Sweet Baby Gamla

Last month we spent 2 days on a farm in the Negev Desert (Southern Israel) with a Bedouin community and the Israeli project Bustan (www.bustan.org). Bedouin people are indigenous to the Middle East and are traditionally nomadic. Their lives have been drastically changed by statehood, land development, and Israeli laws. Most Bedouin living within the state of Israel have lost their land to the state, which has been used for military bases, creating Jewish towns and other developments, airports, etc. They have been relocated into townships, or urban dwellings, where they are detached from their land and poverty and crime fester without opportunity.

This community is working actively to try to maintain their traditional ties to the land and are creating a Bedouin agricultural and education center. But even their land is being threatened by land confiscation by the israeli government through house demolitions and forced removals. Their family has already been moved from their traditional lands and never received the promised compensation.

We had the opportunity to work in their garden, gather medicinal plants from the desert, and spend time with their family in their home. We had some of the best hospitality of our lives, as well as a wrestling match, acrobatics, yoga, singing and dancing, and an arabic-hebrew-english game of telephone with the women and girls in the family. And, of course, spent some time with a one day old camel.