The Cost of War

The Manneken Pis. The iconic symbol of Belgium.

As you know, my school had a two week break for Christmas and New Years, so I after spending Christmas in Bethlehem (!!!), I had the awesome opportunity to travel in Belgium. One of the other YAGM volunteers, Courtney, has family in Belgium so we stayed with them and traveled around Belgium. Courtney's relatives live in Iepers on the Northwest corner of Belgium. Before I started researching Belgium, I knew almost nothing about it. It's a quirky and amazing place. You know a country is great when 1. they go without a government for a year and a half and do just fine, 2. their iconic symbol is of a little boy urinating into a fountain (the Manneken Pis is in Brussels, the capital. It's literally a statue of a boy peeing. Weird.) and 3. they have an entire museum dedicated to chocolate (WIN!).

Our trip was full of adventures exploring castles, old churches and eating excellent cheese and chocolate. However, our trip was also full of visiting cemeteries. As I learned when I started reading up on Belgium, most of the trench warfare in WWI took place on a line going right through Belgium. Trench warfare is a nasty thing. Hundreds of soldiers die to move the line a few feet over. The very next day, even more die as it gets moved back. For four years the trenches barely moved as young men were slaughtered and the countryside razed to the ground. Iepers in particular was completely demolished by the fighting.

In this image you can see the City Hall before WWI (left) right after WWI (middle) and as it has been rebuilt today (right). The damage is astonishing.

Since all of the "old stuff" in Iepers was destroyed during WWI, tourism there now centers on cemetery tourism. Visitors pay homage to the many lost and look for the names of predecessors who died there. This can be quite the daunting task since literally thousands and thousands of men died there during those four years. The most heart-wrenching part of walking through all those cemeteries is reading how old the soldiers were. Most were 18, 19, 20 maybe 21 years old. Not infrequently, young men enlisted under a false name so that they could fight even younger than the legal age. The youngest known soldier who died was 14 years old. Literally an entire generation of young men lost and young women made widows. Heavy boots.

Why must youth fight and die when their (often much older and "wiser") leaders decide to go to war? I understand that our young men make good soldiers. They think they are immortal making them reckless in battle, they enjoy the adventure, they are strong and nimble. Perhaps most importantly, you can teach them to do whatever you tell them to and they will actually do it. But if you think about it, it is asking a lot of really young men and sometimes women.

In Israel there is compulsory military service for everyone. It consists of three years for men and just under two years for women, most often served right after they finish high school. Palestine likewise employs very young men in their forces. These facts mean that the vast majority of soldiers I see are even younger than me. (Think about that for a moment...) I deeply respect those who choose to join the military and the sacrifices they make, but I question the system itself, whereby the young implement, and pay for, the decisions of their elders.

In the book Mornings in Jenin, Susan Abulhawa writes about a young Israeli soldier from the viewpoint of an older Palestinian woman, "The power he holds over life is a staggering burden for so young a man...I feel sad for him. Sad for the boy bound to the killer. I am sad for the youth betrayed by their leaders for symbols and flags and war and power" (305-306). Making a decision about the life, health and/or death of another human being is a staggering burden for anyone, but especially someone who is still developing mentally, socially and emotionally.

The scars that remain from military service are not always physical ones. One need only consider the instances of PTSD, depression and anxiety amongst military veterans to suspect that humans are perhaps not well-suited to the destruction of modern military. Even if they survive combat, soldiers are likely to be wounded by their experiences.

Unfortunately I do not know how to make this system better since it is the way it is for a lot of complicated reasons. I do hope that our leaders really and truly consider the costs paid by our youth when implementing any sort of military presence. The real cost of war may not always be monetary.

School Update

Phew! I apologize that it has been so long since I last posted! I can’t believe it’s already been two months since my last update. After spending a lovely week visiting another YAGM’s family in Belgium and exploring Belgium, I have returned to work at Hope School. This semester is looking to be even busier than last semester at school. Here are some highlights from the past 5 weeks at school.

On May 5^th, each of the four ELCJHL schools will send 8^th, 9^th and 10^th grade representatives of their schools to compete in the English Bowl! The bowl consists a spelling bee and two-minute speeches. In preparation for the event and in order to determine which students will represent their school, each school is having its own two-part bowl. Winning the bowl is a matter of pride and each school really wants to win. Therefore we are feverishly preparing for the bowl! I didn’t realize how big of a deal it was until we started preparing for it. I will be acting as one of the “Native-English speaking judges” at my school and I’m pumped!

