Today, a Palestinian police officer tried to give me a ticket because my car was too dirty. A little while later (presumably in protest), my car died just as I was at the checkpoint — my passport in the soldier’s hands!

But nothing can bring me down from the joy of seeing my friend (and my co-author of the soon-to-be-published-we-hope picture book, “Because it is Also Your Story”) in her first public exhibition called, “Experiment #1. She and three other brilliant young Palestinians make beautiful furniture  from trash.

 

Here is Danna  sitting on a stylish seat made of discarded packing crates and covered with an attractive cushion made by a local artisan.

 

High bar chair made of old water pipes with a woven seat made of discarded inner tubes.

  This is a very comfortable “beanbag” chair. It’s made from thrown-away blue jeans and stuffed with old, foam packing pellets.

 

The picture does not do this justice! It’s a lamp made from a broken shower head with a lamp shade made from a loofah.

 

A beautifully finished table made from a door they found in the street atop old water pipes.

 

Attractive sofa made of a discarded wood shipping box and cardboard tubes thrown aside in the industrial zone in Ramallah.

 

See more work of these “four emerging architects [who] came together to work on finding environmental solutions that hold social responsibility at their core.” They are on Facebook at ShamsArd Design Studio, the web at ShamsArd.wordpress.com and on Twitter at @ShamsArd or by email at ShamsArde@gmail.com.

Read part one of this post…

I am happy to report that my youngest daughter has a sore arm. Today, she took her last vaccination, bringing her up to date. Here’s how it came to pass….

Yesterday the school gave me two sheets of paper proving that my daughter was vaccinated twice in the first grade, not once. One time, the Health Committees in the Palestinian Authority came, and the second time, the Israeli Ministry of Health came. No one came when my daughter was in the second grade. (The school was right.)

The paper told me what my daughter was vaccinated against, not what vaccinations she took, so I had to have them translated into English and then cross check them against the vaccinations booklet. Surprise, surprise. EVERYTHING was written down! Even the ones given by the Health Committees of the Palestinian Authority (who the Israeli Ministry of Health said never write things down). They did write down the date and the vaccine. (The Health Committees were right.)

At that point, I realized that it was all a big mistake. My daughter was up to date. I was an idiot.

I called H from the Israeli Ministry of Health to put closure on the matter and she said, “It’s up to you as the mother to decide what vaccinations your daughter gets. I cannot force you.” I was confused again. I explained that in fact she had gotten the second grade shots in the first grade, so isn’t she in compliance? No, it turned out: “The Palestinian Authority uses a different combination of vaccines. The combination your daughter took does not include Pertussis or Whooping Cough. That what she’s missing.” “Is it important?” I asked, my heart sinking again. “Well, because the kids vaccinated by the Health Committees didn’t take it, we now have an outbreak of Whooping Cough.” (The Ministry of Health was right.)

That was enough for me. I woke my sleeping angel and we drove like the wind to Abu Tur. If you read my last post, you’ll know that the Israeli Ministry of Health vaccinated the girls in Samhar school today. It was my last chance this year to get the vaccine.

Abu Tur is a mixed Jewish-Arab neighborhood in West Jerusalem. I shouldn’t say “mixed,” I should say, “divided.” I followed the signs and found myself on the Jewish side. I asked several people where the Samhar School for Girls was, but no one knew. Then I asked them to point me to the Arab side of the neighborhood. They pointed down the hill.

I asked a ton of people but no one knew where that school was, but they kindly directly me to the girls school. Once there, I found out it was not Samhar, and one of the teachers said, “That’s in Tur.” “Isn’t this Tur?” I asked. “No, this is Abu Tur!” “Tur is on the other side of the Mount of Olives.

It was 9:55 am and the nurse was only to wait for me until 10 am. I was far, far, far beyond the palce where I was supposed to be. H didn’t answer her mobile phone. I felt angry at myself and guilty for dragging my daughter through the heat, without breakfast, without knowing where I was going.

I flew up the hill, past Jaffa Gate, past Damascus Gate, down into the valley next to the Russian church, up to the Mount of Olives, and down the other side. It still took ten minutes of going to the wrong place before I found the right place. “The nurse from the Ministry of Health is upstairs,” I was told. “The nurse from the Ministry of Health just left,” they told me at the top of the stairs. “But…but…but…”

Then I found the nurse, M, waiting for me in a little kitchen upstairs. She double-checked the vaccination booklet, prepared a combination vaccine that included Pertussis, and shot my daughter in the left arm. My angel didn’t make a sound.

My daughter, I think, is the only now third grader from her entire school (and perhaps from all the private schools in East Jerusalem) who is vaccinated for Whooping Cough. I can’t be sure of this, as I am not sure of anything.

If you ask, I might share  what this all means to me, a resident of East Jerusalem, a place that is part of the West Bank according to international law, that was illegally annexed by Israel, and which receives some benefits (like health coverage) but lots and lots of discrimination from Israel. I can’t write about it now because I’m simply too tired.

