A Type of Melting Pot

Generally, I try my best to avoid the central bus station in Tel Aviv. The building is six or seven long and winding floors, connected by randomly situated zigzag staircases and broken escalators. I'm not the best with directions in the first place; I'm always getting lost in malls and such. So when I am forced through that station, half my time is spent navigating my way to the information center and then circling more to find the right spot. On top of that, the building is located in a poor and dangerous part of Tel Aviv, making walking around the place for an hour not the safest activity. In short, if you include finding my way to the sparse and hidden bathrooms (nature calls me often), I've spent far too much time wandering that bus station.

But as I live right outside the city this section, I inevitably end up in that dreadful sketchy maze of a building at least once a week. Last time I was there, while waiting that never-ending wait for our barely existent 90 bus- I people-watched a bit, and got to thinking: Tel Aviv, demographically, is starkly different than Jerusalem. Aside from the large number of Ethiopians passing through the area, there's also a sizable population of other Africans (refugees from Sudan, Eritrea...), as well as a surprising amount of Asians from I don't know where. In contrast to Jerusalem's very European, Anglo, and religious feel, Tel Aviv at times seems more exotic, foreign. To me, it's a less-familiar feel, a less-Jewish feel, but interesting for all those reasons.

Last week, on my way from Tel Aviv to Ein Tsurim (where I ate the seder with my parents and cousins), a black soldier sat down next to me on the bus. I immediately assumed he was Ethiopian, until he started talking on the phone in perfect English in what I thought was an American accent. Which led me to think that he was a black American, which confused me, because among the entire mesh of populations and nationalities and skin colors in this country, there are very few black Americans. (There are the basketball players and the "Black Hebrews" in Dimona, but what were the chances?) So I asked him if he was American, and after talking to him for a bit found out I was conversing with the first and only Kenyan ever to serve in the Israeli Army. Turns out, his dad had been Israeli and his mom a Kenyan. After his parents died in a car crash, the Israeli Army called him and asked if he'd like to move to Israel and serve in the army. So he did, why not. He learned his English in grade school back in Kenya, where apparently everything is taught solely in English. And now he spends his time serving in some elite unit of Tzahal, staying with friends he's met at various ulpans, and explaining to countless Ethiopians who assume he speaks Amharik that he is in fact a Kenyan and can only help them in Hebrew. (Soon after he told me this, an older Ethiopian woman turned around to ask him something about where to get off. "I'm sorry," he told her in Hebrew and shook his head. "I don't know Amharik. I'm from Kenya.") Anyways, it seemed he was sort of a big deal, being the only Kenyan in the army- he said he'd met some important people and been on TV etc. So I felt like sort of a big deal, sitting next to him and all.

On the subject of Africans, I also was able to meet and hang out with some Sudanese refugees here recently. Over changeover, I very spontaneously traveled to Eilat with some friends. Spontaneous, meaning that Pam and I, after suddenly deciding to go, literally had ten minutes to run around the Jerusalem hostel and grab our bathing suit and sunglasses before racing to make the last bus down south. There's a lot of Sudanese refugees around there, around 1,000 I think. I met a Dutch woman on the beach who was watching over a group of Sudanese children, talking to them in English. She explained that it was an after-school program. That the kids attend Arabic schools (because Arabic is their native language), learn Hebrew at school, and English in the afternoons from the volunteer social workers like herself. I volunteered with the group for a few hours the next afternoon, aka played with them, took funny pictures of them, had a free meal. They were adorable and hysterical; one girl wouldn't let me go and kept pulling me around through the tunnels on the playground. It was a good day.

And then there was Save a Child's Heart. It was one of the day volunteer placements while all the schools where we normally volunteer had started their Passover vacations, and yearcourse's hadn't begun yet. The organization is really incredible: It was started by an American cardiologist who made aliyah to Israel, and with the help of donations, decided to bring kids with heart problems from nearby third-world countries to Israel and treat them at the Wolfson hospital in Holon. For three months, the kids live in a group house nearby, some with their moms and some without, and have all kinds of heart surgeries at the hospital. The idea is that they go home cured, when in their country they absolutely wouldn't have had that chance, and would have most likely died before reaching 20. They go home happy. When we volunteered there, there was a group from Iran and a group from Zanzibar. We played with them and interacted with them, without language of course- although one little girl from Zanzibar did congratulate herself at one point with an excited "Kol Hakavod!" Aside from the girl I had to pry off me so she wouldn't steal my camera, the kids were all good-natured and adorable and fun.

And that is Israel, in a different light...when it's not black hat or rich American or even Jewish. The country is so centrally located- smushed between Arab countries, Asia, Europe, and Africa- and the population does, in a sense, reflect that. It's the sense I've been getting more and more while being here, while I help teach English to a class full of Russian immigrants in Holon, or a group of Ethiopians at Ben Yakir. Or, of course, while I wander for too long in Tel Aviv's Central Bus Station, lost again.