Back in the Middle East

20 Dec

Walking down to Damascus Gate in Jerusalem. (Copyright Katia Dmitrieva, 2010.)

I arrived in Tel Aviv just over one week ago, after a 12-hour flight delay. The kids of Kalandia Youth Media are in school and currently writing their exams. It’s a stressful time for them, but 8 girls came out on Saturday to sit down with me and brainstorm ideas for the media program. Each girl wrote a short bio and had their photo taken for the website. I’m posting the photos now, with bio translated from Arabic to English in the works.

This summer, I’m leading two trips to the West Bank and Israel with Operation Groundswell. It’s a unique grassroots organization that takes North American youth around the world on volunteer-based backpacking trips. I was a participant a few years ago and very soon I’ll be leading one of OG’s life-changing trips! The early summer experience will focus on media and discovery, working with Kalandia youth. This means around 10 volunteers to facilitate, engage, and collaborate with kids in Kalandia. I’m extremely excited to see the end-product (a gallery show? A documentary? A radio series? Something entirely different?) of this collaboration.

Girls of KYM writing bios in the kid's centre, Kalandia refugee camp, West Bank. (Copyright Katia Dmitrieva, 2010.)

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Kalandia Youth Media- Panel Discussion

24 Oct

I’m participating in a panel discussion today about working in other cultures. I’m a Russian-Canadian working a quarter of the year in the West Bank. What challenges do I face? How do I overcome those challenges? These are some of the questions I’ll be addressing today at Beit Zatoun in Toronto’s Annex.

Yep- that's me in Ramallah, as shot by Naama, one of the kids I work with at Kalandia. You can see me today, discussing my experiences in the West Bank.

At 7 pm, I’ll be sitting on a panel with Lea Tremblay and Irvin Chow, two dancers who volunteered in the West Bank this summer. I’m sure we’ll have lots to talk about- since we sometimes butted heads regarding cross-cultural approaches.

 

Palestinian food- zatar, olive oil, etc- will be free at the event. But you’re obviously coming for the enlightening discussion- not the delicious free food, right?

 

More info on Remote Creations and the event here.

Fall Updates

19 Sep

I’m back in Toronto now, gearing up for another year of fundraising and outreach events for Kalandia Youth Media!

A game of soccer, captured by a participant of Kalandia Youth Media

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Kalandia, the Details

27 Aug

The assignment for today was to capture beauty in the camp. Two of the girls, Majdal and Noor, love taking nature photographs. The devastating thing is that there is little green to see in the camp. The West Bank is generally like this, since many of the olive trees have been uprooted and farms confiscated.

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Ramallah- Day II

22 Aug

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Ramallah- Day One

13 Aug

The kids of Kalandia Youth Media went on a daytrip to Ramallah last week.  It would have been impossible to take all of the girls at once; Ramallah is a packed city and the drivers don’t necessarily follow any hard and fast laws on the road.

There were no boys to take with us, since one of them was in Bethlehem visiting family, another was ill, and two others don’t usually show up without the previous two present. I’ve mentioned before the difficulties of working with youth of both genders in Kalandia camp, but there are also the challenges of social groups here. This sums up the problem: if the outgoing “leader” boys aren’t taking part in the day’s activities, the participating boys get shy and closed off. It occurs with the girls, as well, to a lesser extent.

The assignment for the girls was to document daily life in Ramallah. It could include the people and the shops, but their challenge was to capture the energy of the place. This meant capturing the smells, sounds, and feeling of Ramallah through their photographs. They were asked to consider how Ramallah made them feel: claustrophobic, energetic, scared, excited, etc. and to illuminate that in their photographs.

As soon as we put our feet onto the streets of Ramallah, the girls were lost. They were looking around at the shops, looking at the people’s faces, listening to me telling them to get off the street and onto the sidewalk. But they weren’t taking photos. Their cameras hung loosely by the wrist-straps at their sides. So we had a little meeting. I reminded them of the phenomenal work they had done in the past, all of the elements of photography they had learned, and reiterated a photography tip: don’t be afraid of taking photos. We had several “meetings” like this throughout the hot day in the city, and it motivated them to pick up their cameras and start shooting.

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Breakthrough

2 Aug

Today, the boys surprised me with their focus and determination on the day’s assignment. They showed me just how much They’re motivated by the creative work.

Part of it has to do with their working together and separate from the girls. I would love to see everyone working together in the program, but I know that it would cause trouble for the youth centre and pose a challenge to the program. Kalandia refugee camp is more conservative than city centres in the West Bank. I feels like a world away from Ramallah, the main work and social hub in the West Bank, even though it’s only a ten minute taxi ride away. The families here are worried about their daughters spending too much time with the boys, and the boys don’t want trouble with the families of the girls. It’s an interesting dynamic that has taken me a short while to understand and a long time to accept. For now, I am working around this unspoken law the best I can, by facilitating group work only when another employee of the youth centre is present.

In any case, I am finding that working with the youth in smaller groups, all of the same gender, has made them feel more comfortable. And if the kids are comfortable and happy, I’m comfortable and happy.

Today’s assignment was to capture the people of Kalandia, with  a focus on colour in the camp. I walk the winding, cracked streets of Kalandia daily and see that this camp is unlike any other. Many people have preconceived notions of what a refugee camp is. They hear the words and already have an image in their minds of what it looks and feels like. I am not an exception. Before I came here for the first time last summer, I imagined pitched tents and dire poverty. I found a few cases of the latter, but all other expectations were shattered when I entered the camp.

When you project an idea of a place, it necessarily reflects on the people who live there. What they look like, how they act, what they do…it’s all an integral part of a place. Without the dynamic and unique people of Kalandia, there would be no Kalandia the way it is now.

I wanted to find out what the kids thought of the people in their camp, through photographs. Like an introduction to the camp, brought to you by Omar, Ahmad, Muhammad, and Bilel.

Welcome to Kalandia.

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