My daughters look forward to summertime when they attend camp in the US. I want them to decompress from living under military occupation, and I guess I want to alleviate some of my guilt about all the extracurricular enrichment they don’t get during the school year. I invest quite a lot of time looking into options, coordinating schedules, and trying to make sure each girl gets the experience she wants.

This year, little, naïve me took the summer camp health forms to my pediatrician thinking I was nearly done with the summer camp preparation. Thank goodness they’re all healthy. It’s just a signature, an ink stamp, and a few minutes at the reception desk catching up with news about the secretary’s kids, right?

No! I entered into a uniquely Jerusalem surrealistic mess.

Dr. M is my fabulous, trusthworthy pediatrician. She is a Palestinian at a clinic in Arab East Jerusalem that is part of the Israeli HMO, Clalit, She said that my youngest daughter’s vaccination booklet wasn’t up to date. “Go to the school and have them write in the date they gave your daughter her second grade shots.”

The school seemed irritated. “You probably didn’t send in the vaccination book that day,” they told me, as if I was asking why the shots weren’t written down. “Okay, can you please write in the date she got the shots?” “We’ll call you.”

They finally called and said that the second graders didn’t get shots that year. “We write everything down and it’s not written down,” they said.

Dr. M said this wasn’t possible. Vaccinations are scheduled by the Israeli Ministry of Health. She told me to talk to the nurse in her office who works part-time doing vaccinations for the Ministry of Health. She’d be able to look up my daughter’s records and update the vaccination booklet with the date she took each of her second-grade vaccinations.

Nurse K told me to ask the school for the date. “But the school said there were no vaccinations given to the second grade that year.” “That’s not possible,” she said, and she gave me the mobile number of H, the woman in charge of vaccinations in the Palestinian private schools in East Jerusalem.

Meanwhile, I thought I must be going crazy, so I checked with several mothers with children in my daughter’s grade. “No, they didn’t get any shots that year.” I want to admit here that these are not easy conversations for me to have in Arabic, and add to that the fact that my question is very weird.

I called H. She checked and said that when they went to give the shots, the school told them (the Israeli Ministry of Health) that the Palestinian Authority’s Health Committees, had already done the second grade vaccinations. “Get the date from the school,” she told me. “It has nothing to do with us.”

“But the school says the vaccinations weren’t done.” I felt ready to cry.

H told me to get the vaccination booklet and she’d go over all the vaccinations to see what was missing. “The problem is,” she admitted, “that the Health Committees don’t document the vaccinations they give in the booklet. We’ve tried to speak with them about that, but ….”

From H’s review of my daughter’s vaccination booklet, it became clear that the US, Israel and Palestine not only have different schedules for giving vaccinations, but they also give different combinations of vaccinations.

“The important one you’re missing,” she told me, “is one you can only get from the Israeli Ministry of Health, not from your pediatrician. And the last day we’re giving it this year is on Wednesday.” She told me the name of the school in the Abu Tur neighborhood where the shots would be given. She gave me the name of the nurse who would be there to help me.

“Don’t worry that it’s not exactly the same vaccination you’re missing. It has something extra, something your daughter already has. But our regulations say that there is no danger of double dose for that one. You could take it today and again tomorrow and it wouldn’t matter. So don’t worry.”

I was worried.

So I went to the school. Telephones just don’t get across the same information as face-to-face meetings. Miss J checked the records again. “I could tell you that they usually come in second grade, and I could tell you that they did come to the second grade this year, but I can’t tell you that they came to the second grade last year when your daughter was in second grade, because I have no record of it and the secretary has no record of it – though we do keep those records because these are things that should not be done by memory.” That sounded reasonable.

She took it upon herself to call the Ministry of Health. She was satisfied with the explanation. Then she gave me O’s number so I could hear the explanation directly. O said: The Israeli Ministry of Health has always vaccinated the first grade, but only started vaccinating the second grade the year that my daughter was in second grade. But they didn’t do it that year because Markaz Nidal (called previously the Health Committees) had already given the second grade vaccinations when she was in first grade (but I thought the Israeli Ministry of Health was responsible for the first grade?). According to O, my daughter is up to date, but when I told her that H, who turns out to be her boss, already told me that my daughter was lacking the IPV or something or another, she decided to check again. I waited.

O now confirms that the Israeli Ministry of Health recorded that my daughter’s second grade class had already taken their vaccinations from Markaz Nidal (and they don’t write things down and no longer work in Jerusalem). The Israeli Ministry of Health would never record that without confirming since they are responsible. “Can I have the number of Markaz Nidal so I can confirm with them too?” “We don’t have any relationship to them or any contact with them,” she said. “So who did you confirm with?” “With the school!” “But the school says they were not vaccinated that year!”

I have a headache.

Read part two of this post…