometimes extremely impersonal and harsh, while lack of luxury can bring compassion and solidarity. What is the better option in the end? It turns out, that it's not so black and white altogether...