The Alchemists

As some of you may already know, a principal goal for our three week extension of this trip was to create a biogas digester for the cave-dwelling bedouin community of Ghwein, in the Southern Hebron Governate. Earlier in the abroad, we had spent a day with this community learning about their lifestyle, eating wonderful food, and hearing about the difficulties of living traditionally under the occupation. This day prompted our desire to give back. That same day, we briefly visited another small community, Suseya, where Adrian had helped Yair Teller to install a biogas digester a few weeks earlier. This project gave us the idea of spreading this proven system to the people of Ghwein. We have been spending some time setting up all the contacts, primarily with the biogas wizard Yair Teller, and our Hebron contact Nayef Hashlamoun. Through our work with these two individuals, we hope to see this project come to fruition.

After a week of emails and phone conversations, we set a tentative schedule for our project. Tuesday we were to travel to Ghwein, joined by Nayef as our local contact and translator to the cave dweller community. Nayef Hashlamoun is a retired photojournalist who worked for Reuters for many years. He now runs a small organic farm on his property, and is the full-time president of the Alwatan Center; a community center in downtown Hebron. Yair Teller is a graduate of the Arava Institute in southern Israel, which specializes in environmental issues, and is the only campus which has Israeli, Palestinian, Jordanian, and International students. After graduation, Yair started the small company Ecogas to provide biogas digesters to communities in the West Bank. Through email, Yair provided us with a list of supplies needed to create the biogas digesters, and we planned to collect these materials on Wednesday in Hebron with Nayef's help. Thursday will be spent building the biodigester with Nayef and Yair's help.

Tuesday started slow and rainy. Difficulties at the rental car agency and with directions meant that we arrived to Hebron in the early afternoon. We met up with Nayef at the Alwatan Center downtown and followed him to his house to visit the organic farm and discuss our exploratory trip to Ghwein. After the obligatory chai, we set out in the afternoon light, grateful that the rain had lifted. We spent the drive to Ghwein questioning Nayef about the possibilities of this project and learned that he had two site recommendations for implementation. The first site, slightly up the road from Ghwein was a small family farm and Women's community center. The second, a family of 13 within Ghwein itself. The next 4 hours, we spent trying to deliberate the most effective site to implement this system. It was not easy. Though we ended up content with our decision, Adrian and I had difficulty choosing between these two sites because this system would be excellent for both sites.

who could begrudge empathy and aid to children like this?  

The process of making the decision was influenced by many factors. We wanted to implement this project in the place of greatest need, but also trying to be mindful of the opportunity for this system to naturally spread in the area through adoption. Both sites met the necessary input criteria: an abundance of sheep and goat manure, wastewater, and eager participants. Our biggest sticking point came from the possible outcomes of the two sites. The first site had a great location close to the highway, and the women's center there would allow for the greatest exposure to the community. We had a personal connection with the second site from our earlier visit. With its remote location and destitute inhabitants, this site definitely had the greatest need. Our qualms centered on deciding between serving the greatest need or promoting the technology to the widest possible audience.

We visited the women's center first and established that this site would be perfect for a biogas digester system. We were so content with this decision, we almost decided to move ahead with the project there without even visiting the other community. This site was perfect! We were confident that the project would take root and spread with an abundance of the needed inputs, a need for the gas and fertilizer, and willing participants. We elected to scope the other site just to be sure. The need for aid was felt very strongly in the second community. After a short while we began feeling uneasy This second family could barely afford to buy gas and certainly had an abundance of manure and wastewater, but due to the more arid conditions there seemed to be no agriculture. With the output of excellent fertilizer seemingly going unused, we were hesitant to subscribe to the biogas digester as the answer to their needs. We slowly learned that the family did have plans for a vegetable patch and herb garden for their personal use in the near future, and the sludgy fertilizer which flows from a biodigester would fit this project excellently.

members from the two different families survey a biogas digester in Suseya.

Still unsure of our final decision, we decided to take members from these two communities with us to visit Suseya to see the project's impact on the families there. This instantly created a very lively discussion of the project between the family who had been living with a bio digester for around two months, and the two prospective families. Community building of this sort was another focal point for our project. We wanted this project to foster communities of cooperation between families with biogas, instilling knowledge and experience within families which is transferred to new adopters of the technology.

