Part 14
We lived in barracks, a bed, a chair and a closet, two people to a room. We ate collectively in a very large dome-shaped dining hall with a lot of light coming through the glass ceiling and the food was great, in particular the salads and everything in abundance. We worked in the fields and that was heavy. The area around the Dead Sea is known as the lowest on Earth and is bowl-shaped into the neighbouring mountains as far as 393 metres below sea level. Mostly there was no wind, sometimes heavy downdraughts took us by surprise and destroyed the labour of the day within minutes. The sun nearly always shone, so we flushed a lot of sweat over our brows. With pruning shears in our hands, eight of us walked behind a tractor upon which two collecting gutters stuck out approximately four metres to either side. In there we threw the harvested aubergines. The tractor was driven by a Sabra, the Hebrew word for someone born in Israel, after an indigenous cactus and rightly so. They were in the habit of gradually speeding up the tractor. Also they limited their contacts with us to single cries and shouts.
Another job I did a lot was kind of smart: we made greenhouses for tomatoes by sticking hoops of steel wire into the ground in rows of dozens of metres. A wide strip of plastic came on top and was anchored by throwing earth on the edges.
Thus one afternoon we were working on the hothouses and had done quite a length, when suddenly downdraughts started tearing tremendously at the plastic. Because this was only fastened provisionally we made an extra effort to save the work of that afternoon. Until one of the ‘tourists’, who at another kibbutz had attended an ‘Opan’ (=school for Hebrew), made sounds and gestures indicating to ‘leave it be’. He pointed at both Sabra’s that had nestled themselves against a bank and observed our exertions at their leisure. They were having big fun about our dedication but did not lift a finger. And though we did not do any more work that day, the next day we had to start all over again.
In the evening there was a bonfire and everybody would come and sing. Later the joints went around, sometimes they came sametimes from both sides. There often was an elderly man, an immigrant from Russia, who told beautiful melancholic stories. In general the older Jews, who came from far away and had been through a lot of hardship, were really nice people.
Jan Ploeg
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