We Visit a Bedouin Tent

This adventure starts with us hiking down into the dry river valley near our house, which we've shown in numerous pictures in earlier blog posts, and up the other side. To get up on the plateau we take a trail known as the Divshon Ascent. Here's the view looking up as we hike up the trail.


Here's a picture I took of Miriam while on our way up the Divshon Ascent.


Once we're on the top of the plateau, we hike across a plain on which is scattered the usual combination of limestone and flint rubble. I've read that ancient tools made from flint are abundant up here, but I've yet to find one. After about an hour's hike on the plateau we come to a tent.


As we get closer to the tent we can see a sign inviting us in for tea, coffee, and pita bread. We decide to enter. You can see Lynn and Miriam already inside in the picture below.

Once inside the tent, we meet our hostess, Majdeline (This is how her name sounds to us but we don't know how she actually spells it). Majdeline is clearly Bedouin, which is the name for a group of nomadic Arabic tribes that are indigenous to the area. They migrated to the Negev from Saudia Arabia via the Sinai desert about 250 years ago. The integration of the Bedouin into contemporary Israeli society has not gone well for reasons that I won't go into here. Another thing we've learned about the Bedouin is that they have a tradition of warm hospitality. Majdeline clearly enjoys carrying on this tradition. Here she is pictured below with one of her daughters.

Majdeline puts out quite a spread: sweet tea, fresh pita, soft homemade goat cheese (known as labaneh cheese) garnished with herbs and olive oil, and peppers stuffed with rice. Everything is delicious.

There are just a few parties in the tent, but as you can see, Majdeline has room for many more.

Lynn does a great job of carrying on a conversation with Majdeline in fractured English, Hebrew, and Arabic. Majdeline decides to show us how to make Pita bread. First, she builds up a wood fire and cleans off the pan, which looks like an inverted wok.

Next, she flattens out a ball of dough by throwing it back and forth between her hands.

She then tosses the flattened dough onto the pan and flips it by hand.


After we've eaten nearly all the food she put out for us, she agrees to have her picture taken with Miriam and Rebekah.

Soon afterwards, we thank Majdeline profusely and head back out onto the windblown desert plateau. Here's a picture of Miriam and Rebekah taken by Lynn while on the walk home.



If you ever find yourself in the Negev desert, don't miss a chance to visit Majdeline. Please tell her we sent you.

When it absolutely, positively has to be there in a week or so

I love Israel. I love the land, the food, the people, and almost everything else about Israel. One of the few things I don’t love is that, sometimes, the customer service provided by companies and government agencies is reminiscent of the old Soviet Union. That doesn’t mean that we haven’t had lots of great customer service here. In fact, lots of people have been very courteous and helpful. It’s just that, every now and then, we’re surprised by the horrible customer service we receive. Here’s one example which starts while we’re still home in Colorado packing up.

Late January: I realize a few days before we are set to leave on our trip that my Schwab Bank debit card is going to expire at the end of March. I call up Schwab and the customer representative tells me not to worry. All I have to do is mail Schwab a letter with my address in Israel. I write the letter and get it out right away.

Early February: No debit card or word from Schwab so I send an e-mail. A few days later I hear back that the bank has no record of my letter. I call Schwab from Israel and get a helpful customer representative. She urges me to fax my letter to her. I can’t imagine where I’ll find a fax machine so I mail a new copy of the letter directly to her.

Late February: The letter still hasn’t shown up at Schwab even though packages I mailed much later have already arrived. I decide to go the fax route. I ask an Israeli friend to fax it from work and he lets me know that he can.

Thursday, March 3rd: My Israeli friend sends out the fax. My new friend at Schwab calls me several times on my cell phone to let me know she got the fax and she’s taking care of the situation. Within a few days she sends out the new debit cards to me via FedEx. She also lets me know that my letter mailed from Israel finally showed up a few weeks after I mailed it.

Tuesday, March 8th: My Schwab rep sends me an e-mail with my FedEx tracking number. Estimated delivery is on March 10th. It’s not clear to me how FedEx is actually going to deliver the package to my house. Our neighborhood here isn’t like the US, where there are named streets laid out in a grid and houses are clearly marked with numbers. Instead, our neighborhood consists of alleys and a few unnamed lanes for cars to gain access. I don’t ask about this, though. I figure FedEx must know what it’s doing.

Thursday, March 10th: I check the status of my shipment on the FedEx web site. It’s on the truck for delivery. I tape a note to the door asking the delivery person to leave the package at the door (see picture below). By late that afternoon, no delivery is in sight. I don’t even get a door tag telling me that a delivery was attempted. I get on FedEx’s web site and send an e-mail message asking for help in arranging for delivery. Lynn and I talk to the neighbors. They tell us that in order to get a FedEx delivery, you have to get on the phone with the driver and explain how to find your house.



