Ramat ha nadiv

Volunteering in Ramat haNadiv. Yesterday was our first day volunteering there next to the stream... They are getting ready to plant a garden of native to this land vegetables and other plants...he (machfuz) call it ancient agriculture.... I have to understand why he wants to calls it ancient and not say organic - because he always stresses the fact that they are not going to use any chemicals... Anyway we were supposed to help. Well, it was verynhard for me - first, people were very late (we said we will start at 11 (I actually came at 10 to have some time to swim beforehand) but most of the people arrived around half past 12... Machfuz was not worried, but he gave us an impossible task - to clean one of the terraces from rocks... He also acted very much like a teacher this time (asking kids questions and lecturing a little on how to garden "the right way") what upset me the most was that he didn't even tell them his name (you see, this is unimportant, what is important is a bunch of facts you are going to forget or not understand... His name, where he is from, why he does this... He didn't really want a relationship with them...) I remember how we started in the Haifa zoo... It was the same, a huge group of "volunteers" (moms who are happy to send their children to do something and hopefully without their direct involvement and kids who don't really want to be working. We were given very hard and boring jobs - cleaning the mice cage, cutting salads etc. I had to work hard, Eran would disappear every time we would show up. In the end though, after getting rid of the group and baking cookies and drawing pictures for a year we had a real friendship that involved really helping and learning. For me the best part was seeing and being friends with real people doing real work that they loved, that they wouldn't trade for anything else... So here too, I have to get ready for a year of making connection, of showing them who we are and finding out who they are... It will be good - I just know it!