The Kids that Shoot us

Ben Yahuda street-da Girls!

Just a few of the trouble makers

My bud Muhammed


I am not longer as afraid of my own neighborhood. I am not going to lie. I was for a while. Especially at the end of Ramadan. It seemed like every little boy got a pellet gun to celebrate then end of Ramadan. As we would walk up the hill back to the center, they loved to use us as target practice. Yesterday we got the opportunity to face these little gunmen face to face...service project style. The streets and lots around the Jerusalem Center are always littered with trash. This semester, we did a clean up project to pick up the trash and interact with the neighborhood. A bunch of young boys from a school just up the street came to help. These would be the same boys that throw rocks and shoot bb's at us. Luckily I was jsut so excited to be able to be with kids, I forgot that little detail. When the boys came to help, they made their presence known. I began following a little cluster of boys around, hoping they would pay attention to me and take a liking to me. I think it worked. Before I knew it, they were carrying around a stick with a baby doll's head shoved on top, teaching me Arabic words. I'm not going to lie, we didn't do much trash picking up, we be sure had fun. One boy in particular stuck by my side most of the time. He was a hard little worker and I don't think I ever saw a smile leave his face. Even when the rest of us got into a water bottle fight, he smiled and kept right on working. His name is Muhammed. He helped me learn most of the other boys names, and laughed at me as I attempted to say what should have been easy phrases in Arabic, but my tongue and lips just couldn't form the right sounds. After three hours of picking up trash and sweeping the sidewalks, we all ended up in a dirt lot, playing games. The littlest boys were climbing all over the tall students, making them throw them in the air and give them piggy back rides. We all eventually made our way to a grassy, spider covered slope on the Jerusalem Center grounds. Muhammed sat next to me and shared half of his orange with me. the others were all throwing olives that fell off the trees above at each other. Little boys are so much fun! It was so much fun to watch all of us students interact with the kids, and to see how similar children are no matter what part of the world they grow up in. Even if we were dirty and smelly from rumaging through the dirt to pick up trash, it was well worth it to get on good terms with the little trouble makers, and now some of my favorite friends, here in East Jerusalem.
Later that day, a big group of us decided to walk over to West Jerusalem to check out the night life, look at all the sukkot outside the resturaunts, and grab a shwarma to eat. It seems like everywhere we go we turn into a specticle. A couple of the guys started arm wrestling, and before we knew it, there was a circle of people around us, cheering and taking part in the contest. There was every walk of life hanging out on Ben Yahuda street. There were hippies playing guitars, Othodox Jews eating out, and BYU students arm wrestling. It felt so great to get out of the center for a night and add a little change to our routine.