Why the security fence is a separation wall

Seders are the ideal opportunity to think about how any particular experience is different from the typical experience.  Last night, I also spent much of the evening reflecting on overcoming oppression.
Over the last week, I've been thinking a lot about how my most recent trip to Israel and Palestine is different from all my other trips.  I've never traveled with students in Israel and Palestine.  Watching students wrestle with the events, people, and places was rewarding as a teacher.  The students showed an amazing ability to critically engage, reflect on, and talk about challenging topics in a mature and sophisticated manner.
Watching the Israeli and Palestinian representatives from Friends of the Earth Middle East talk about water issues and how they affect both Israelis and Palestinians (and Jordanians) was inspiring. At the same time, I was often dismayed by the increasing difficulty for some other Israelis and Palestinians to talk about the other.  Too often I heard sentences that began with "Israelis are…" or "Arabs are…" or "Those people..."  These generalizations too often obscure a far more complex reality.  As a world history teacher, I often struggle with avoiding these sorts of generalizations, so I tend to be more aware when others use them.  It's not about me judging people, I just notice the generalizations.

The separation wall in Aida Refugee Camp with Palestinian olive trees and the Gilo settlement in the background.

While staring out at the separation wall from the rooftop in the Aida Refugee Camp in Bethlehem, I was struck by how close many Israelis and Palestinians live, but how little contact they have because of the wall between them.  Walls are more than physical structures.  They prevent people from interacting with each other, learning from each other, and knowing each other. The separation wall truly does separate Israelis and Palestinians in a way that the reality of each people become completely unknown to the other.  There's nothing left but the ability to make generalizations.
We need more opportunities for people to interact.  We need more moments for Israelis to rub shoulders with Palestinians, to sit and hear their stories, to learn about their dreams, and to walk along their streets.  We need more moments for Palestinians to rub shoulders with Israelis, to sit and hear their stories, to learn about their dreams, and to walk along their streets.  I had that opportunity on my last trip, which is why it was different from every other trip.  I want everyone to have that opportunity.

Spring Break Palestine 2012

Traveling in Palestine is never simple.  It begins with simply explaining what I mean by Palestine. (For the record, I'm talking about Gaza and everything within the Green Line.) Every day presents a variety of challenges.  There are the simple difficulties of moving from place to place on the most deliberately complicated system of roads ever developed to the spiritual and mental challenges of witnessing the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory.
Over the last six days, I, and five other teachers, have been chaperoning seventeen students around the West Bank.  It has been one of the most rewarding things I have done as a teacher.  A few of the highlights have been guiding a group of students through the old city of Hebron and letting them witness the most invasive aspects of the Israeli settlement project, watching students learn about the effects of agriculture and waste disposal on the Jordan River Valley and the Dead Sea, and sitting in the Meetinghouse in Ramallah as the students talked about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from a Quaker perspective with Jean Zaru.
I feel an unbelievable sense of gratitude for being so fortunate to have these experiences and being able to share them with such an amazing group of students.  It would be so easy for a group of American teenagers to spend their spring break relaxing on a tropical beach.  Instead they spent it learning first hand about one of the most challenging and long-lasting conflicts in the world.  I really do have hope for the future.

Entrance to the IDF "Civil Administration for Judea and Samaria"

Young girl in Jifna

Separation wall in Bethlehem with Palestinian olive groves and an Israeli settlement in background

Palestinian girl in Aida refugee camp in Bethlehem

Hebron

Students learning about the water issues of the Jordan River Valley with a FOEME representative

Students preparing mud bricks

Learning about the process of soap manufacture in Nablus

48 Hours in Istanbul

It seems excessive to travel 5,000 miles for a forty-eight hour getaway, and it probably is.  At the same time, it seemed so perfectly logical to get away when I booked the ticket.  