Sunday, March 13th: I had to wait for Shabbat to be over for the FedEx tracking web site to be updated. It tells me that my package wasn’t delivered because “Customer not available or business closed.” No response to my email, so I get on the phone to FedEx. After talking to several customer representatives I get transferred to FedEx International. The representative tells me not to worry, takes my Israeli cell phone number, and tells me that the FedEx Israel folks will give me a call. I wait. Still, there’s no delivery, door tag, or phone call. Today’s excuse: “Incorrect address.” How could I have not been home yesterday at an address that doesn’t exist today? I’m concerned that the FedEx driver isn’t even attempting to deliver the package, and is just filing arbitrary exception reports. I expect that tomorrow the same thing will happen, and then, FedEx will send my package back to the US. The gulf between the customer service FedEx is famous for in the US, and what it provides here, is mind boggling.

Monday, March 14th: In the morning, I call FedEx International again. Again, the representative tells me that my package is on the truck for delivery. She’s quite apologetic. She takes both my phone number and e-mail address and tells me I will hear from someone. By the end of the day, no delivery, no door tag, no phone call, and no e-mail. The reason for today’s non-delivery: “Customer not available or business closed.” Apparently, I’m out of delivery attempts. I finally get a response to my e-mail message to FedEx from four days ago. It’s an automated message telling me that FedEx US can’t help and advises me to send an e-mail message to FedEx Israel. I do. I get a prompt reply! It reads: “Maximum hop count exceeded. Message probably in a routing loop. Maximum hop count exceeded. Message probably in a routing loop.”

Tuesday, March 15th: I go through my usual morning routine. First I check the FedEx tracking web site. Although I thought I was out of delivery attempts, my package has been loaded on the truck for delivery yet again. The e-mail from FedEx yesterday also included a phone number for FedEx Israel. I call it. I get a guy who tells me that the driver couldn’t deliver the package because he couldn’t find my house. I ask why he didn’t call my cell phone and the guy on the phone tells me he couldn’t because he didn’t have my cell phone number. I don’t mention how many times I have given my cell phone number to FedEx International. I give my cell phone number yet again. The customer rep says that the driver will call between 12 and 3 today. I have my doubts, but I’m cautiously optimistic.

At about 1:30, when I am hiking with Lynn and Nicholas in the Makhtesh Ramon (more on this in another blog), my cell phone rings. It’s the FedEx driver. I try explaining to him how to get to our house, but it’s not working (See below for the picture of me talking on my cell phone to the driver). Between the sketchy cell phone connection and his limited English skills, it’s too hard. At Lynn’s urging, I ask him if he knows where the bike shop is. He does. I tell him to deliver the package there. He happily agrees. I call Asaf, the owner of the bike shop. He tells me that he already has the package.




On the way home from our hike, we stop off at the bike shop. Asaf hands me the envelope (pictured below). Hurray! After a month-and-a-half, and a lot of aggravation, I now better understand how to get things done in Israel.

Ulpan

Jay and I started ulpan, intensive Hebrew language classes, almost 2 weeks ago. It's our excuse for why the blogging is slowing down. We are in class 5 days/week, 5 hours/day in a kibbutz half an hour from where we live and have lots of homework. The class is small, just 4 other students, 2 from France and 2 from the US.

The ulpan guys

We meet in a bomb shelter

We spend several hours trying (often with little immediate success) to learn new words. We sing children's songs and have inane conversations with the few words we know. We laugh a lot. Every morning we struggle to remember words, re-introduce ourselves, are pleased to meet each other all over again, ask where we live and how long we've been in Israel. We play games like standing at the board, trying to write down numbers our classmates call out as fast as they can. Or putting out 10 objects, learning their names, then leaving while a few a removed and saying what's missing. It's either ulpan or an Alzheimer's preview.

Jay, trying to remember what's missing...and how to say it in Hebrew

Yesterday we learned a few verbs. Thank goodness! Now, besides studying and talking, we can eat, drink, shop, talk, walk, stand and sit.

There are many cases where Hebrew has only one word for two in English. For example, "like" and "love" are the same word. Romantic comedies must be even funnier here. Also, there is one word for both "this" and "that." Do I sit in this chair or that chair becomes Abbott and Costello material. I asked our teacher whether it was confusing. I got the Israeli shrug and a bemused, "yes, it's like that."

Here's another interesting thing about Hebrew, or perhaps about my experience of Israel. Before I started ulpan, I made a list of words I knew. About a third were different ways to say good: good, very good, ok, everything ok, sbaba (ok in Arabaic), excellent. I didn't know any negative words! Now that I have a week of Hebrew class behind me, I know the word for "bad," but it turns out that it has that rolling, throatal r that I can't pronounce, so if I tried to say it, people wouldn't understand me. I've already forgotten it anyway. So the worst I can be is "not good." So far the words I know are happily quite sufficient in this department. But perhaps this is where the Jewish mother style of complaining comes from?

