internship day 1

Ok.  So I went to the actual place I’ll be doing my internship for the first time.  It was an adventure.

To start, I meet at the main CARE Office.  That’s the international group that is placing me further with a local CBO (community based organization).  So my CBO is in the Palestinian refugee camp.  There’s little to no English there, so CARE is sending me with a translator.  How cool is that?  So I get to the CARE office and we get in their car and head off to the camp.  So in the car is their driver, an official lady from CARE who speaks good English, my translator who is only 20, and her mother, because as she put it, “Mom wont let me go out alone”.  Oh yeah and me.

So it takes forever to get there.  And as we drive, not knowing where we’re gong at this point, I start to know my translator.  She’s amazing.  She’s Iraqi, maybe a refugee.  She’s taught herself English and her English is definitly the result of watching movies.  Or maybe she’s just that much trouble.  She’s wearing skinny jeans, a rocker tee, huge sunglasses, and hot pink nail polish.  And no make, or at least an actual natural look unlike most the girls here.  And she’s beautiful.  Smiling and dimples and all. Short bobbed hair.  And her mom looks typically Muslim.  Black dress pants, a nice flowy white top, and hijab. So I have to wonder about how adventurous this girl is.  As we start to chat, and get to know each other, we launch in to everything.  Let's just say she doesn’t hold back.  Everything from wanting kids, to having been stuck in Baghdad, to not wanting to be held back by society, to how very much a part of that society she is, and more.  She has enough personality to go around.

We arrive (finally!) and there’s more smiling women, fully covered, some wearing niqab (which is everything but the eyes).  But I know they’re smiling because once we’re sure there are no men, the veil lowers and it fits just like a hijab.  Which I didn’t know until now. Everything is done in Arabic and over my head, so I just sit patient and smile whenever someone looks at me.  Then we got a tour of the place.

It’s a few floors, but there aren’t screen or glass in the windows.  And the whole place is just a bit dirty.  Rundown, but its in that part of town. Its also a mess.  Like stacks of anything, precariously piled nearly everywhere.  Looks like a job for me and my organizing. 

It all ends up being just another introduction meeting and I still don’t know what I’ll be doing.  Bt I have an Arabic speaking shadow to follow me. By the end we were holding hands and just giggly. 

By the way, girls and guys (within their gender) hold hands and cuddle all the time here.  Like its not weird to see 2 guys holding hands and strolling down the street.  Or laying ones head on the other’s shoulder.  Whatever.  Its still strange to see for me, mostly the guys, but its very common place. Strange like different, not strange weird anymore.   I mean, I guess everyone like to have physical contact to feel close to each other. And since you can't cuddle with the other sex, you gotta get that attention somehow.