Wind, Sand, and Stars

Seven Wells — Un petit histoire d’un apres-midi en Be’er Sheva

May 19, 2009

“It’s sad, you know. You always have to be critical and pointing out what’s wrong and injust, otherwise they [the rest of the world] will think that everything is okay.”

Yesterday I took  a trip up to Be’er Sheva with the RSDSC team, where we met with another team member and the ecologist for the project.

Afterwards, I had a great rendezvous with Miri and Noga (friends of friends and family). We met up at a unique cafe with *great* food adjacent to the BGU campus. The cafe, opened by Miri’s husband back in December,  is special in that provides jobs for at-risk youth if they agree to meet once a week with a social worker. It aims to provide a greater incentive for youth to stay off the streets by not only giving them something to occupy their time (as a traditional youth center might) but also allowing them a chance to achieve job training (learning valuable skills) and earn money at the same time (decreasing the opportunity cost of doing other things).  While on the way back to Miri’s for dinner, I walked with her husband and Haleli (their 9 month old daughter, who was carried by her dad) to hear more about his perspectives on the cafe and the town.  He has plans to open up another youth center (his fifth–not including the cafe) in the city before too long, though it may have to wait until Haleli is a bit older.

Also, right before dinner, Miri, Noga, and I were discussing my travel plans back to Ketura. Though we had more or less decided I would take a bus back the next morning, right about the moment we discussed this, Miri got a call from a childhood friend of hers (now a geologist) up north. It just so happened he was on his way from Jerusalem to Kibbutz Ketura, and was hoping to drop by Be’er Sheva to visit her.

Just a little while after the delightful dinner with the crew (including two German electrical equipment engineers accompanying Miri’s childhood friend–they were going to investigate heat flows in the desert nearby Ketura), I joined in the three-hour journey back down south.

The world can be quite small sometimes, though immeasurable in the possibilities it affords.

Entry Filed under: project, travel. .