After a few hours, when our heads are about to burst, we go out and walk around the kibbutz. One day we learned the names of trees and plants that grow there.

Kumquats grow here. Delicious, but what a word!

Anenome (clalit)

Our second day, we took a field trip to the local grocery store. We caused a minor traffic jam in the chocolate aisle as we practiced reading prices on various products. We took turns going to the good-natured cashier asking "kama ze ole?" (how much does this cost?) and reporting our findings back to the group. Since this is a country of immigrants, people are generally patient with us, talking slowly and remembering when they learned Hebrew. Today, we went back to the grocery store again. Old pros now, having mastered the numbers, we learned the names of vegetables and fruits. Very useful!

Kama ze ole?

We had our class over for lunch. Nicolas, a playwright and theatre director from Paris, seated between the girls, deemed them "very dramatic."

Back to the flashcards for us!

We Go Mountain Bike Riding

One day we cut class at Ulpan (Hebrew language school) to go on a bike ride organized by the local bike shop. Our crew consists of: Asaf, the owner of the bike shop; two guys from France and Switzerland; a local Israeli; and Lynn and me. That's Asaf on the left.

We head out into the desert with Asaf in the lead. The riding is technically challenging with lots of loose rubble.

Lynn is sure enjoying riding on her new mountain bike.

We experience technical difficulties. No problem. Asaf is an expert tire changer.

After a few hours of riding we make it to the Makhtesh Gadol. The makhtesh looks like a huge crater, but actually, it was formed by water erosion.

Here's a closeup of the wall of the makhtesh. The red rock on the cliffs below the limestone escarpment is actually sandstone. It's the first sandstone we've seen on this trip.

On the ride back, Asaf leads us to this hole in the ground.

On closer observation, we can see that there is a staircase leading down. We go down the staircase into an ancient water cistern, chiseled out of chalk probably about two thousand years ago. On the right wall you can see the chisel marks. We continue to be amazed at the engineering prowess of the people who survived in this desert in ancient times.

Inside, the cistern is huge. Nowadays, there's even a tree growing inside.

Here's another view.

When we come out, we can see the network of ditches and dams that were constructed to direct runoff into the cistern.

The ride takes nearly all day and one of the European guys told us it was 38 kilometers. That's over 23 miles on dirt and rock. Only on the way back does Asaf reveal to us that it's one of the most technically challenging rides in the area. Once we're back at the bike shop, it's time to celebrate our success. Here's Lynn having fun with one of the bike techs.

Here she is clowning around with Asaf.

Here we are, savoring the sweetness of completing a great ride.

Our first road trip

Last weekend we went on our first road trip, to the Dead Sea area. We started out at Kibbutz Ein Gedi, a real oasis. The staff are very friendly, all obviously proud of what they've accomplished. It's a gorgeous kibbutz, complete with botanical garden, shady and green in the midst of yet more austere desert. There are baobab trees. Remember in The Little Prince when he finds a planet that's so small there are only 3 baobab trees on it, and they're growing so fast and big that he worries they will split the planet apart? Well, these trees are absolutely immense, and they're only 50 years old!

Baobab at  night

The whole place is gorgeous.When you're inside, it's so comfortable and lush, it's easy to forget you're in such harsh desert. When we were there the weather was lovely: 60s and 70s. It gets brutally hot, though, with temps in the 100s during the summer.

The contrast between kibbutz and surroundings is striking

Don't know what this cool tree or growths are, but all real

Cactus garden

There's even mini-golf, though it's different from what we're used to.

You have to hit the ball lightly on a concrete course

The buffet breakfast and dinner are excellent.

Check out the halvah!

The next day we went on a hike in Nahal David. It's a national park and was crowded with Shabbat hikers. Surprisingly, much of the hike was in the shade and in water. We saw several waterfalls, all within 20 minutes of trailhead.

After the hike, we went to float in the Dead Sea, or Yam Hamelech (Sea of Salt). We passed by the lowest meteorological station in the world.

The Dead Sea is in bad shape. The water level is dropping a meter a year because so much water is being taken out of the Jordan river. That's depth, not distance from the shoreline. Here you see where the shoreline was just 11 years ago. Now you can take a tractor ride down to the sea.

Obligatory tourist photo.

The next morning we got up early to hike up to Masada. See Rebekah's post for her point of view.

The Snake Path, where we're hiking, in the foreground

View from Masada over the Dead Sea, Moab Mountains in Jordan on far side

Masada is very impressive and we'll write more about it in another post.

All in all, a great trip. We were glad to be home in our little town and ready to go out and explore more.