Pre-Student Evacuation Stories: Birthdays at En Gev
One of my state-side Regina Logistica duties was to make sure we had a copy of each person’s passport; this means I am privy to personal information, such as one’s date of birth. One day as I flipped through the pile, I noticed that one person’s birthday was in July. So I did a thorough review and discovered four people would be celebrating birthdays with us in Israel.
We arrived at En Gev late Friday afternoon on June 30. Anyone who’s been to Israel knows that the country begins to shut down for Sabbath by Friday afternoon–banks and shops close at 2 pm, busses stop running in mid-afternoon, etc. There had been some confusion about our arrival time, and so no arrangements had been made for our Saturday meals. For subsequent weekends, each digger has been given credit for 36 shekels at the kibbutz mini-market to purchase food for Saturday’s breakfast and supper (lunch of leftovers is served in the dining hall). Efrat, a gem of a woman who is the kibbutznik in charge of housing and other arrangements for the diggers, graciously opened the mini-market for us Friday evening, and Mark and I purchased food for the group’s meals on Saturday. Since Sunday was Rachel’s and Stephanie’s birthday, I added a couple of Israeli cakes (small, loaf-shaped cakes that serve about 8 and are sealed in a package) in the stash of food. After our picnic supper and devotions on the beach Saturday evening, a couple of us tried to light the birthday candles I had brought from the US on these small cakes. It gets very breezy on the beach in the late afternoon and evening, so we were only partially successful, but everyone sang, and the birthday girls cut and served the cake. Sunday, their actual birthday, was our first day on the dig site, and most of us remembered to wish them a happy birthday and single them out for special razing throughout the morning of digging. It was all pretty low-key but better than being with a group of mostly strangers and not having the day acknowledged at all.
Steve Chambers, the professor from the Lutheran seminary in Edmonton who came with 3 students (and lost his passport after clearing immigration at the airport—I hope eventually to give details of THAT saga!) was our next birthday celebration. Steve’s wife had made sure all three students (Joyce and Clint Magnus and Dan Barr) knew it was Steve’s birthday on July 9 (a Sunday and our first workday of the second week). That day up at the site Clint came up to me and said, "There’s something important I need to tell you." I knew immediately what it was! At breakfast we sang "Happy Birthday" and that afternoon I asked Efrat if she had freezer space we could borrow; she was happy to oblige, and so our birthday celebration for Steve that evening included cake with candles we could not keep lit AND ice cream. Steve deserved something a little more to compensate for all the hassles of his lost passport, the tick he had removed from his leg the first week, and egg-sized lump on his shin from a misadventure with an archaeological tool called a terria.
Tangent: I’ve no idea of the correct spelling of the word "terria"—I’m told it’s Arabic. It’s used to scrap into little piles the dirt loosened by the pick axes and then to scoop the dirt into the plastic buckets. It rhymes with "Maria," so the first week of the dig Andrea and I were making up songs and came up with this one:
"Terria, I’ve just met a tool named terria,
and suddenly I found
how wonderful a tool can be!"
Anyway, Efrat and her husbanc Eldad joined us for cake and ice cream at my invitation; they had gotten to know Steve well because of all the phones calls to the airport and Canadian embassy regarding his lost passport.. In spite of all his troubles, Steve was a joy to be around for the 2 weeks they were with us. He was like a little kid in a candy shop up on the site, getting into every detail of the whole dig and doing a super job at an area supervisor. We all miss him!
Our final birthday celebration was Nancy, one of the "mature" volunteers (or as one parent said about Darryl and me when the students were evacuated, Nancy is one with more "life experience" than the twenty-something students). Nancy and her roommate Linda are both 2nd year volunteers. During the trip to Jerusalem, just as we were about to enter the Old City through the Damascus Gate where there are dozens of vendors displaying their wares on tables in the open air, Linda and I were both near the end of the line of our group when I spotted a plastic, beaded silver tiara. "Linda," I said, "what do you think of this for Nancy’s birthday?" She agreed it was the perfect item, so we made a fast purchase and pushed ahead to catch up with the others. By the time Nancy’s birthday rolled around a few days after Steve’s I was tired of the cake and ice cream routine; instead, we gave Nancy the tiara after the devotions, sang to her, and then invited all to the kibbutz pub for a birthday drink. Nancy showed up without the tiara, but Linda managed to sneak out and bring it to the pub, and Nancy, always a good sport, wore it as she drank her Gold Star (the local brew). Mark and I left early (for some reason, we’re always tired—can’t imagine why, when we get to bed between 10 and 10:30 pm every night and the alarm goes off at 4:00 am!). I understand the party expanded to include some of the members of the Polish team and Jessica, one of the students, ended up wearing the tiara. Someone snapped a picture of Nancy in the tiara. If that person is reading this, please e-mail a copy to me to post!