I arrived in Istanbul on Saturday morning.  After dropping my bag at the hotel, I headed right over to Hagia Sophia.  I’ve been there many times, but there had always been scaffolding set up inside.  I finally got a chance to see this 1,500 year old marvel in all its glory.  At that moment, all the travel was completely worth it.  I sat on the cold marble floor staring at the domed ceiling for a half hour, and I couldn’t have been happier. 

I then headed over Beyoglu to visit the Istanbul Modern.  Since I last was in the city in 2006, there has been an explosion in the modern art scene.  Istanbul Modern was a good place to start.  They had a great collection of twentieth century Turkish art, as well as some current exhibits.  The location right along the Bosphoros is also stunning.  I spent the night strolling along Istiklal Cadessi enjoying the shops and the people.  Even though the night was a bit cold, it felt so alive.

On Sunday, I headed back over to Beyoglu to visit Salt, which is another contemporary art space.  I wandered through eclectic exhibits and video installations all by myself.  It was Sunday morning, but it was eerily lonely.  I headed out to santralinstabul in Silahtar, which is part art museum, part science museum, part park, and a couple of restaurants.  They were changing exhibits, so I didn’t get to see much art.  The science museum is housed in the old power building, and it was incredible.  I wandered through old turbines from the early twentieth century amazed by their massiveness.  

I strolled in the park before finishing off my afternoon listening to live jazz in one of the restaurants.   I was sitting next to a 40 year old Pakistani economist who works for a development bank in Istanbul.  He had studied int he United States and became a jazz fan.  We talked about the number of private colleges and universities opening up in Pakistan.  He was refreshingly skeptical about most development projects.  My evening ended with me watching the second half of the Knicks-Mavericks game with a Turkish broadcast.  Somehow it seemed fitting for my whirlwind weekend.

An old fish and lots of Europeans (then and now)

Malindi is a Swahili city.  Like the other cities (Lamu, Mombasa, Zanzibar) of the Swahili Coast, there is a rich history of interaction with the Indian Ocean.  You can see the Arabic, Islamic, and Indian influences in the architecture and the food.  But Malindi seems to be a bit more European than the others.

The main museum is called the House of Columns, and it's a great example of Swahili architecture.

When you first walk enter the museum, there is an exhibit the coelacanth that was found in the harbor in the early twentieth century.  I had never heard of the coelacanth until yesterday, but I now know a lot more.  Instead of simply narrating the story of finding a coelacanth, the exhibit is set up with signs that pretend to be  a talking fish asking you to guess what he/she/it is.  The exhibit was a bit weird because it felt like an exhibit designed for a five year old, but it lacked the other sorts of things exhibits for kids have.

On the upper level, there were rooms full of an exhibit on Vasco da Gama.  But instead of having any artifacts or items, there were simply about twenty posters narrating the story of Vasco da Gama being the first European to sail directly to India.  The odd thing about the posters is that they were written from an Eurocentric perspective.  Da Gama "discovered" the route to Europe - despite non-Europeans sailing across the Indian Ocean for over a thousand years in 1498.  Da Gama also got around the "Muslim stranglehold" to reach India, which seemed an especially odd description in a museum in a Muslim town.  Not a single poster looked at da Gama's voyage from a non-Eurocentric perspective, other than to mention briefly the help that Ahmad ibn Majid, an Arab navigator, provided him in sailing across the Indian Ocean to reach India.

There is also a Vasco da Gama pilar that he set up at the southern edge of the harbor in the early sixteenth century, so Portuguese sailors could find Malindi again.  Other than a few busloads of school children who quickly visited and left, I was the only person at the pillar.  It was the same experience at the beautiful little Portuguese chapel, which was also built in the early sixteenth century.

But despite the prehistoric fish and Vasco da Gama, the main attraction in Malindi seems to be the beach.  The town has been overrun by Italians.  Most of them seem to shuttle between the beach, the tasty Italian restaurants, the mozzarella cheese shop, and the gelateria.  The history of Malindi may seem to be ancient to most of its visitors, but you can still get a good espresso.