After many hours of conversation and too many cups of tea to count, we headed home to Bethlehem still deliberating where to implement our project.

Tune in next time for the exciting conclusion to... The Alchemists!

Bustan Qaraaqa!

I wish we spent more time at as a full abroad group at Bustan Qaraaqa. This excellent permaculture farm is nestled in a valley on the outskirts of Beit Sahour and embodies many of my favorite characteristics. The farm also operates as a guest house, but the times we ended up staying there we never payed. Travelers from around the world visit here, intent on learning permaculture strategies from Tom, the gregarious farmer/ inkeeper/ professor who keeps this place humming. We visited on a Thursday afternoon and didn't end up leaving until early Friday morning.

A long tour of the premises with Tom revealed more than meets the eye. To the casual viewer, the farm looks almost lackadaisical, mostly native plants and trees planted in the wadi at varying distances from each other, piles of empty beer and wine bottles along the path to the composting toilet, and cats everywhere. Through Tom's eyes however, I see projects! Here a contiguous canopy of forest cover, creating shade and enriching the farmland for the next generation of plants to grow, there a bottle-walled greenhouse/ shower room/ kitchen/laundry, and the cats, a family of strays much like the wayward travelers who come for a short visit and find themselves beguiled by the wonder that is Bustan Qaraaqa.

This colorful and smell-free composting toilet was a pleasure to use!

The compost toilets were some of the nicest I've seen, clean and not smelly in the slightest. Tom uses the “humanure” to plant trees and other shade bearing nitrogen fixers, but mentioned that he would be willing to use the humus for growing foods as well. “Compost toilets make me feel like an alchemist” Tom said, “taking the most base of materials and transmuting it into black gold, the freshest, richest soil I have ever seen!” I agree completely. It is time for us to stop this open chain of consumption of resources and production of waste and close that loop. Permaculture states that “Waste is energy in the wrong place” and this is no exception for human waste. The composting process produces incredible amounts of heat, (up to 80 degrees centigrade!) which kills all the human diseases and bacterias, rendering the soil completely inert and ready to produce excellent crops.

Other projects in the works included a pedal powered washing machine, sauna cave, aquaculture gardening, and some involved local tree plantings for West Bank bedouin families. The project is funded completely by donations and grants and does an immense amount of good in the area. To learn more or donate, visit BustanQaraaqa.org.

Volunteers are welcomed throughout the week, to take part in any of the multitudinous projects that the farm undertakes. We spent a Saturday demolishing some old concrete brick walls and digging out the area wherein the new bottle-walled greenhouse will be built. It was tiring work digging out the clay about 2 feet deep for the entire interior of the greenhouse. Though exhausting, it was rewarding work, especially seeing the excited look on Tom's face at the progress being made; Tom has been looking forward to this project for several years now so the groundbreaking was certainly a big step.

We continued to hang out with Tom and the Bustan crew for the rest of our time in Palestine getting into all sorts of mischief. Some even came down to help us South of Hebron with our biogas digester project which is the subject of my upcoming post entitled “The Alchemists”.

Harvesting the Sun Twice

Adrian and I decided that after all the excitement of traveling in the past frw days we would love a day off to just sit at a cafe and catch up on writing papers, emails, blogs and the like. We spent the morning lounging around Bethlehem, glad to be back in the West Bank, and happy to be able to put our bags in our apartment and home-base for the remainder of our trip. No longer weighed down by our heavy packs, we happily roamed the streets of Bethlehem picking up groceries and grabbing lunch at our favorite Falafel stand Afteem, all but in sight of the Nativity Church. We sat and wrote in Manger Square, passing the time, relieved to be stationary for once.

Adrian had received correspondence from a friend who invited us to a conference in Jerusalem at 5:30 entitled “Harvesting the Sun Twice”. Intrigued, we figured that we could just make it if we hurried to the bus stop. After a quick trip into Jerusalem, we called Adrian's friend for directions and struck out into West Jerusalem in search of the conference hall. We arrived around 45 minutes late, without an official invite, but our luck was still holding strong and we were let in with nary a second glance.

