Poem from Gaza: You have 58 seconds to run

The following poem was posted by Jonathan Cook, a Nazareth-based journalist, on his blog site 'Jonathan Cook, the blog from Nazareth'.

I don't know what the answer is regarding the ongoing and often bloody dispute between Israelis and Palestinians, and I recognise there are two sides to every argument, but this poem, written by a Palestinian lady definitely makes you stop and think

Running Orders

Lena Khalaf Tuffaha

They call us now.
Before they drop the bombs.
The phone rings
and someone who knows my first name
calls and says in perfect Arabic
“This is David.”
And in my stupor of sonic booms and glass shattering symphonies
still smashing around in my head
I think “Do I know any Davids in Gaza?”
They call us now to say
Run.
You have 58 seconds from the end of this message.
Your house is next.
They think of it as some kind of
war time courtesy.
It doesn’t matter that
there is nowhere to run to.
It means nothing that the borders are closed
and your papers are worthless
and mark you only for a life sentence
in this prison by the sea
and the alleyways are narrow
and there are more human lives
packed one against the other
more than any other place on earth
Just run.
We aren’t trying to kill you.
It doesn’t matter that
you can’t call us back to tell us
the people we claim to want aren’t in your house
that there’s no one here
except you and your children
who were cheering for Argentina
sharing the last loaf of bread for this week
counting candles left in case the power goes out.
It doesn’t matter that you have children.
You live in the wrong place
and now is your chance to run
to nowhere.
It doesn’t matter
that 58 seconds isn’t long enough
to find your wedding album
or your son’s favorite blanket
or your daughter’s almost completed college application
or your shoes
or to gather everyone in the house.
It doesn’t matter what you had planned.
It doesn’t matter who you are
Prove you’re human.
Prove you stand on two legs.
Run.

- See more at: http://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2014-08-02/poem-from-gaza-you-have-58-seconds-to-run/?utm_source=Digest+August+13%2C+2014&utm_campaign=July+30%2C+2014&utm_medium=email#sthash.qSiMCkPJ.dpuf

Summer holidays – not always sun, sea and sand

With the summer break just over two thirds of the way through it’s been lovely seeing photos of so many friends and their families having well-earned holidays at home and abroad.  But combined with some recent visits I’ve made it has also led me to reflect on the wider experiences of this period in the year

The preferred perception of summer holidays is, as alluded to, one of happy family times, adventures, days out, exploring new places and welcome breaks from the normal routine of long working days and the relentless ‘pinging’ of the e-mail inbox

However there is another side to school holidays, and in particular the longer summer one. A lack of access to free school meals for the children leads to extra pressure to find ways to feed the family. A lack of routine results in the loss of security that comes with that routine. The holidays become a concentrated block of time with none of the usual support systems. The summer break is a time of apprehension for those transitioning from one school to the next, and that apprehension can manifest in many and varied ways. The holidays are also a time of peer pressure to take part in holiday activities – days out, weekend breaks etc that they can ill afford, and that result in debt racking up. The holidays can be a time when the fracturedness of family life comes to the fore.

Last week I went to visit a friend who was leading a summer camp for 40 local children ages 9 – 12. Of those 40, local churches sponsored at least 12 of them because their families couldn’t afford to pay the camp fee themselves. For many of the children, it was their first time away from home, for others it was the furthest they had been from home, even at just 45 miles or so. As I watched and joined in with them exploring the woods, trying out the homemade waterslide, blasting prayer rockets skywards, posing for the photo-shoot and preparing for tent inspection, it was clear what a fun adventure this was for all the children, but for some of them it was also the absolute highlight of the long, ‘boring’ break from school.

In Bulgaria this week a team from the Salisbury, affiliated to the Trussell Trust, are running a summer camp for ex-orphanage young people. The camp is run in conjunction with FSCI (Foundation for Social Change and Inclusion) which CRED is forging a partnership with, and whom I visited a couple of weeks ago.

One of FSCI’s main projects is setting up Houses of Opportunity for young people who have spent their lives living in orphanages but on reaching 18 yrs old have become to old for the orphanages and so are forced to leave. With no preparation given to them on how to live life outside of an institution, and yet with access to a standard care-leaving pot of about £1500, these young people can find themselves adrift and very vulnerable to those who want to take advantage of them, and their money, including pimps and traffickers.

The FSCI Houses are a safe haven, and allow the young person to stay for 2 years whilst they finish their education, get some training and a job, and also learn basic skills for life – cooking, shopping, budgeting and independent living.

