Art of Pottery

Thursday, November 21st

9:30 am. When I arrive at Tarabot a little later than usual this morning, contrary to Samer's statement from yesterday, there is already an activity taking place: a group of women are there, decorating cups with a modeling clay under instruction, which will soon be sold at some bazaar. Sophia and I are allowed to try it too, but the modeling clay is not as easy to work with and shape as we thought.

The available motifs to choose from are: a girl in a flower dress, or any imaginable Christmas motif. Contrary to expectations, Christmas is slowly becoming a theme here. Abu Hamza, a colleague at Tarabot, asked us yesterday if we could suggest a nice Christmas song that can be rehearsed soon on Saturdays during the music lessons at Tarabot. It is probably something cultural that Christmas is thematized here for children and young people - as far as we know, we haven't met any Christians at Tarabot yet.

While Sophia has chosen the motif of a fir tree with candles, I attempt to create the flower girl. The modeling clay usually doesn't cooperate as I want it to, which is why I quickly regret my choice of motif. Maybe I would have had more joy with a Christmas tree. However, the women around me are all very focused on their cups, so I don't want to give up so easily now. In the end, I'm glad when I'm done, but I wonder if there's anyone who would actually pay money for these cups. Maybe the trick of saying the children made them will help.

We spend our lunch break at Abu Wahid's, then another horde of children rushes in. Kemo is not here today, so there will be no Dabke dancing today, which is why Amer and Sara take turns conducting games. Among them are familiar ones, like the journey to Jerusalem, but also new ideas: a competition to eat clothespins off a rope that Sophia and I hold. The sight is a little disturbing, and always a bit fearful that the children might hurt their lips while eating, but the kids clearly have fun and leave Tarabot in a very good mood towards the weekend.

However, we are not quite done yet: there will be visitors again on Sunday, so we still need to clean today. During the last few days of washing in Downtown, I noticed that a specific cleaning strategy is usually used here: flood everything with cleaning water, then pour it into the next drain with a scraper. The same thing is happening here now: Samer and Amer carry four huge buckets of soapy water, with which they flood the entire floor, and then we dry everything off with loud music and scrapers. It's still an unusual method for Sophia and me, but anything else would have taken ages on such a large area.

So we manage to leave Tarabot on time, although the weekend unfortunately falls out for us this week: we have to submit two assignments and give a presentation. So we first meet with the Clara-Rudaina-Sophia-Eva group at Manara, which I don't leave until it closes at 11 o'clock. That won't change in the next few days.