Archive for June, 2004
Day 5: Doreen’s Diary
June 27th, 2004Today the ladies slept in. I, however, was up at 6:30 am. My sleeps are deep, but I am unable to sleep late. When everyone had finished breakfast and checked out of the Retno, we boarded vans to Qalandia checkpoint. There we decided to walk through on the Palestinian line.
A man carrying a child, who [...]
Day 4: Gail’s Diary
June 26th, 2004I have arrived in the Occupied Palestinian city of Ramallah unfortunately minus one of our beloved group, WCA (Women of a Certain Age). Several of us were held and interrogated at the Ben Gurion airport on arrival and released after several hours. Ann P. was detained and ordered deported. With the support of the ISM [...]
Day 4: Anni’s Diary
June 26th, 2004Our training was put to the test! There was a demonstration in a-Ram, north of Jerusalem, where the Wall is being built. For the first time the town is coming together in peaceful protest. Our first real checkpoint experience: shadeless, ruble-strewn, rocky, merciless. Long lanes, like tollbooths for pedestrians. Hundreds of people, the elderly, babies, [...]
Day 4: Doreen’s Diary
June 26th, 2004Today was the opening day of Freedom Summer 2004. We had planned at last night’s meeting to leave the hotel by 9:30 to go into central Ramallah to find an internet café, to buy phones, and to pick up a lunch of falafel and shwarma. We knew we had to be back by 12 to [...]
Day 3: Doreen’s Diary
June 25th, 2004Today was a full day of training; intensive, informing, and empowering. Faris, Mohammed and Raji are adorable, well-informed, intelligent and dedicated young men who did a fabulous job training us. We certainly were a challenging group and they handled us superbly. We were consistently throwing things off schedule because of all of our questions. We [...]
Day 3: Anni’s Diary
June 25th, 2004Training took place about 12 hours for 2 days in the Meeting Room of the Retno with three beautiful young Palestinian men. Here they were, confronted with 13 women, some of whom could be their grandmothers, and a noisier, more serious group we couldn’t be. We started with one, slim, intense, with raccoon eyes, and [...]
Day 2: Anni’s Diary
June 24th, 2004Before going to training in Ramallah, we ventured out to roam the Christian and Arab quarters a bit, the bazaar area where there are no obvious tourists. Shopkeepers who have always hawked their wares now plead with the tourist, using their plight as manipulation to buy: “We are starving, the Occupation is destroying us, you [...]
Day 2: Doreen’s Diary
June 24th, 2004We set our alarms for 4:45 a.m., showered, dressed and went downstairs, a bit unhappy to leave the luxurious large bath towels, the heated bathroom floor and mirror, and the fabulous beds and coverlets. Stacey went to check us out thinking Carol might have ordered a Pay-Per-view movie (as she’d said she might last night.) [...]
Day 1: Anni’s Diary
June 23rd, 2004It is easier to fly, as Ahmad is home safe; I feel that if something happened, he will be with the boys, so I am unusually relaxed about the travel. Flight to Amsterdam is uneventful, and Jenny and I study our Arabic. We had a 5 hour layover, so we went into Amsterdam Central for [...]
Day 1: Doreen’s Diary
June 23rd, 2004Today was the day. After three wonderful days in Eindhoven visiting Carol’s children, Stacey, Carol and I were ready for our adventure to begin. We woke about 9am. After showering, we had breakfast, piled into the car, and headed for the center of town: I, to look for shoes, since my dependable Merrill’s were killing [...]