The Tawjeehee students are SUPER stressed. They are the 12^th graders and they are in the midst of  preparing for the enormous tawjeehee exam they take at the end of the year which determines whether they get a degree or not, college entrance, etc. The tawjeehee students can be recognized at breaks by the textbooks permanently poised 8 inches from their faces, the sweat beads forming on their brow and the silently-moving lips as they try to memorize everything. They are also hilarious. On Tuesday they rolled out their class sweatshirts which are white with bright blue trim and say, “No, the world is not ending. We are just taking it over” in English on the front. I love it. I also kind of want one… 

The kindergartners are as cute as ever. The younger ones are really starting to grow into their own. They’re called “bustan” because they aren’t actually 5 years old yet so for them it is more like daycare as opposed to the five year olds who are in “rowda”, which is kindergarten as we know it in the US. The bustan kids spent most of first semester being absolutely terrified. It was a couple months into fall before we had a day free from anyone crying for “Mama” or “Baba”. Now they are beginning to flourish. One little bustan guy, I call him little buddy, is small for his age and used to be totally overwhelmed at recess. I don’t blame him; the rowda kids are rather terrifying, especially when equipped with rubber balls. In any case, little buddy is a little shy and had trouble making friends so the first few months he used to hang out with me at recess. He’d stand by me, we’d admire planes on the infrequent times they went overhead, sometimes we pretended to be planes, but mostly we just hung out. I would chat with him, in English he surely couldn’t understand, about my concerns, “You know little buddy, it’s hard that there are so many kids and so few rubber balls and no one seems willing to share. I should really learn the word for ‘share’ in Arabic”. He would nod knowingly. Later he would tell me something in Arabic and I would say, “ah” sympathetically without really being sure what he said. 

However, recently little buddy has started feeling more comfortable at recess, has made some friends and therefore no longer needs to hang out by me. For a while he fell in with a bad crowd, the boys who try to sneak back into the building during recess or who kick the rubber balls away from the other kids. But now he’s made friends with Little Red’s Bro (Little Red is a bustan girl with red hair. Her brother actually has red hair too, but the fairy tale is about a girl so in my head she is Little Red and he is Little Red’s Bro. I promise I don’t actually call the children these names…) Little Buddy and Little Red’s Bro get along swimmingly. I’m really proud of Little Buddy for making friends and growing into his own, but I do sometimes miss his companionship on the playground. I suppose that’s how parents feel all the time, eh? Glad your kids are developing well but a little sad for the good parts of the phases gone by.

On a side note, I met Little Buddy’s Baba when we came to pick him up one day after school, and he is enormous! Probably 6 foot 4 or 5, which is especially tall for a Palestinian. This makes me realize that if I come back in ten to fifteen years, Little Buddy will likely be taller than me… weird.

The eleventh graders just started reading Animal Farm by George Orwell and I get to lead these classes! The first day I was very excited, had created all these discussion questions and plans for how the 40-minute class would go. Then I got to class and quickly realized that 1. Three quarters of the class had not even opened the book to do the reading they were assigned and 2. This is a foreign language book for them, so the questions I had written about the themes and symbolism were a bit far reaching when what they really needed was questions about basic reading comprehension. Sigh. The teacher and I talked after class and we’re likely going to have to read each chapter in class since the students won’t read outside of class. This plan makes me sad; not only is it incredibly boring for the students and myself, but also because it is accommodating bad habits. Shouldn’t we encourage everyone up to the level of the hard-working students rather than bringing everyone down? 

I actually think I would love teaching students who actually want to be there, are interested in the topic and did the reading. If the kids aren’t already interested and intrinsically motivated to learn (not just to get good grades, but to actually learn) I honestly don’t understand how we’re supposed to reach them. Please don’t misunderstand me; a lot of these students are hard working and motivated, but mostly in math and science classes. They see those as the route to good jobs and successful futures. How can I teach them what I have seen? That, for lots of complicated reasons, English is a language of considerable power. That if they want to publish academic articles some day or go to a prestigious graduate school, they are going to need good English language skills. I’m not saying that it is morally right that English is so favored in the global economy, but it is the reality right now. I have come to realize over and over again how powerful a native knowledge of English is right now. It is for this very reason that so many spoiled Americans find it unnecessary to learn any other language. Our language is on top, so everyone else should have to learn it. Again, I don’t think this attitude is morally right, but I totally understand where it comes from.

Last week the student counsel planned and threw a big party for the older grades. It was all the buzz! Unfortunately I did not get to chaperone so I am still in the dark as to what a Palestinian high school party actually looks like... When I've asked, everyone just says it was a party. Duh. Hopefully they'll throw another one so I can find out more!

In Peace