When donkeys bray

The first thing I noticed about Lamu is the incredible beauty of the old town.  As the boat approached the shore, an amazing city straddled the shore.

I stepped out of the boat, and the sound of donkeys braying filled my ears.  There are no cars or buses, so donkeys become the main means of transportation.  And like the persistent honking of New York City taxi cabs, the braying of donkeys is everywhere in Lamu.  It was a bit odd at first, but I quickly became used to it. Everywhere I turned, there were donkeys.  They wander around the streets of Lamu like cows in Indian cities.  They stop in the middle of the road.  They wander up to restaurants.  And often they are loaded down with bricks, food, or other assorted items.

The lack of cars and donkeys wandering all over the place make for a slow pace of life in Lamu.  No one seems to be rushing to get anywhere.  Instead, everywhere I turn I see people relaxing and talking with each other. This is a city made for wandering about.

Expectations

Today I woke up in Nairobi, and the first thing I heard was Denise Williams' "Let's Hear it for the Boy." it wasn't what I was expecting, but traveling is often not what one expects.

Over the next three weeks I'll be traveling down the Swahili Coast. I plan to be blogging more and posting lots of photos. You can expect to read, but probably not much about Denise Williams.

Teaching about Economic Inequality

It's been well over a year since I last posted, but it's about time to resume....

I was struck by an article in the Guardian's Comment is Free about economic inequality.  It doesn't seem like a surprising topic for a paper such as the Guardian.  What grabbed my attention is the author of the article: Kenneth Rogoff.  I don't usually associate Rogoff with leftist economics or columns in the Guardian.  (Although after checking, he has published a few other articles in the Guardian.)  

Rogoff's arguments are not remarkable or unique.  In fact, he says a lot of things about the global economy that many people would agree with as being problematic:

Within countries, inequality of income, wealth and opportunity is arguably greater than at any time in the last century. Across Europe, Asia and the Americas, corporations are bulging with cash as their relentless drive for efficiency continues to yield huge profits. Yet workers' share of the pie is falling, thanks to high unemployment, shortened working hours and stagnant wages.

This trend is one that is a major part of my modern world history course.  In teaching tenth graders about world history, I'm less concerned in discussing the battles of the World War or the details about the lives of famous people.  Helping students to understand how the world has become so economically and politically integrated and the consequences of that integration seems far more important.  From day one of the class, I encourage students to think about the world they live in and how it functions and to ask questions about how this world came to be.

One of the key steps in helping students understand the modern world is analyzing the effects of the Industrial Revolution.  Trying to teach a sixteen year old about the global nature of industrialization is not the easiest task.  And few topics are more challenging to teach than Karl Marx and the origins of Communism.  Students have lots of preconceived ideas about Marx and Communism.  Most of those ideas are wrong, but that just reflects the broader American understanding of Marx.  Despite the generally negative American stereotype of Communism, most students are still excited to learn something about Marx.  That excitement disappears after a couple of pages of excerpts from the Communist Manifesto.  Imagine what goes through the head of that sixteen year old when she or he reads:

The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes.

Still, I know that I need to teach Marx.  You can only imagine my pleasure when I read Rogoff actually highlighting the importance of Marx:

Writing in the 19th century, Karl Marx famously observed inequality trends in his day and concluded that capitalism could not indefinitely sustain itself politically: eventually, workers would rise up and overthrow the system. Outside Cuba, North Korea and a few leftwing universities around the world, no one takes Marx seriously anymore. Contrary to his predictions, capitalism spawned ever-higher standards of living for more than a century, while attempts to implement radically different systems have fallen spectacularly short.   

Yet, with inequality reaching levels similar to 100 years ago, the status quo has to be vulnerable. Instability can express itself anywhere. It was just over four decades ago that urban riots and mass demonstrations rocked the developed world, ultimately catalysing far-reaching social and political reforms.

Reading Rogoff has reminded me about the importance of challenging students to look closely at the world we live in and to ask difficult questions about why the world is the way it is.  And hopefully, those students might try to change things.