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My messima by Miss Maya Grosberg
I work Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays (took her for a drink on…) Sunday, which requires a 'lie in' of 7 a.m. I go downstairs to the jungle, where the official morning language is grunts all round. I prepare breakfast in bed for Goldie. A good shove in the...'bleep'. Our other partner in crime, Cobbie Bousins, comes to greet us in the drawing room; .rich people's talk for lounge.
He's all equipped with Hanoah HaOved bag packed full of peulot, and movement shirt, a socialist in the making; not forgetting his Rick Mayell faces, as it's viva la 'bottom' this week, as Cobbie got the series sent out.
Goldie limps behind us, with his semi-permanent twisted 3rd wooden leg. We arrive at the primary school, around 8, to begin our satisfying yet back breaking work, or should I say leg for Goldie?! The children flock around us like sheep, desperate for ideology and education; well more like a chance to escape the perils of an English lesson. I get camouflaged in between them, as yet again I forgot to bring my yellow pages to stand on to school. Back to the young uns we go, to pick out four children who come out after having one last dive off the table; what treasures they are.
We play games like the old school, 'What's the time Mr wolf and the never tiresome, 'head/catch', to get them learning English in bite size chunks.. see 'www.Bitezize.com' (Give me a break it's my first Shnat report).
After this we take them skipping in toe, to a classroom (or so they think) to teach them English on different topics, such as body parts and animals, a topic they all have something in common with. After the morning's over, we go for a right good fress at the 'local diner,' down the road. Hot dogs, oozing with mayo and charif... not forgetting the diet coke, to contradict ourselves.
On Tuesdays me, Bobs and Goldz visit our fellow Shnat couple Mr Mikey 'lil *****' Green and 'Yoddo the Oddo,' Joni. The kids speak moderately good English, so we have a right good chinwag about their weekend, censored of course, and flick through some English mags, to fill them in on celebrity gossip, as this will definitely get them through life, as Showman will vouch for you, 'honest it's hard work.'
Around 4.00 p.m, after our second lunch, we walk to the local library for a scheme called, 'England.' When all the ducklings arrive we get our water bottles out and tiyul boots on for our 30 second tiyul round the corner to the ken where we play games for an hour and then either go over their homework with them or teach them English on the computer for the last half hour ('technology these days eh..nochahora').
As we walk home, like a western film set with dust balls flying round and movement shirts flying high (a regular feature in this genre) we tell the days stories with Dalya 'Ross' Gould and 'Gadnalex' Lazare.
Once home we put our feet up and unwind with an Israeli cup of tea (and no milk).
Ilan, our culinary chef informs us on tonight's menu…a roast is in the oven tonight (who says we're underfed on shnat?).
We all look forward to the sequel to pie day, which featured Shepard's pie and apple pie, for something sweet after our meal, we then head to the other house to watch the film Pie, sure to send us to sleep.
My messima by Katy 'Showboat' Showman
The Arab Tzevet Messima: When Ariel Sharon phoned me on my mobile a few months ago, I have to admit, I was in a state of shock. Not because I'm not used to Prime Minister's randomly phoning me up, because believe me I am, (Tony says hi by the way) but because of what he had to ask me. He asked me in his dodgey use of the English language whether the members of Shnat 04/05 could make peace in the Middle East. I informed him that we'd try but we're actually busy people what with our many tiyulim, lessons and general socialising to do. The phone call then slipped my mind for a while, until a month ago when I though to myself, "hmmmmmm, maybe we should give this peace thing a go". Which brings me to the present, with six members of the aforementioned and very famous Shnat 04/05 teaching English to Arab schoolchildren.
OK, so maybe we’re not solving the little problem of peace in the Middle East but we are working towards better relations between Jews and the Arab community in Israel. Let me take you through a week in the life of the Arab Tzevet, which consists of Ilan "Scoolbag" Scorah, Oli "Funkmaster" Gee, Candice "Kop-a-load-of this-Man", Gabrielle Sarah McEdlin, Tamar "I'm from Holland" Berger and me, Katy "Showboat" Showman.
The week starts on the day of the Sun where instead of relaxing with a cream cheese and smoked salmon bagel in our hand and Songs of Praise on the TV we are out of our humble abode at the crack of dawn, wide awake and ready to give those arabs a good old teaching of English. In the morning we teach in a high school in the village of Kfar Manda where we are treated as celebrities. It is no lie that I have been asked for my autograph on a few occasions.
We educate, informally of course, on things such as the environment and values including equality, violence and culture. I really felt like I was making a difference, during a quiz about culture where the kids had to make up questions from a chinuch sheet we had given them, when one group came out with the question,
"Who the decade in the 90s were the Spice Girls band?" - Education eh? It's a funny thing.
In the afternoon we teach in an afterschool club in the Bedouin village of Ibtin. It is very interesting to compare the discipline of the arabs in Kfar Manda and the Bedouins of Ibtin. Instead of dreading going to Ibtin, we saw this as a "challenge" and after a few games of "Cat, Cat, Dog" and "Legs, Legs, Eyes" they decided to stop pulling Ilan's very long (some would say girlie) hair and were raring to learn.
On Tuesdays, we work in Kfar Manda again in the morning and then in the afternoon our lovely taxi driver Halil takes us to Ein Mahal where there is an arab Hanoah HaOved (Habonim Dror's sister movement in Israel) ken that has 500 chanichim. That's almost as many chanichim as Hale and Cheadle kenim combined. One highlight was when Candice "I ask inappropriate questions" Kopman asked the guy in charge, our good mate Asadin, if she could marry his son when he said his son was the same age as Candy. This was inappropriate because 1) his son was probably already married, 2) marriage is not a light issue in the arab world and 3) last time I checked, Candice wasn't an Arab and therefore not a suitable match.
On Thursday mornings we work in Kfar Manda with really cute 9 year old schoolchildren. This gives our week a lot of variety and also more confusing names in our head that we don't remember. So far, out of all the many people we teach, the only name I know is Waleh. And that's because the only English she knows is "I am Waleh" and so repeats this when you ask her anything. We’re working on that.
And so although we're probably not solving the lack of world peace I really feel that our messima is important in helping arabs to understand Jews and our culture and also for us to understand their culture. And if they learn a bit of English along the way, well that is only a bonus. Amen.
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