September 1st

Today we had a group volunteer day. So at 8am we all loaded up onto the bus with our packed lunches and headed out. We were going to a student village near באר שבע(Be'er Sheva) called Ayalim. This is one village in a series that had been started a few years back in order to relocate young and idealistic people into the Negev and Galilee. These two areas combined cover 80% of the country, but only have 8% of the population located within them. Israel has a feeling of use it or lose it when it comes to this problem, but does not seem to be able to get people to move into these areas very easily, despite trying to move factories and industry into the area.
As I said, this is a student village and all the inhabitant are students. These students live in the volunteer village (and in fact build them!) while being full time students on scholarships at the University located near their village. We spent some time watching a recruitment video on the program and having questions answered by one of the higher ups in the organization before (figuratively) rolling up our sleeves and getting to work.

We were split up into about 5 groups, the first was working on pruning flowering plants etc. on a walkway between some of the houses. The second group (the one I was in) was pulling out the plants that had grown out into to the paths around the building in the background of the above picture. The third group was working on laying out a gravel terrace area, while group 4 was transporting all the gravel from the gravel pit. Group 5 was our two lovely water girls who made sure we all stayed hydrated throughout the day.

I started out working with David, Shauna, Max and Tracy on pulling out plants and sweeping down the sidewalks when I came to a Rosemary bush that had grown out over half of the path. Unfortunately Rosemary grows from one central trunk, so you cannot just pull out the offending parts, you need to take a saw to the plant to prune it. For the next 2.5 hours I worked on this bush with an old hand saw, and eventually the path was clear.

The upper part of this path was blocked by a Rosymary bush. The black hose is an irrigation hose, it will be placed better in the future to allow plants to grow despite the desert conditions.

The upper gravel terrace - this area was just sand before the group laid out tarp, irrigation hoses and gravel.

On my way back from dumping some of the clippings from my Rosemary bush (it took 4 wheelbarrow loads to get it all moved!) I noticed a part of the entrance sign we could not see from the bus.

I thought it was a beautiful sign and a perfect sentiment for the type of work that is being done with this village.

At the end of the day we were all hot, sweaty and tired. But knew we had made a difference. As a group that came to Israel specifically to volunteer, we were all itching to get our hands dirty and do some actual work. Today was perfect.