Back to the center

I was really looking forward to go to the center yesterday! After some days in this confused mood the idea of doing something that isn't new to me sounded really inviting.
I arrived around noon and started to write proposals to german foundations, talking a little bit about Amouns work and asking if they could consider a cooperation - aka: give money.

At the moment the Dom centers Budget ist very low. They still give arabic classes for the children which are well visited and there is after school tutoring and homework help too, but thats just a drop in the ocean. Even though it is amazing to see how excited the kids are after a day at school when they come to the center and learn even more. Yesterday there were about 12, from 7 to 13 years old, all chearful and ambitionous. Most of them came just for the classes, one girl arrived early and joined us for lunch ("It's good for them to be in an english-speakinh enviorment" Amoun said once) and L., Amouns niece who brought me to the center on my first day, helped with the dishwashing and general cleaning before and after class. None of them was brought to the Center by their parents, all of them could have stayed outside playing or whatever but they wanted to be at the arabic-class. So it's a pity that there are no other offers the Dom Society Center can make to the children, their mothers and fathers because they barely know how to pay the rent.

So I asked for help in germany where I'm from and where I can approach different organisations in my and their mother tounge. While writing I discovered more and more how easily you arrange the facts depending on your issues. Which I considered an understandable behaviour before seems now like something you can't omit. This brought me to some considerations regarding my final report: Sure I want to give something back to the Dom, or to Amoun Sleem and the Domari Society Center if she remains my only close contact, and of cours I support her agenda and political strategies - but I'd like to do this somewhere else than in the report.

At the moment I feel very strongly how getting to know other people really changes you. Thi bright, charismatic, trong woman Amoun Sleem - she got me already. Even before I was sure that I would never publish anything that could harm the people I needed to get those information but now I'm not sure if I will be able to write something without being morally involved.

Perhaps that's one of the problems why I had this concern about all the gathered information and Amouns direct connection to them: Maybe everyone who came to the Dom Research Center before went through the same developement and I will ending up like them: promoting what Amoun wants me to promote, trying to help, wanting to affect the way other people see the Dom. And now that I'm wirting this with a bit of fear to get too involved a little voice in my head already asks "what would be so wrong if that happened?"

Well, I will still try to stick to the plain discription in the report and volunteer at the center for two days a week now. So even though you experience there all the time that whatever is done it's never enough I might at least lead my mind to the conclusion that I gave more than I took and that after this I may write a non-tendencious report without betraying someone with it.

A day at the Dom Research Center

After going to a really nice concert of a hebrew chanson singer yesterday I nearly overslept today. But with a little hurry I was right on time to meet N. who works as a volunteer at the center.
I didn't dare to ask Amoun about the old legends because I got the impression that she was leery about the intentions of some of my questions anyway. For example when I asked her what the other israeli groups could learn from the Dom I expected her to tell me something about cultural pride, keeping ones own roots alive, creativity and the ability to survive in a hostile enviorement. Well, she said: "What do you mean? Learn to be poor?" So, after this I really didn't feel like asking something like "Do the old legends reflect the Doms attitude to work and do you think this can be a problem?"
I just realized today that even though I've been reading and talking about the Dom for quite a while now they know nothing about me. Usually when you meet people you interact on the same level of trust, distance and interest. Doing a field study is very different. I hoped for quick answers but underestimated the trust that is needed to get even close to this kind of information.
Later the other volunteers were organizing and open house day at the center where some important and influential people from Jerusalem shall experience Dom live and art firsthand and they were working on proposals to get funding from international foundations. With me included there are currently three anthropology students and a couple who study ancient geology (? or something similar...) volunteering. Since I didn't bring my Laptop and the two computers of the center were used otherwise it was my job to tidy up and clean out the bookshelfes for the children. It was interesiting that there was just a very little amount of arabic books, even less books in hebrew (almost as many as in finnish) and the vast majority in english. From Books that explained the alphabet to small printet long tales, from neary untouched ones to books with more than just a few pages missing everything was there. There were picturebooks, too, but they were handmade scrachbooks with pictures cut out from magezines and put into a folder. And there were - for my taste - too many explicit christian books telling about gods love for children who belive in Jesus. The "worst" one showed cute blonde children wainting for christmas and getting a lot of presents. It made me wonder what kind of people donated these.
For lunch Amoun cooked a tasty soup with a lot of peas for us all. While still eating the first girl came from school, did her homework at the center with a bit of tutoring and left before the arabic-class arrived. Unfortunatly I didn't see how many kids joined from the beginning this offer because I was in the next room sorting childrens books in order of age but four kids arrived a little bit later and in the classroom is maybe eanough space for 15, maximum.
While writing the proposals the question occured how many children used the tutoring program and succeeded in their education because of this. After a short discussion "more than 50" seemed the most realistic answer. Regarding that the center was founded only ten years abo in Amoun Sleems own house, also works in the women empowerment and is constantly in the need for donation and money (the rent alone costs about 10000 $ per year!!!) that is an impressive number, I think.

So, even though my blog and my study will not be about the Center alone, let me just mention here that this for sure is a good and trustworthy project if someone wants to contribute:
https://www.paypal.com/il/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_flow&SESSION=-l-C3Ap76RlqDiXI2qtai_o6L3YwcHPsXPtMMBxtd4nXZAZ3d1IUajOcMIy&dispatch=5885d80a13c0db1fc53a056acd1538874a43d73a07f26b2cc3a8a5dff46470e3