After greeting Avi and his full length micro fabric cargo pants with knee length zippers that convert into short, we bid farewell to the David Citadel Hotel, climbed into the black Mercedes 8 passenger van and headed South for Eilat. Avi and I had planned a little surprise for David and luckily David was engrossed in email and therefore oblivious when an hour into the drive Avi diverted the van toward Gaza and Kibbutz Ziqim, where David had lived for 6 months when he was 19 years old. David often speaks of the glory days of his kibbutz experience and of the beauty of the landscape and I was so excited to have the family share this piece of his past. As we approached a large sign bearing the name of our surprise destination, Avi called to David, who looked up in disbelief and immediately began smiling from ear to ear, not quite believing where he was.
Soon enough none of us could believe where we were, just 5 miles from Gaza in a largely dilapidated looking kibbutz that hardly resembled the image I had formed in my mind of David’s beloved Kibbutz Ziqim. Marian (a very young looking 48 year old man who was born on the kibbutz) is the director of volunteer activities and he joined us to show us around. First he explained that there are no longer any actual volunteers, and we were too polite to inquire as to why he maintained a post for which there was no actual need. Might be it was like being in the Reserves of the army, where he had to keep his volunteer overseeing skills sharp in case the kibbutz decided to restart the volunteer programs. He then explained what life on a kibbutz meant, long story short it is a community based on 1920’s socialist ideology whereby all residents work according to their skill and ability, and share equally. For example, a doctor and a garbage collector will literally be treated the same financially and socially. They are given the same house, furniture, spending money, bicycle, color tv etc., and no salaries are paid as it is a community where everything is shared. Justin became instantly suspicious, “Why would a doctor be paid the same as a cow milker, I mean isn’t the doctor’s work worth more?” Excellent question but sort of missing the point of socialism.
Marian also pointed out Gaza to us with his finger and explained how the kibbutz has been bombed with Palestinian rockets consistently for the past 20 years but that fortunately the last 4 months have been relatively quiet with no rockets at all for the past 6 weeks. He showed us how each new luxury home had a bomb shelter attached to it, courtesy of the Israeli government, as well as the large shelter attached to the school house where the children hide during bombing when incoming rockets are abundant. “I wouldn’t live here Mom, I mean come on, rockets," Livvy called out incredulously, "and I need my head bands and jewelry, and you can't share those,” she continued, pointing out the ludicrous nature of the entire kibbutz lifestyle proposition.
Marian showed us around. There was a sad looking petting zoo with goats and some very loud peacocks, adjacent to row after row of 1950’s looking stucco storage rooms that turned out to be the “new luxury” homes with the shelters attached, I dared not imagine what the older none luxury ones looked like. We visited the Refet/dairy farm where hundreds of cows cavorted in knee deep mud, and stopped to see the remains of the “pub” which was a roofed 15ft by 20ft cement block that was no longer in use, the mattress factory building which we politely declined to enter, and the school house with reinforced steel beam anti-rocket roof. To David however, we were in Camelot. He pointed to each rust stained drain with great affection, and showed us the path where he had staggered home drunk from the pub each night, the dirt road where he caught the morning tractor to the orchards to pick oranges, the cow fence from which he had guided his cows to the milking station, the shelter he and his friends had used during attacks, and the general vicinity of the ramshackle house he had lived in. We tried our very best to share his enthusiasm, the kids put on a particularly good show, but quickly their good will turned into a strong desire to leave Ziqim and hopefully never return.
And so we left the kibbutz with David as happy as I’ve seen him in years. As for the kids, they continued to mull it over and tried to understand it all.
We carried on to the South and the Negev Desert en route to Eilat. We stopped at a Bedouin enclave for some camel riding and a delicious lunch in a Bedouin tent where the kids entertained us with fake Israeli folk singing and dancing (see video below), before continuing on to the Ramon Crater just 20 minutes away. The Ramon Crater is the largest naturally formed crater on earth and our 4x4 vehicle driver and guide was Yehoshua. Yehoshua was not a young man, nor was he a man with many teeth, but he was a man who loves geology, and a man who horks and swallows incessantly which I can only hope is the result of a mild sinus condition. Unfortunately, Yehoshua uses a microphone and small speaker system in his 4x4 that seemed unusually sensitive and so we were privileged to hear each grepps and hork quite clearly. You can imagine the howls of laughter from the kids with each audible nasal articulation, and my growing fear that we did not have sufficient stores of Purel. Yehoshua is also someone whose driving can make pretty much anyone puke when riding in his 4x4. In addition, Yehoshua is fond of practical jokes and asked us to let him know when we felt he should stop as he neared the crater’s edge. Then he accelerated full speed toward the edge of the crater and did not stop in spite of our clearly audible blood curdling screams of “STOP”, but rather drove straight off the edge of the cliff and proceeded down the banks of the crater resulting in what can only be described as sheer stomach gripping terror on our part. Crazy Yehoshua, the horking, practical jokester geology lover quickly became black listed by the entire family.
Once returned safely to Avi with his clear sinuses and full set of teeth on flat land, we continued on to Eilat where we arrived in time for dinner. It was 107 degrees when we arrived and the scorching summer breeze fortunately removed all of our appetites, so the aggressive shoving and pushing by the mainly Israeli crowd around the buffet of gefilte fish, chopped liver and roasted chicken was hardly bothersome (although anthropologically interesting), in the 400 person mess hall-style dining room. Apart from the language being spoken, the scene was identical to 1970's Miami Beach at Christmas when all the East Coast Jews descended upon the Sunshine State in search of sun and citrus.
Tomorrow we explore the Red Sea.
"You can imagine the howls of laughter from the kids with each audible nasal articulation, and my growing fear that we did not have sufficient stores of Purel. " YOU HAVE TO WRITE A BOOK - MEL BROOKS COULD USE THIS STUFF!!!
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