white plates, yellow plates (part 2)

long day today, but very productive. its been really emotional. i slept only a few hours last night, again, and woke up groggy, but hyper=thinking. i cant stop feeling like there is just way too much to do, mixed with fear, mixed with anxiety and a whole lot of other shit. getting to ramallah yesterday was the first time i have been back to the occupied territories, and i was reminded very quickly what that means. there is a huge wall all the way around jerusalem, only one entrance. and the road is being widened and repaved proudly by USAID. the irony. this morning in ramallah i met with abed, a man who has a bigger heart than anyone i have ever met in my life. he walked out of the restaurant with shining eyes and kindness and found me, graciously invited me to eat breakfast of hummus and pita, arabic coffee, and cigarrettes. abed is a union leader, working for the palestine general federation of trade unions, PGFTU, working in the legal department bringing advice and workshops to workers about their rights in factories in the territories, in israel, and even in the settlements. yes, palestinians have the dangerous and inhumanely ironic job of working construction in settlements, or working in israeli factories in settlements, using their cheap exploitable labor for thier export industry. they face the obvious racism and violence from settlers daily going in and out of the areas. but the deseperate economic situation in the territories has forced many into these jobs. abed also works in jenin in area of fair trade olive oil, and he is on the community councils in dozens of small communities throughout the west bank. in fact, he just finished building an emergency health clinic in a small village north of ramallah, that will be open 24hours a day and serve 25,000 people in the outlyinf villages of ramallah who otherwise would have to face dangerous or humiliating checkpoints in order to get to the only other hospital in the area in ramallah. its a great project. after hours of conversation with him and the secretary of projects related to women and gender in the PGFTU, abed decided tha the wanted to invite me to do a training in his clinic. he was enamored with the idea, he wants to know the next time i will come and he can advertise it all over all the villages - for treatment and for the training. in the future he has invited me to come work, once i have graduated, in the clinic in his village! what an honor.

all day today i spent with abed, and he was unendingly gracious. always offering me coffee, tea, food, the chair, the door, everything. he introduced me to the rest of all the PGFTU and we talked for several hours. they showed me how their union office has been raided by israeli forces last month, they stormed the building at night, wrecked all the furniture and doors, stole the computers, and shot the place up. they have filed an official internation complaint, as a violation of all ILO standards. at one point during the conversation he said, oh you just go to jerusalem, then come back, you can do it easily in one day. and i almost broke down and cried right there. jerusalem is 15 minutes away, and palestinians are not allowed to go there. he worked in east jerusalem for 20 years, and is no longer able to leave. for just an instant i felt the stifling strangulation of the occupation. but for me it was an instant, and i felt so stupid that it had not been on my mind, while obviously it is on the minds of every palestinian. all the time.

later abed accompanied me to a meeting i had set up with a doctor in the treatment and rehabilitation center for victims of torture. http://www.trc-pal.org/ is a comprehensive website. i wil post the notes from the meeting very soon. Dr. Mahmud Sehwail is the general director of the program, he started in 10 years ago. he graciously agreed to meet with me, i am not sure how i got the meeting. but anyway. he was a psychologist in a mental hospital in bethlehem for 15 years. he opened the center, and has an incredible operation. we had a conversation about PTSD, he says according to his surverys in the center and around the west bank (he works in jenin, tulkarm, qalkiliya, ramallah, bethlehem, and hebron) that in 2003 there were 24/100 people had PTSD. today its closer to 28 people in every 100. compared to the rest of the world - US 1-4/100 (max in some areas 10/100), in the arab world 8-10/100. in palestine the rates of anxiety and depression are equal to the rates of PTSD - 28/100. according the doctor, 40% of the adult male population in palestine has been in prison at least once. b'tselem, an israeli organization http://www.btselem.org/index.asp, estimates that 85% of palestinian prisoners are tortured while in prison. the palestinian surveys put them at 95%. you can imagine the PTSD that is a result. the clinic offers free treatment to anyone, not restricted to nationality (even israelis, spanish, american, german, egyptian, and swiss) or to perpetrator or victim. it is a clinic that offers an individual plan of treatment for each patient, offering a range of treatments.
the center also does three trainings 1. students of various institutions in mental health and trauma, 2. for palestinian security officers 3. trainings for health workers in communities to be able to identify trauma and ptsd in patients. 4. they also have awareness programs to talk in communities about the immediate and remote consequences of torture. he told me stories of prisoners who had been tortured who return home and inflict the same torture on their wives and children. so it is important to stop the cycles of violence.

he shared a moment of his own rage about the occupation. his mother has cancer, whe is 82 years old. the only hospital in the area that treats cancer is in jerusalem. he accompanied her to the wall, where she was denied entry. the soldier said hell no. everyone on the bus was pleading with the soldiers, nobody knew the woman, but they were all attempting to get the soldier to let her in. no luck. how many other stories like this? he shared several. one boy was 10 years old and watched his mother get shot in the head in front of him. then he was angry at school, and worse. he attended a summer camp that the center offers in one of the 6 cities they work in. at the end of the camp in all the cities there was a game that the children played, where they were offered 3 wishes. 12 out of 15 kids (all across the west bank) shared one of the same wishes - death. children wish for death.

after a long conversation and brainstorm about how i could then help, the doctor invited me and whoever else to return to do the 2-day training in his clinic, in all of their clinics, so that it can be incorporated as part of their ptsd treatment plan. he is very excited. he also had heard of reflexology and would like to incorporate that as well. he too invited me to work there as a volunteer when i graduate. so a depressing and exciting day. i was also able to hear testimony of some people at the clinin. maybe i wont write about that today.

thats a lot, thanks for reading. more to come. tomorrow i go with abed to his village to see his community health clinic. i will spend the night at his house... i have to go. maybe i can sleep tonight.