Nancy chose to be evacuated with the students, so she’s no longer here with us; work on the restoration of the mosaic floor in the church has slowed considerably, since she was heading up that major task. Somehow, we’ll muddle through to the end without her, but it’s just not the same. We all miss her hard work and dry sense of humor.
We arrived at En Gev late Friday afternoon on June 30. Anyone who’s been to Israel knows that the country begins to shut down for Sabbath by Friday afternoon–banks and shops close at 2 pm, busses stop running in mid-afternoon, etc. There had been some confusion about our arrival time, and so no arrangements had been made for our Saturday meals. For subsequent weekends, each digger has been given credit for 36 shekels at the kibbutz mini-market to purchase food for Saturday’s breakfast and supper (lunch of leftovers is served in the dining hall). Efrat, a gem of a woman who is the kibbutznik in charge of housing and other arrangements for the diggers, graciously opened the mini-market for us Friday evening, and Mark and I purchased food for the group’s meals on Saturday. Since Sunday was Rachel’s and Stephanie’s birthday, I added a couple of Israeli cakes (small, loaf-shaped cakes that serve about 8 and are sealed in a package) in the stash of food. After our picnic supper and devotions on the beach Saturday evening, a couple of us tried to light the birthday candles I had brought from the US on these small cakes. It gets very breezy on the beach in the late afternoon and evening, so we were only partially successful, but everyone sang, and the birthday girls cut and served the cake. Sunday, their actual birthday, was our first day on the dig site, and most of us remembered to wish them a happy birthday and single them out for special razing throughout the morning of digging. It was all pretty low-key but better than being with a group of mostly strangers and not having the day acknowledged at all.
Steve Chambers, the professor from the Lutheran seminary in Edmonton who came with 3 students (and lost his passport after clearing immigration at the airport—I hope eventually to give details of THAT saga!) was our next birthday celebration. Steve’s wife had made sure all three students (Joyce and Clint Magnus and Dan Barr) knew it was Steve’s birthday on July 9 (a Sunday and our first workday of the second week). That day up at the site Clint came up to me and said, "There’s something important I need to tell you." I knew immediately what it was! At breakfast we sang "Happy Birthday" and that afternoon I asked Efrat if she had freezer space we could borrow; she was happy to oblige, and so our birthday celebration for Steve that evening included cake with candles we could not keep lit AND ice cream. Steve deserved something a little more to compensate for all the hassles of his lost passport, the tick he had removed from his leg the first week, and egg-sized lump on his shin from a misadventure with an archaeological tool called a terria.
Tangent: I’ve no idea of the correct spelling of the word "terria"—I’m told it’s Arabic. It’s used to scrap into little piles the dirt loosened by the pick axes and then to scoop the dirt into the plastic buckets. It rhymes with "Maria," so the first week of the dig Andrea and I were making up songs and came up with this one:
"Terria, I’ve just met a tool named terria,
and suddenly I found
how wonderful a tool can be!"
Anyway, Efrat and her husbanc Eldad joined us for cake and ice cream at my invitation; they had gotten to know Steve well because of all the phones calls to the airport and Canadian embassy regarding his lost passport.. In spite of all his troubles, Steve was a joy to be around for the 2 weeks they were with us. He was like a little kid in a candy shop up on the site, getting into every detail of the whole dig and doing a super job at an area supervisor. We all miss him!
Our final birthday celebration was Nancy, one of the "mature" volunteers (or as one parent said about Darryl and me when the students were evacuated, Nancy is one with more "life experience" than the twenty-something students). Nancy and her roommate Linda are both 2nd year volunteers. During the trip to Jerusalem, just as we were about to enter the Old City through the Damascus Gate where there are dozens of vendors displaying their wares on tables in the open air, Linda and I were both near the end of the line of our group when I spotted a plastic, beaded silver tiara. "Linda," I said, "what do you think of this for Nancy’s birthday?" She agreed it was the perfect item, so we made a fast purchase and pushed ahead to catch up with the others. By the time Nancy’s birthday rolled around a few days after Steve’s I was tired of the cake and ice cream routine; instead, we gave Nancy the tiara after the devotions, sang to her, and then invited all to the kibbutz pub for a birthday drink. Nancy showed up without the tiara, but Linda managed to sneak out and bring it to the pub, and Nancy, always a good sport, wore it as she drank her Gold Star (the local brew). Mark and I left early (for some reason, we’re always tired—can’t imagine why, when we get to bed between 10 and 10:30 pm every night and the alarm goes off at 4:00 am!). I understand the party expanded to include some of the members of the Polish team and Jessica, one of the students, ended up wearing the tiara. Someone snapped a picture of Nancy in the tiara. If that person is reading this, please e-mail a copy to me to post!
Nancy chose to be evacuated with the students, so she’s no longer here with us; work on the restoration of the mosaic floor in the church has slowed considerably, since she was heading up that major task. Somehow, we’ll muddle through to the end without her, but it’s just not the same. We all miss her hard work and dry sense of humor.
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