The Bedhouin life, shopping and a culture shock

Shocked by the lack of profile women play in life, all-pervasive poverty and lack of amenities that people contend with in their daily life, the community worker said she really felt for women and children, as well as young men who led a very limited life.

“It was an amazing experience. Even going shopping is a nightmare for them, because they have to go through all these barricades and even visitors, we had to queue up like everybody else. There were kids standing with big buckets of soup and things like that...there was a wee girl in front of me and she had big buckets of soup and them not covered over. It is a totally different life,” she said.

One of the poignant things that touched Jeanette deeply was that there were little or nothing culturally or socially for women and girls in society in the Middle-East.

This was highlighted most acutely during a visit to Al Walaja in Palestine, where for ‘entertainment’ young people and women visited each other’s homes.

“They just went from one house to the other, and the children were jumping about the rocks like little goats, and I thought ‘My God, is this it?’ The young girls just sewed in the house at home, making cushions and mats and so forth, and the kids had no toys to speak of; they just went outside. It was just awful.

“They really had nothing, It was hard. It is a very harsh existence for them. There was nothing for them,” she said.

TO view a video of Jeanette talking about her experience, simply click on the video box above.