The conference was underway when we took our seats in the auditorium, but we quickly caught onto the gist of the project being presented. The project involved using thin-film photovoltaics, basically clear plastic which uses some of the available light to create electricity, and lets the rest of the light through. The project was examining the usage of these thin-film PV cells on greenhouses in Israel, Palestine, and Jordan as a possible replacement to the plastic roof coverings that are traditionally used on the region's many greenhouses. Although these technologies only provide for about 5% of the electricity of silicon PV cells, the ability to grow plants underneath with no noticeable disruption of growth is akin to “Harvesting the Sun twice!” If this technology is cheap enough, I am excited about the possibilities that it could bring to this region in terms of electrical independence.

If the product can provide electricity as well as crops for the farmer on the same piece of land it could do wonders for the farming population. There are still many questions to be answered, namely cost, durability, and reliability, but it is an idea which utilizes an infrastructure that is already built, and improves upon it.

After our journeys and the excitement of hands on building with Noam, this conference was a bit blasé in comparison, but still an excellent use of our time which would have otherwise been squandered roaming the internet or something.

Our next adventure takes place on a permaculture farm in Beit Sahour, a suburb of Bethlehem. Stay tuned for... BUSTAN QARAAQA!!!!

The Big Wind Blows

We had set up a meeting to volunteer with Noam Dotan, co-founder of COMETME.org, At his workshop in Bet Shemesh, a town between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. So we woke up early, put the Mediterranean to our backs, and traveled East by bus and train towards Jerusalem. Noam met us at the train station and brought us to his beautiful property along a ridge line looking East into the West Bank. COMETME is a small Israeli nonprofit which builds and installs hybrid, clean-energy power plants for off the grid communities in the Southern West Bank. The hybrid systems rely on a mix of wind and solar energy to charge batteries which the communities use to power all number of electronics.

Noam, a retired physicist, and renowned tinkerer, began by showing us around his workshop, which has two small windmills, one is electric, and the other a water pump, solar panels, an incredibly friendly shepherd/ collie mix named Nanya, and a multitude of homemade whirligigs. We chatted about the projects that COMETME is now undertaking, and learned an incredible amount about the way windmills work. We soon learned that we would be helping him construct a 4.2 meter diameter (13 feet!) windmill over the course of the day. We began by winding copious amounts of coated copper wire into neat little coils. These coils will be part of the stator, where energy from moving magnets attached to the windmill blades creates an electrical current through all these copper wires.

I had mentioned that I knew my way around power tools, so Noam set me to grinding and shaping two parts of the windmill frame to be welded together, while Adrian began disassembling an automotive bearing joint which would form the rotor to which the blades would be attached. We then helped Noam weld together the frame, and then weld the rotor to the frame. Noam taught Adrian how to weld, and set him loose to do some practice welds on some metal scraps, while I helped Noam to clean up the shop.

We then worked to clean and prepare two large steel discs onto which the magnets will be glued.

If you know me well, you know that I'm nuts about magnets... so this next step was easily my favorite part of an already excellent day. We unwrapped the DHL box of magnets, carefully packed within styrofoam and arranged in stacks of ten with plastic spacers in between. The rectangular neodymium magnets were each the size of a matchbox, and were unbelievably strong! Noam had given Adrian and I a cursory safety talk about welding and power tools during our last activity, but it paled in comparison to his emphatic warnings and strict guidelines regarding dealing with these magnets. After working with these magnets, I understand why. If we had not been careful, these magnets could have leapt out of our hands, crushed fingers, broken windows, or generally caused incredible amounts of mayhem in their search for the nearest piece of metal. The magnets were secured around the perimeter of the two steel discs with industrial epoxy, and then left to cure for 24 hours stored away from metallic objects and especially computers so as not to create said mayhem.

After completing our work, we drank espresso and chatted into the evening with Noam about his interest in wind energy, the future of COMETME, and how his work meets the needs of communities in the West Bank. His responses were brief and humble “I don't know if I'm contributing to peace in this region, I just saw a need, and I have the ability to meet that need with COMETME.” Noam's straightforward approach to energy independence intrigued me, because I see availability for it's application in communities the world over. For COMETME to do this work here, reaching across military barriers, speaks volumes about the efficacy of the technology, overcoming social and cultural stigmas to provide for the needs of neighboring communities.

