I am living in Balata camp near Nablus, working with my friend Salah on the music for a theatre piece being performed on the 20th october by children attending the Yaffa cultural centre. At the same time I am working at Music Harvest, a small organisation that offers music tuition to anyone who wants it. The people who run this place are vehemently a-political, hence they do not work with larger organisations that have perceived political affiliations. This princ...

The plane to Amman may have been easyjet, but it gets you there, with one suitcase and a violin for the princely sum of 112J. Follow that by a 3JD journey into town and a 3JD sleep in a bizarre hostel inhabited by japanese and many planks masquerading as beds and you have my total experience of Amman. Of course the crossing into Palestine was never going to be easy, however in the five and a half hours I was waiting I never stopped worrying that in fact this t...

If I were president.... Was the question I put to my students some time this week. Other topics have included the Wonders of the World, making up an Agatha Christie style murder and matching bizarre english idioms with their real meaning. I have no idea whether it holds any benefit for them, but it amuses me no end to watch them wrinkle their brows as they try to work out what exactly having a whale of a time entails. Whilst not preparing for classes (ever an up...

I have realised that it has been far too long between now and my last entry for me to actually give anything in detail without it turning into some vast extended and gratuitous essay on the mundanities of daily life here. I will try my utmost to curb these tendancies to give an accurate yet relatively concise image, unlike Rousseau. I may be so bold as to juxtapose two events that took place precisely a week apart and involved the same journey and the same desti...

انجنَت في فلسطين! A week hath passed since my arrival at the phoenix centre - time to spill the fuul. Well, a little bit about the phoenix centre. It was founded burnt down and re-built three times since its establishment in 2000, hence its name, al-feniq in Arabic. It is run completely by volunteers for the community of the Dheishe camp where it is situated and beyond. The camp was formed by the arrival of thousands of villagers from around Jerus...