I turned the corner and headed to the classroom with a cluster of 9-year-olds trailing me like frenzied groupies. As I approached the English class, a girl darted outside and grabbed me by the wrist, beseeching me to sit next to her. As I followed the girl to her seat, the other students, seemingly jealous, tried to coax me to their seat with desperate screams. One girl even grabbed my other wrist and tried dragging me to her seat.
I make the army look good.
Most of my volunteering in Ofaqim, which hovers around 35 hours a week, I spend teaching English. Three times a week, I spend at a school, grades 7-12, taking kids out of their English classes for private tutoring. Last week, I distributed the lyrics to Alanis Morissette’s “Ironic” as we listened to the song and watched the music video, which actually has no visual connection to the lyrics. Instead, it is Alanis, in fact, two different Alanises, screaming like mental patients in a car. So much for aiding the visual learners.
In the afternoons, I work twice a week at an after-school center for kids who are part of a mentoring program. The mentors are assigned a number of kids from poor families, and they, with the cooperation of the children’s parents, ensure the children’s well-being both in school and outside of school. I, for my part, help the kids with their homework, either English or math, after school.
Twice a week in the evenings, I volunteer at a youth café, which is run by a group of soldiers whose goal it is to offer kids, mostly in high school, a safe place to hang out with their friends and also to serve as role models for them. Initially, any attempt toward a real conversation was thwarted by the kids incessant inquiries into my sexual life, mostly pertaining my interest in whores and my sexual orientation. For some reason, these kids, mostly from Russian background, have no interest in anything but making immature, inappropriate jokes using their comically poor English skills.
Socially, the town of Ofaqim is a black hole. There is not any place where people my age can hang out and mingle at night. No bars, no restaurants. The only food establishments are small, fast-food shwarma and falafel joints. Not an ideal breeding ground for social interaction.
Therefore, most weekends I escape Ofaqim to visit Israeli friends nearer to civilization. Last weekend, while staying with my friend in Modi’in, I organized a reunion for staff who worked at my summer camp in 2007, my first year. About 13 people attended.
This week, I will be in Ashdod, and then Sunday my program has a seminar and trip that will focus on minorities in Israel. Will we actually talk to intelligent, eloquent, English-speaking Arabs? For the sake of our largely narrow perspectives, I hope so.
Again, thanks for reading and sorry for the absence. Oh, and Happy Purim!
Signing off,
Brian.
Posted by brianfreedman 