Cross Cultural Journal: From a Pseudo-Palestinian

Andrew Millette

Sophomore Koren Dugan and senior Leah Meja spent the weekend living like the Masai tribe of Kenya.

Habib the rooster came to us from the United States by way of Israel.

As Palestinians, we were initially wary of this "peace offering." After all, the Israeli settlers were supposed to be our adversaries. The U.S. government officials had delivered the bird that first night with a loud message of goodwill towards Israel, which we assume was meant to anger us. But the Israelis' act foiled any such attempt. With the bird in our possession, we could clearly see that it had no real value except to wake us up by crowing at all hours of the morning. He was also the only member of our family whose name father Ebrahim could remember.

The Global Jubilee Village Experience began Friday afternoon as approximately 22 college students were divided into eight "families," each representing an economically disadvantaged group from different nations. The participants cast off their identities as students from EMU, Shepherd University, and Shenandoah University to become Israelis, Palestinians, Haitian refugees, Kenyans of the Masai tribe, Chinese, Mexicans, and residents of Appalachia in the U.S. Each group had a different campsite on the grounds of Ezekiel's Place, a retreat center in the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia. Dick Anson, the director of the retreat, would represent the government throughout the simulation. Each nation also had a native resource person to help develop the role playing and answer questions about their country.

The first night, each group was given resources of food and shelter representative of their economic status. The Palestinian family I was part of was close to the bottom of the global hierarchy. We received a bit of rice and some lettuce with the warning that it might have to last us. We decided to go to bed hungry so we would have something to eat in the morning. The canvas lean-to type tent we put together held up well the first night. Some of the groups with "nicer" tents ended up soaked, but we stayed dry.

The following day was spent trying to stay warm and dry. Of course, such efforts were doomed from the start. We still had something of a fire that morning and sold some coals to Mexico for an egg, but by midmorning fire was a hopeless dream. Instead, we headed off to work at the sweatshop, which was at least inside. With hard work, ingenuity, and a little luck, we managed to come out better than many of our neighbors. We took our breakfast with us to the sweatshop and were able to use our dishes to help us separate rice from sand. The government officials who gave us the work explained that this was part of an important new process to make computers last longer. No one believed them.

By the end of our twohour workday, we had made the equivalent of $17 U.S. dollars and were able to buy a decent amount of food plus a few luxury items, such as a banana, milk, and coffee. Of course, it probably wasn't realistic that we earned more in water bonuses from the sweatshop than we did in actual wages or that when one of our group members had a panic attack, the world government took him inside, gave him a free meal, and didn't even charge us a hospital bill.

The afternoon was dedicated to roleplaying. That is, we were supposed to be in conflict with Israel, but it didn't really happen. First of all, they were our best trading partner. We really weren't motivated to develop bad relations with people who were sharing fish with us. Fish that the Americans had turned up their noses at and that the Israelis were willing to trade for coffee. Secondly, we were altogether too rational. None of us wanted to sleep in the mud that night, so we didn't want to invite retribution for dousing their fire or knocking over their tent. Besides, they weren't the obvious focus for our aggression. If we were frustrated with anyone, it was the world government for telling us to build a house without a hammer and then driving away. Thirdly, my Palestinian brother Waleed (one who was supposed to be the most anti-Israel) was in real life married to one of the Israelis.

So we drew pictures in mud on the wall dividing our nations, shoveled some crude ditches in hopes of draining our swamp, and made lists of demands for peace. The next morning after packing up, we met at the house - yes, the warm government house where we were provided with chips and hot drinks - to discuss our feelings about the conflict simulation and watch a video. We also caught a glimpse of the local paper: the interviews we gave out Saturday morning as we stood in line at the trading post had made the front page.

After three days of mud and rain and wind, my clothes were cured with smoke. The smell still clung to my hair after several washings and my dorm room never felt so luxurious. It was a rought weekend, but not impossible. And perhaps we learned more about trade than conß ict and more about ingenuity and survival than inequality.When asked what he learned from the experience, senior William Grey's first reaction was that next time he would take warmer clothes. After all, it's hard to really teach what it's like to live in poverty to people who know they will be going home when its over.