The summer camps are an opportunity for the young people from all the FSCI Houses to come together for mutual support and to learn more deeply life skills and skills for life. They are a chance for exploring and processing their thoughts on the way forward, for having some extra mentoring and guidance, and most of all for them to have an actual summer holiday – something that is so ordinary to many of us, but is a new concept to these young people.

Another family that I met whilst in Bulgaria gave another view on the summer break (which is 3 months long starting at the end of May and running through until early September). They are a Roma family, living on the edge of a small town, and very much marginalized by many in the community. They live in a very run-down, two room structure that has plastic bags and sacks filling the many holes in the walls and roof. They cook outside in the summer but in the winter bring the wood-burning stove inside as it is the only source of heat. The family comprises an alcoholic dad, an abused mum, 5 girls ages 16 – 9 and a boy age 5. The youngest son, age 3, lives at an orphanage as the family just weren’t able to look after him, but they’d dearly love to have him back.

For this family, 3 months without school means 3 months when the children don’t get a guaranteed meal in the day. Life is a massive struggle for them all the time, but to be without the access to breakfast and lunch for the children is a huge extra burden on the parents – enough to drive dad further to drink with all the possible outcomes of that.

The family can’t afford child care, so the youngest children either fend for themselves, or are looked after by the oldest girl whilst the mother and the other older girls go in search of seasonal work. For this family, and others like them, summer holidays are certainly not a string of carefree days, lie-ins or days out.

For many families in the UK, the 5 – 6 week summer break from school is too short, and it whizzes by far too quickly. But for others it is plenty long enough, and the thought of the children going back to school, with all the security, routine and support it provides, cannot come soon enough.

As we enter the final week or so of  the summer holidays, may it be a positive time for all, and a time when a few extra special memories are made.

A new layer to the onion of trafficking

I'm in Bulgaria, visiting a CRED partner FSCI and getting my head round some of the work that they do. There are two key strands at present - 1 is working with young people as they leave the orphanages, providing supported living in 'Houses of Opportunity' to help the young people with the massive transition from institutionalised care to independent living.

The other focus is in supporting work in the Roma community - a big but very marginalised group here in Bulgaria. As part of that work, yesterday we went to Stara Zagora to meet a project that FSCI is partnering with called World Without Borders. Led by a Roma Christian guy called Ganshaw, this project is doing some really good work within the Roma community, and also in breaking down the barriers between Roma and Bulgarians.

We went for a bit of a look round the community, the largest Roma community in Bulgaria at 40,000; there have recently been bulldozings of hundreds of their 'illegal' homes and as a result it wasn't safe for me to take any photos as tension is high, but whilst we walked we chatted about various aspects of the life of the Roma. One conversation stood out for me above all else - here is the summarised version.

We were chatting about education, and how much it is, or isn't valued within the Roma community and Ganshaw was explaining that it is very hard to keep Roma girls in school beyond age 12. The reason for this is that when a Roma girl gets married (always arranged, never for love), she has to be able to provide proof to her in-laws that she was a virgin on her wedding night. So the day after the wedding day, a suitably stained sheet has to be produced.

For this reason, the girls are married young, before any 'mistakes' can be made, and once married they can't go to school. No chance for the girl to state her side of the story - what the circumstances are that means she wasn't a virgin, or didn't have the proof. No forgiveness, no second chances - its all about the damaged pride of the parents and in-laws.

The increased cruelty of it all comes with the outcome of not having the stained sheet. If it isn't produced on the morning after the wedding night, it is assumed that the girl therefore wasn't a virgin and the marriage is declared null and void; the girl is then taken back to her family who in turn will cast her out and declare essentially 'dead to them'.

At this point there are a few possible outcomes for the girl:
1. she runs away and lives on the streets
2. she tries to survive as a prostitute in Bulgaria
3. her family sell her into a trafficking ring, and as a result they get some money, and she gets the 'promise' of a new life abroad - little knowing that she will essentially be a domestic slave or prostitute slave
4. her family sell her to an underground ring where the girl is 'used' as a baby-making 'machine' to keep the illicit overseas adoption business going

What a desperate bunch of outcomes for the girl, and you can see what the thought of a life abroad, where she would have a roof over her head, and someone to find some work for her can be seen to be more appealing.

Yes we as a receiving country of trafficked girls know that it isn't like that at all, but faced with the alternatives, and when the traffickers have got their speech so smooth and slick and enticing, you can see how girls buy into it.

How sad, how desperately sad. And all because a community won't consider forgiveness and second chances