May 26th 2005 What a Circus - Birthdayparty for an israelian Volunteer It should become a day of beautiful surprises, nervous tensions, and sometimes excessive turbulences – in some sense just everyday-life here in our work with the Jahalin-Bedouins. It was the day of Nitza's (the Israeli colleague in the Project) birthday and actually it was supposed to start with the Hebrew-lesson in the new Study-Center in the morning. But the Jahalin men had other plans: flowers, presents, balloons, garlands, and a birthday-cake were waiting for the „birthday-child„ and that was how the day started...
On the same day in the afternoon, a group of italian clowns from Venice (!) with a small performance was expected in the Camp (really expected!). The whole story starts at early noon. After the first telephone call with the „Tour-Organizer„ and the question, if they are going to keep the schedule as we had planned, I already have the feeling, there might be some problems ahead: I hear about checkpoints, road blocks, detours, traffic jams and so on...
On this day everything is against us and the italian clowns show up at the Jahalin Camp more than two hours late! They get out of their bus, with their red noses and coulored hats, giant shoes and coulored baloons - and almost 200 kids come rushing upon the new visitors after they have waited for such a long time – finally! At the end of the day we leave the Camp totally exhausted. Wherever we look, we see balloons – long balloons wrapped around heads, ballons flying up in the air, balloons caught in fences or just gone with the wind...
The traces are obvious: here was a circus going on...
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