After a few days of being too lazy to blog I thought I should write something.....
Ramallah
After a week Jerusalem it was time to move on to Ramallah and start my project. For those who don’t know – Ramallah is the ‘capital’ of the West Bank and is nothing like you think; nothing like what you see on the news typically and nothing like you would expect; its full of internationals, NGO’s and a shed load of development agencies (The guys that come in and do good nice things here). A positive sign for the area is the fact that it is a building site full of new things being constructed; Ramallah however has been described by so many people as a ‘bubble’ that is unreflective of the rest of the region.
Freezing!
Ramallah is FREEZING no doubt! You’d be surprised how cold it is – it’s like a freezing day in England without any snow or ice. The accommodation where I am staying is also freezing; it’s not designed for the winter I guess and only for the hot middle eastern summers; guess i came at the wrong time of the year! They have though given me an extra warm fake mink blanket (Kamball) to keep me warm. Views are amazing though; this place beautiful.
UN Barrier Monitoring Unit
Works going pretty well, the team there is pretty cool; I’m working with an ex stock broker (Andrea) and an economist (Imad) who worked for the Italian government – let’s just say economics wise they know there stuff. The project in particular is measuring the financial and economic impact the Barrier / Wall around the West Bank had had in terms of cost to the international community and the UN; if you’ve got refugees, jobless farmers who have had land confiscated and a wrath of related issues – someone has to pay. The Question is how much has it cost and is it sustainable?? Interesting fact –in my research i have seen that the Gaddafi Development Fund made a substantial contribution to the UNWRA budget last year....I guess his money was not deemed to be blood stained at this point??
Bethlehem and the Wall
Khadar a Christian Palestinian form work took us all out to see the wall and tour Bethlehem on Sunday; very nice peaceful place – Bethlehem that is – not the wall. If you have seen pictures of the wall I can assure you that in the concrete flesh it is HUGE and much bigger than you can imagine!
A positive and encouraging sign is the amount of support all over the wall from all around the world; i swear if the wall could be turned into an art museum it would make a fortune! A could swear half the messages on the wall are from the Irish (RESPECT!).
The true impact of the wall in Bethlehem is probably best seen through the eyes of Imad one of the guys I am working with on the barrier economics project. He travels from Bethlehem everyday and this takes him an hour and a half if not longer some days for a journey that took him previously 20 minutes. The distance is not even that far. He well into his fifties, the same age of many of our parents, an old man; he shouldn’t need to do this; he shouldn’t need to be put through this. This is madness.
We also got the chance to go through the Dheisheh Refugee Camp in Bethlehem, this is more than a refugee camp put a semi-permenant village - the camp was full of art work with one simply reading "where is the world".
No comments:
Post a Comment