Cleanup Day
Nadim, one of the Actionaid (the agency Shez works for) staff owns a house in a village just north of Ramallah. It was built by his farther, but hasn't been lived in for thirty-odd years. Brenden, the new head of the Middle East operations for Actionaid, found out about the house and has been encouraging Nadim to renovate the place. Nadim and his family live in Bethlahem and the place would make a great "weekender" near their family.
Brenden picked me up from our apartment in Ramallah and we headed up to the village to meet Nadim, his brother-in-law and their respective families. Our mission for the day was to clean out the rubbish in the house so they could start renovating. Before we started, we stopped off at Nadim's aunty's place. Nadim's aunty had lived in Australia for 30 years, working as a nurse in Melbourne, before retiring back to the West Bank. She is a great old salt with a sharp wit and a broad Australian accent when she spoke english.
After morning tea, we headed up to the house to survey the work. A couple of the rooms had piles of rubbish which would need to be pulled out. Brenden led the charge in getting things cleaned up. John, Nadim's nephew, was also into everything, much to the worry of his mother who was worried about snakes. While I can't speak Arabic, the worried tone in her voice and repeated and insistent calls made me feel sure she was trying to get her son to retreat from the large pile of rubbish he and Brenden were attacking. Like teenagers the world over, John ignored his mother's protests and was a great help in cleaning things up.
We had a large pile of rubbish out the front of the house by mid afternoon. I asked Nadim how he was planning on getting rid of the rubbish. He said not to worry about it as it would be gone by the end of the week. As it turned out, it was nearly gone by the end of the day. One of the neighbors came over and started to remove all the wood to sell to refugees as fire wood.
Once cleared of debris, the little house really revealed it's potential. The house was built from stone by Nadim's farther (we rescued the masonry tools from the rubbish). The main part of the house is roughly square with 2 small rooms and a living room taking up 3 of the quarters, and a large cistern occupying the fourth. The cistern is a deep well like room that was about 12ft deep and fed from the roof. The cistern's vaulted roof was about half the height of the house ceiling, making a strange half height room that Brenden reckons could make a good bunk nook for the kids. The ceiling of the 3 rooms was also made form vaulted stone covered in plaster. The last room of the house was a small outhouse type room that had served as a kitchen. A second story, which was started but never completed, would make the house quite large. The view across the valley from the roof is quite good.
All in all, despite being small, the place will come up really nicely. Now that the place is cleaned up a bit, I think Nadim plans on taking some basic furniture and a BBQ up so that they can work on it at weekends. Hopefully they'll have it in a habitable state in a few months.
Brenden picked me up from our apartment in Ramallah and we headed up to the village to meet Nadim, his brother-in-law and their respective families. Our mission for the day was to clean out the rubbish in the house so they could start renovating. Before we started, we stopped off at Nadim's aunty's place. Nadim's aunty had lived in Australia for 30 years, working as a nurse in Melbourne, before retiring back to the West Bank. She is a great old salt with a sharp wit and a broad Australian accent when she spoke english.
After morning tea, we headed up to the house to survey the work. A couple of the rooms had piles of rubbish which would need to be pulled out. Brenden led the charge in getting things cleaned up. John, Nadim's nephew, was also into everything, much to the worry of his mother who was worried about snakes. While I can't speak Arabic, the worried tone in her voice and repeated and insistent calls made me feel sure she was trying to get her son to retreat from the large pile of rubbish he and Brenden were attacking. Like teenagers the world over, John ignored his mother's protests and was a great help in cleaning things up.
We had a large pile of rubbish out the front of the house by mid afternoon. I asked Nadim how he was planning on getting rid of the rubbish. He said not to worry about it as it would be gone by the end of the week. As it turned out, it was nearly gone by the end of the day. One of the neighbors came over and started to remove all the wood to sell to refugees as fire wood.
Once cleared of debris, the little house really revealed it's potential. The house was built from stone by Nadim's farther (we rescued the masonry tools from the rubbish). The main part of the house is roughly square with 2 small rooms and a living room taking up 3 of the quarters, and a large cistern occupying the fourth. The cistern is a deep well like room that was about 12ft deep and fed from the roof. The cistern's vaulted roof was about half the height of the house ceiling, making a strange half height room that Brenden reckons could make a good bunk nook for the kids. The ceiling of the 3 rooms was also made form vaulted stone covered in plaster. The last room of the house was a small outhouse type room that had served as a kitchen. A second story, which was started but never completed, would make the house quite large. The view across the valley from the roof is quite good.
All in all, despite being small, the place will come up really nicely. Now that the place is cleaned up a bit, I think Nadim plans on taking some basic furniture and a BBQ up so that they can work on it at weekends. Hopefully they'll have it in a habitable state in a few months.