Exeter report

Thurs 6th 9.20pm

Sharifa, Rawia, Rana Wasfia,Thureyah and Manal arrived with Pauline as planned 9.20pm on Thursday. All were exhausted and laden with huge bags!! It seems most had not slept for 2-3 days.

Three of us Exeter women were armed with the duty of swiftly dispatching the women around the town to their respective houses. We also had the unenviable task of breaking the news to them that we had arranged school visits the next morning. We felt terrible and wished that we had not got quite so over excited with booking so many visits in the day. The women were very gracious and insisted they were happy to get up early for the visits but I am not sure I would have!

The logisics of organising the 6 then 10 women (Imethal, Rawan,Shatha and Nandita were arriving later that day) over a 24 hour period should not be too hard - in theory, in practice I reckon it ranks for me one of the hardest planning exercises. Beaten only by organising the walk outs and demos in Exeter on the day the Iraq war started

Sharifa and Manal visited my daughters primary school, year 5 have a link with Qurdaba school in Hebron. This was my personal favourite event of the day. In the one hour we had with the class we had the kids (aged 10) writing their names in Arabic, listening to Arabic music, drawing Palestinian flags in their books etc. The poignant theme running through the hour was the fact the kids kept saying “where is your country on the map?” “why can’t we find your flag?” etc . Manal and Sharifa seemed to really enjoy the visit to and connected brilliantly with the kids. We left with Manal doling out handfuls of Zartar to the kids and telling them to eat it up- which they did with scrunched up faces!

We then went on to a meeting at the University. Unfortunately room details etc had been finalised at the last minute by the students organising the meeting leaving little time to advertise the meeting. I felt there was a poor turn out but I think Shaifa and Manal were ok about it.

In the mean time Rana and Thureya visited a school outside Exeter for the morning talking to 60 forteen year, and then about twenty 6th formers who were studying the Palestine/Israeli conflict.

Wasfia and Rawia visited two schools, one outside and one in Exeter to meet similar kids. All four were escorted by people involved with the Global Centre in Exeter. This centre has funding from Devon Development Education to run a “Coping with Conflict “ programme – it uses Hebron as one of the “Conflict” areas.

I only found out the day before that one of the schools Wasfia and Rawia were visiting was having a non uniform day to raise money to help build a school in Malawi. The theme of the day was cops and robbers! – and seeing the kids coming out of the school at the end of the day - fishnet stockings and suspenders seemed to be very popular – goodness knows what Wasfia and Rawia thought of it!!!!!

We all met at the uni for a quick lunch and photos with local press. Sharifa and Rana then came with me to the Mosque. As I raced Rana to my car, only then did I find out she was actually 6 months pregnant! The others headed on to the sea.

After prayers at the Mosque we met with some of the people attending and talked about the situation in Palestine. It was in the middle of this Nandita called to say the others had missed the train. My military style planning looked like it was about to unravel!! I tried to put Nandita off from bringing the new arrivals to the sea if they were going to be very late as we had a tight schedule to keep!!!! Nandita and the students were having none of it and so we arranged to somehow meet at the sea, though feeling slightly anxious as we didn’t know when and our phone batteries were dying on us.

I managed to get lost on a diversion whilst taking Sharifa and Rana on to meet the others at the sea. As I was flapping about getting late and apologising for having to drive all over the place Sharifa calming pointed out that diversions and getting to places late was something they were more than used to – good point! I nearly gave up on the sea, but thank goodness I didn’t because I will never forget the image of Sharifa and Rana running into the sea –yes in to the sea on a cold March day! I found myself screaming with excitement with the womenas they saw the sea – I held back from running into it! Sharifa told me she wanted to let her family smell the sea on her trainers!

We caught up with the others who by now had been at the sea for ages and were getting cold. Nandita and the students arrived and it became obvious that we were not all going to make the 7pm meeting we had planned back in Exeter. After grabbing some fish and chips we went back to Exeter leaving Nandita and the students at the sea.

Our evening event had been planned to coincide with an exhibition being opened the following day by Devon United Women. It was entitled “Challenging Negative Borders”. Thankfully Wasfia and Manal and Rawia made it there for the beginning, so started off without the others. We had a full room with at least 60 people there. It actually worked really well because the others arrived at almost perfectly staged intervals. It looked like we were bringing the women on one at a time to talk (so no one guessed that I had no idea who was where and at what time they might turn up!)

We concentrated on the “wall and borders” and had various activities for people to do including a wall (simulating the separation wall) for people to write their comments on. It was truly moving to hear the 9 strong women speaking about their experiences as women living under the occupation.

On Saturday there was a mad dash to the train and it looked like Nandita might be cursed with a train missing habit – they finally made it with a minute to spare. The Three Exeter women who had met them only 36 hours before waved goodbye – we felt honoured to have been involved and to have met them. We gave each other a hug and three hours later were on a 100 strong protest over Gaza in Exeter City centre!

Lizi Allnatt