While this approach might not directly tackle the issue of peace in the region, I believe in the work being done contributes indirectly to the peace effort by creating an Israeli point of contact for these communities which is diametrically opposite to the military occupation. Palestinians in these communities connect with real Israelis like Noam, who care about their well being and create lasting partnerships despite the military occupation.

We said goodbye to Noam, and headed to Jerusalem by bus, exhausted from a long day of working and learning. From the Jerusalem central bus station, we walked to dinner in the bustling Jewish market, then continued to the Old City to find a place to bunk for the night. We planned our return to the West Bank the next morning, Bethlehem will be our home base for the next few weeks.

Tune in Next time for “Harvesting the Sun Twice”

Amman to the Viv

Our first day on our own and we've already gotten ourselves into quite the adventure...

Adrian and I spent a leisurely morning in Amman, Jordan, taking in the city and picking up some sweet antiquities and asking around for directions to the crossing into Israel. Our greatest hurdle between us and the next three weeks was the Israeli border. We packed up and headed out of Amman by taxi in the early afternoon and after ninety minutes or so we had reached the Sheikh Hussein border crossing. The taxi driver was young, spoke little English, but we managed to have some basic gesture conversations and he even bought us arabic coffee for the trip! The view of the Jordan River Valley from the steep, winding road out of the Jordan mountains swept by us as we hurried towards the border, trying to get through and situated in Israel early enough to avoid Shabbat complications.

Our border crossing quickly went from the sublime to the ridiculous . I had run out of Dinar, and it cost us 28 each to get out of the country and into a bus which ferried us across the border. By the time we had straightened out the exit visa, we just missed the hourly bus to the Israeli side. Feeling frustrated, but still excited to be traveling again, we ate knock-off pringles, and Peanut M&M's to pass the time.

Crossing the Jordan River brought us to our biggest hurdle of the day, Israeli customs. This is where our trip could get seriously derailed if we misstep in any way. A young Israrli girl in RayBan glasses grilled us for a few minutes on the reason for our trip into Israel, where we were planning on staying, and what we studied. She asked me what I wanted to do with my life, to which I replied “farmer”. It didn't quite connect with her why a farmer would need to be college educated, but she soon relented and then it was our bags turn to run the gauntlet.

I had not packed correctly to travel through the border, and my blood ran cold as another young Israeli (this one with very little English) began searching my smaller backpack. I had managed to pack all the items that would raise red flags into this pack. Fear induced adrenaline made my breath catch in my throat as she pulled out item after item of suspicious nature. She flipped through my notebooks, perused the PLO negotiations primer, asked a few questions about the arabic dictionary, and mentioned “kuffiyeh” to one of her coworkers. I stood silently, mortified that I had ruined this trip before it had even started. To my amazement, I was let through! We breathed a sigh of relief and hurried through the rest of the border crossing with no further drama. We stepped outside, elated to yet again be on Israeli soil.  

An Arabic dictionary, PLO negotiations primer, Nonviolence literature, and a Kuffiyeh.   Any of these on their own can lead to a Denied Entry stamp.  

All of our mental energy and planning had been focused on getting to and through the border crossing so when we reached the other side, we realized that we hadn't come up with a plan. Shabbat was fast approaching and we figured there was perhaps an hour left until sundown so we started hiking toward the nearby town of Bet She-an, hoping to hitchhike and perhaps find a bus all the way to Tel Aviv. The first car to pass us stopped to pick us up. Issac, a young Israeli from Bet She-an gladly took us to the far side of his town promising that Afula, the next town over would have public transport to Tel Aviv. He also offered to come pick us up to spend Shabbat with him and his five dogs if we weren't able to hitch into Afula within the hour. We thanked him profusely, and walked West into the sunset, still unsure of our accommodations for the night, but ecstatic about our good fortune so far, and trusting that we were where we needed to be.

We hadn't walked 400 meters before another vehicle, an Isuzu pickup with a father and two children, stopped and offered us a ride to the Afula Bus Station. The father Rotem was not confident that we could find a bus after the start of Shabbat, but he was happy to help us navigate the bus station to explore the possibilities. We learned soon that the last bus to Tel Aviv had gone over two hours earlier and though we were amenable to continuing our hitchhiking experience, Rotem and his family insisted that we come join them for the night on their Kibbutz just out of town. We happily took the offer and piled back into the truck for the quick ride to Kibbutz Yizre'el.

