Showing posts for 2009 - Show all posts
16
DEC
2009
Posted at 15:15
Hannah and Liz will post their final blog soon. Here is a photo of the gift we were each given by the SOS Village and School - an angel playing a harp carved out of local olive wood. This one is photographed in my kitchen on a piece of Palestinian embroidery made by the Arab Womens Craft Guild.
03
DEC
2009
Posted at 13:50
Hannah:
Our last few days are proving to be extremely busy as we continue to deliver sessions at the SOS School and in the Village. By now however, many of our trainees are able to lead the sessions by themselves which is great for us to see and reassures our hope that they will be able to sustain these sessions once we leave. The instruments we purchased last week are going down very well and proving a success in both places.
Over the weekend the village was fairly empty as the majority of the children were away visiting family or friends for a few days to celebrate Eid. There were however, around ten children who stayed at the village for the duration which, for me, really highlights the importance of the SOS community and organisation as these children sadly have no one else to look after them. With a complete day off last Sunday we set off for Jerusalem to meet up with the music teacher from SOS school who is also one of our trainees. He had kindly offered to spend the day with us (I say ‘kindly’ because days off are rare for him and he sees us many times at school!) and he gave us a fantastic tour of the Old City, this time focussing on the Armenian Quarter as this is where he grew up. Despite spending many an occasion on a noisy bus trip where the children here go wild for loud Arabic pop music Liz and I have yet to be put off; in fact we have fallen in love with Arabic music off all kinds and so whilst in Jerusalem with our music specialist we were desperate to get our hands on some CDs to take home!
What we have seen of Palestine so far has been fantastic. As well as the phenomenal architecture, sites of religious history and landscape that is very different from home, I think the most special thing I have come across here is the friendliness of the Palestinian people. Tomorrow will be our last day at the SOS School. We will really miss all the people there as they have been extremely welcoming. The trainees especially have worked very hard and shown great enthusiasm for the ‘Music as Therapy’ programme. I’ll try get back on the computer and give you some more information before we leave.
Music as Therapy trainees.
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27
NOV
2009
Posted at 16:37
This week has been very busy indeed. It is a Muslim holiday here at the moment, so the schools are closed until Tuesday next week. To compensate for missed days, we have made up some sessions over the past few days, and will be trying to ensure everything is tied up neatly by the time we leave.
Preparing the handbook for staff is our priority at the moment, although it’s a bit difficult to concentrate! Some of the children who are here in the Village without families or friends to stay with over this holiday are being very boisterous, and keep rushing in as they don’t understand why we are working today! In fact I’ve just been given some sweets to keep me going by a kind little friend.
Talking of food, we’ve been given some amazing meals here in the Village. Earlier in the week we had Cabsa, a rice-based dish containing various spices, sultanas and roast almonds together with chicken. We have been given the recipe, and also a quantity of spices to enable us to (hopefully) reproduce this when we go home. Another hit was a famous dish called Musakhan. This is again made with spiced roast chicken, and served on large round pizza type breads called taboon. It has a sweet fried onion topping made with sumac, a spice derived from the plant of the same name that is deep purple. We recommend it, although beware, it is very filling!
A social worker at SOS village and a music teacher (below).
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22
NOV
2009
Posted at 11:38
Hannah:
Yesterday we celebrated the 60th birthday of the SOS organization and we had a great day! The children all went away for a picnic with the SOS school whilst at the village we gathered with the mothers, the aunts, all the people who work for SOS Bethlehem and the Principal and deputy principal of the SOS School to celebrate something that is no doubt being celebrated all over the world. We listened to speeches by the directors here at the village and a visitor from the Ministry of Education in Bethlehem (give me a couple more months of my Arabic studies and I would have understood every word!), ate lots of cake and then all went outside to release 60 balloons painted with the SOS logo into to sky. Seeing everyone celebrate together really highlighted the closeness of this village which has a fantastic family feeling running throughout.
After a morning off joining in with the celebrations we decided to compensate for all the cake we had eaten by hiking up the hill to Yasser Arafat Street. There we visited Valentine Music Shop and bought many instruments we had decided upon for both the SOS school and the village. Now that we have got to know the staff that we are training very well Liz and I had a play with the instruments in the shop to decide which ones would be most beneficial and how they could be incorporated into the training. We’re really looking forward to adding these to the collection and using them in our upcoming sessions.
Outside our sessions and once all is finished for the day one of the things I enjoy is visiting the houses with my clarinet and having some fun with the children. Having made the mistake initially of trying to entertain ten children in one go I have now got a great system of playing with one child at a time! Yesterday I visited a little friend who is very ill this week and having spoken with his mother we thought a little music might cheer him up. With my clarinet and a couple of the quieter percussion instruments (!) we spent about twenty minutes playing and improvising together and had a few funny conversations in our usual broken Arabic/English way!
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