Day 6: Through The Jordan Valley

We're up early for another show. It's another beautiful day out in the sunshine and we head up north-east into the Jordan Valley, first meeting up with our British contact, Martin, who knows the families that the Circus is due to perform to today.



We first have to take a taxi to Jericho to the east. Our taxi driver, Walid, waits for us patiently to get the Circus equipment together. In the meantime he's happy to show off his skills on a musical instrument that resembles a recorder. As he hands it to me for me to have a go, I inspect it a little closer to find that it's an aluminium pipe with six holes cut into it. I can't even get a note out of it.


Above: Monastery carved into a mountain on the way to Jericho.
Below: Martin


From Jericho, we take a second taxi heading North. Martin explains that we're headed into territory that although it is in Palestine, has been designated as being under Israeli Military control. We've got one more person in the taxi than is lawfully allowed, and as we approach a checkpoint (not even on the Palestinian border), Jen, the tiniest member and also the contortionist of our group is stuffed under a load of blankets on the back seats. Here, even the smallest excuse to make life hard for anyone crossing this checkpoint is used - Rafeed's description of the Israelis just wanting to cause irritation is becoming evident. As the taxi driver shows his documents, we wait about 20 minutes, and we later find out that the taxi driver has been fined without reason. We're told it's common for corrupt guards to issue fines to boost their own income. There's no wall here, but there's a guardpost about 16 foot high, manned by a kid on a mounted machine gun turret. For obvious reasons, I haven't managed to get a photo of this yet.


Above: Jen peers out of the back window of the van along this dirt track of a road.

We drive on for another hour or so through barren lands. Every now and then, the taxi driver makes sure we've got our seatbelts on as we drive past an Israeli military placement. Having lived in the area for a few months, Martin is well-informed about the situation of the area and says how usually everyone takes their seatbelts off after passing these illegally placed military placements. A small act of defiance but one nevertheless. I'd take my seatbelt off but I'm rolling around at the very back of the cargo compartment of the taxi van anyway, and am feeling very much at home thanks to many a Subsource journey.


Above: At 30 metres below sea level, the Jordan Valley is the lowest land on Earth. It is a flat and extremely fertile plain compared to the rest of the dry, sandy land that we have passed so far. I'm told that Israelis have forcefully occupied this territory within Palestine with support from their military and much of the Israeli food exports that make it out of the country are actually from right here in Palestine. I get an eerie feeling from this place.

Martin, who has reached guru status in my eyes by this point (definitely helped out by the kick-ass beard), then tells me of the atrocities committed in the tiny villages that the Circus is about to perform at. In these tiny communities of Palestinian families within the Israeli military-controlled zones, they are having their homes bulldozed after an hour's notice. The lucky ones get a few days. Unlike the major towns and cities, these tiny encampments are powerless to resist any military takeover and the result is a gradual annexation of the land by the Israelis.

It's only when we get there and I see it with my own eyes that the reality kicks in. The sight of a few shacks built out of re-used food sacks and some sheets of corrugated metal feels like a kick somewhere just under and behind my stomach.








Above: Panoramic of the family camp. It really is in the middle of nowhere.

This is Al Hadidya, where the Palestinian families live in separate tribes, and the hope was for these different families to come together and bring the children to see the Circus. Unfortunately, there are feuds between the tribes and we're told that they refuse to all get together. It's a sad state of affairs, knowing that even with the military oppression, they fail to unite - it's as if the constant intimidation has brewed frustration between the camps with it. I ask our host what the intertribal fighting is all about and I'm told that nobody can really remember any more. For the Circus, it's all a bit of a blow as they do a short version of their act to just one of the families here: four children and a few dogs.













The taxi driver stops for a break by a few more shacks. We realise that this is where he lives and he invites us in for one hell of a meal. And a photo of the whole gang.





Afterwards, it's off to a second show at Ein Al Beida, where the children are called from working on the plantation to attend the show. The girls pull off another fantastic show. The kids love it of course, and it's incredible to see women are in hysterics, the men joining in and the teenage guys catching it on their mobile phones.











On the way back, there's another close call with the traffic - a van coming in the other direction has come a little too close to our taxi and we've lost a wing mirror. Nobody stops. At one point earlier in the trip, I was reading about renting a car and I'm sure I read somewhere that recommended that if you hit a pedestrian, you should just drive off.

We meet Walid again at Jericho for our final leg home. He hands me back my lens cap which I realised I'd misplaced earlier in the day. Then he hands Ruth back the single most important possession you might want to hang on to whilst travelling - her passport that she left there earlier. Nobody is surprised. I thank Wahid for the earlier music lesson and he gives me the aluminium pipe instrument to get some practise in.

We're really settling in at Susana's now. The flow of late night conversation is tending to divide between Jen, Laura, Mauro and Susana talking about the troubled situation of Palestinian affairs whilst the rest of us talk about the troubled situation of all my photos showing up too many double chins. There are a lot of double chins but hey, Photoshop can only do so much.

Martin's Blog:
http://brightonpalestine.org/