Rotem's family took us in, opened up a communal guest room on the Kibbutz for our use. We had dinner and good conversation at Rotem's mother's house and afterwards Adrian and I played some basketball with the kids, horsing around and feeling genuinely blessed by our incredible fortune.

The Agmon family, Rotem, Smadar, Tamar, and Ya'el.

 It had been a very long day of travel so we turned in early, eager to continue the experience the next day. We woke to a call from Rotem, inviting us to breakfast. After breakfast we took a short hike off the Kibbutz to a small spring in the Valley where many secular Israeli families were spending Shabbat lounging in the shade of the nearby eucalyptus. Rotem prepared tea on a small camp stove as we asked questions about the area, his family, his work, political beliefs, travel experiences, and all manner of other subjects. 

We returned to his house for a delicious lunch, with fresh orange juice, coffee, veggies, chicken and some delicious sweet potato ravioli. Rotem then took us, this time by car, up the nearby Mt. Gilboa to see the Gilboa Irises which were in bloom. We toured and hiked around, getting an incredible view of the Jordan River Valley to the East, and the top edge of the West Bank to our South. We spent most of the afternoon touring around and seeing various hot springs and aqueducts in the valley which had been in existence since before roman times. We returned close to sunset which meant the end of Shabbat and the renewed possibility of public transport.

After saying our goodbyes and packing our bags, we grabbed a bus to Tel Aviv, exhausted but elated by the past two day's extraordinary events. Upon our arrival, Tel Aviv Central Bus Station presented a new challenge. The maze-like nature of the building disoriented us briefly, but we gout our bearings soon and headed for the coast. We walked down Allenby to the beach and spent the night in Hakaryon 48, a hostel a block from the Mediterranean.

There is no way to succinctly express our fortune from these first two days of travel. We felt almost as if we were constantly celebrating, because each step of our travels had fit so excellently together, and from all these disparate pieces, we had created a beautiful travel tapestry.

Tune in soon for the next chapter entitled, “The Big Wind Blows”  

Southern Jordan Desert (Wadi Rum)

Wadi Rum, 20:00, Two days before the full moon.

Driving into winding, sand-filled canyons on the back of an old toyota land cruiser, I feel the connection to our environment reaching out for me. Like lightning, which travels both down from the cloud and up from the earth, I feel the link between myself and the world forming and strengthening. We reach a small Bedouin encampment nestled within the sandstone cliffs under the light of a strongly waxing moon. After settling and dinner, our Bedouin hosts begin playing traditional music and clapping (somewhat) to the beat. Although I enjoy the songs and dance of the Bedouin people, I hear much more clearly, the call of the wilds. I head out of the camp, venturing just to the top of the nearby sand dune, and wait for my heartbeat to return to resting. The absolute silence is uncanny, not a sound but the lingering laughter of the group reaches my ears as I watch a small beetle make his way across this sandy landscape. Evidence of others passage is visible through footprints and the tire tracks of other trucks hauling sightseers through this gorgeous landscape.

The barren nature emboldens me to not worry overmuch about disturbing natural habitats over the next 48 hours, but at the same time I feel that with every footstep I am making my mark on this land, changing it in some small way with just my presence. The rock and sand which have been here for centuries have have an intrinsic worth and yet, with our intellect and planning, humans have changed this landscape forever. Building dams and reservoirs to catch and contain what little water does fall, humans have conquered this landscape, bending the rules of nature to our whim. But there is a limit to nature's elasticity, and with too much bending, comes irreparable damage to our ecosystems.

Although we see this place as a barren wasteland, bereft of human meddling, there were copious signs of human involvement in this place. Plastic and glass was often visible, strewn at random across the sands, with the occasional fire ring dotting the landscape. Now don't get me wrong, fires have been a part of our survival kit for generations untold, but glass and plastics are a fairly new addition to the human element. Used pottery can be smashed and will return to the earth from which it was made. Plastics and glasses are nigh on indestructible, and will mar the landscape for centuries to come. This is emblematic of our western relationship with the world. We extract what we need, use it once, then bury the refuse under piles of the same, simply for the convenience of bottled water. How can we expect to live continuously on the only world we've got unless we choose to live within a closed cycle of giving and taking?

