13 September 2006

Back to baggin' bananas. At lunch the volunteers, separated on several of the moshav's farms, returned to a central home to eat pre-packaged meals from the hotel (i.e, efficiently packaged food from breakfast). While I was content to sit and eat, channeling the supposed life of a farm worker, the heterogeneous group would eventually begin discussing a variety of topics. While some couldn't restrain themselves in terms of engaging in a civil discourse, the topics were nonetheless interesting: Jewish identity, intermarriage, etc. with a variety of viewpoints being shared. While I didn't necessarily agree with the views presented, I was enraptured by the idea of watching these Jews be able to talk (as usual) and then get back to dirty manual work.
After lunch we got down to real dirty business: Rippin' out dead matter among the plants. Four plants are planted together in a "bayit" (house), with drip irrigation tubes feeding water to each plant. Each plant is essentially a weed, growing sprouts that need to be destroyed (watching our female host walking around with a machete, lopping off the tops of these sprouts and pouring gasoline on them was priceless). We were pulling the dead debris out, which could range from completely dried out leaves to stalks that at first appeared to be dehydrated, only to put up a fight and display it gooey, dripping innards once exposed. The liquid went everywhere, either dripping out our gushing out that made all of us give up bananas for a respectable amount of time.
We finished work and returned to Acco to package food for needy families in the area for Rosh Hashanah. The place was located in a warehouse filled with boxes and an extended family of volunteers. I'm not quite sure of what ethnicity they were, my bets are on some Central Asian republic or the only Jewish Gypsy family in existence. We get started on working, and the place is in total chaos. The two women in charge, "Ponytail" and "Goldteeth," each have different ways of packing the same box – if one taught you how to do it and the other checked it before being packed, you were screwed. After finishing several palettes of boxes, we got to a new one with different items in the boxes. Goldteeth was explaining to me how they should be packed, as she knew I spoke Hebrew, in order to explain it to the others; Ponytail, in the meantime, was getting progressively antsy with us, and finally she exploded: She yelled at the Rabbi in our group, and went absolutely nuts. Goldteeth tried to make her shut up, when then progressed into an incredibly loud shouting match which devolved from Hebrew into whatever language these people spoke (the fact that I couldn't tell was making the whole scene funnier). In recounting the story to my roommate during the trip, I said that I was waiting for the trained bear form their caravan to join the melee, or at the very least for them to start a knife fight.
After a half-hour more of packing, and Ponytail's tail tucked between her legs, we left exhausted back to the hotel. Dinner was served outside on the lawn facing the sea, a beautiful backdrop and a free dinner for the area's mosquitoes. Catching up on my telenovela, I joined another participant and my roommate downstairs for a drink and a great conversation. My roommate was a 19-year old from Kemp Mill who was a fashion design student in New York. Despite lots of differences, personal and otherwise, I felt like I was looking at a mirror-image of myself from that age (which initially depressed the hell out of me, thinking about starting sentences with "When I was your age…"). We talked clothes, music, politics and religion along with an older man from Rockville. I admired his desire to make sure that he wasn't seen as "the kid," even if it meant egging on others and making comments that pissed people off more than engaged them in conversation. Whether he knows it or not already, he will be my clothes designer.