Living within our means in an economic sense means making sacrifices, forgoing the extraneous and choosing to focus only on that which is necessary for survival. If we look at the world's ecosystems like a giant stock portfolio, we must only use the yearly growth, not the capital if we want to live sustainably. Take a second to calculate everything that, as an individual, you consume from this world's resource pool. Now balance that against what you give to the environment, and that is your net environmental impact. Is your resource intake greater than your environmental output? Mine too.

Nazareth Homestays

My apologies for the inconsistent posting here, the  trip and HW has been taking priority i'm afraid.  Now that the official  abroad has concluded, I am travelling with a friend, Adrian, for three weeks and will be posting much more regularly both retroactively, to catch you up on my abroad goings on, as well as what I am up to currently.

This is my wonderful homestay family in Nazareth.  from left to right, Suhair,Taha, Sa'id, Osama, and Hammad.  Thank you so much for welcoming me into your home!

 The time I spent with my homestay family was an enlightening, albeit brief, foray into the daily life of a middle class Arab-Israeli family. The opportunity to visit with Taha and Suhair's family and friends revealed many cultural differences and nuance which helps me better understand the other as a whole. I had the opportunity to head out to Akko with Taha's friends Horon, Raaz, and Zacki Darwesh. Two of these men are professors at Haifa University teaching the subjects of Arabic Literature, and Children's literature. Zacki Darwesh, brother of the late Mohammed Darwesh writes short stories. All three are published authors. These men plunged me into an atmosphere of intimidating intellectuality, which was a pleasant treat. We discussed politics and religion, told jokes and drank coffee while the men smoked shisha for nearly three hours at a beautiful cafe built on Napoleon's old harbor, surrounded on all sides by the imposing ramparts of the ancient port city of Acre.

Taha is a wonderful example of working class Arab-Israeli. He is the manager of an office north of Nazareth. Horon, unmarried and brazenly intellectual, is his best friend since grade school, and the connection between Taha and the other literary types who joined us in Akko. Horon is a self described “spiritual thinker”, Raaz is a practicing Muslim, and Zacki says he doesn't believe in God. The religious and philosophical discussion illustrated the diversity of thought within the Arab population and brought some interesting thoughts to my mind as well. The connection between God and man was discussed, along with hypothetical discussions on the origins of deity. Horon made connections with the Jewish narrative and biblical history, expressing that he was taught much of the Jewish narrative during his primary school years in Israel. Horon told me that “Israel and the Middle East are places of belief, not understanding.” This struck me as central to the continuing conflict, if no attempts at understanding the other are made, personal and cultural beliefs derived from religion and communal narrative will continue to rule the political scene, working unilaterally in the multilateral arena of regional politics.

Education was also discussed. Two of the four men were currently professors and Zacki is a retired professor so they had interesting insights on the nature of learning and concepts of continual growth. We discussed finding the right questions to ask. Not worrying about the answers, but learning HOW to learn, to continually challenge oneself with contrary ideas and opinions to shape and strengthen one's own beliefs and understandings. This is one reason I enjoyed such plurality of religious beliefs within these four gentlemen. They all met and discussed these subjects in order to learn and grow. I realize how integral friends are to the learning process as they provide trusted and respected, yet different narratives and beliefs. Some of the best conversations I have had on this trip, with the most growth, haven't been in class discussions, but impromptu chats about the travel and those we meet with another abroad member, or a new friend at a coffee shop such as this night in Akko. These friendly discussions can cover innumerable topics, weave in humorous and earnest elements, and promote an unforeseen growth intellectually and interpersonally. I am grateful to have this night as a memory from my travels here, and to continue to learn and grow from the ideas that were shared with me. A sincere thanks goes out to Taha and his family for hosting me, Horon for being my translator, and new friend, and Raaz and Zacki for making this night truly extraordinary. Near the end of the night, Raaz and I were walking along the docks, getting a bit of fresh air from the nargile-stuffed cafe, and looking out to the Mediterranean Sea, thinking. Raaz left me with another quote that was both simple and deep, if not too cliché, “The sea is like our futures, both inviting and frightening.” I'm anxious to paddle my way out into the warm surf of my future, determined to grow with every stroke.