100 laps in Gaza

Random bullet point list of stray experiences, thoughts and stories from this weekend:

• Met a fellow development worker who lives in Gaza. This guy is a runner, but can't, you know, run on the street in Gaza due to security concerns, so he runs on his roof. Every night, looking at the beach but unable to go to it, 100 laps. 50 one way, 50 the other, up to 10K. He runs with a gps and then plus it into his computer to count the miles. His computer spits out a map that's just, at this point, the overlay of the thousands of circles on a tiny space. This is a short story that needs to be written.

• I went on a glorious hike which concluded in just amazing views of the Dead Sea. It's been three years since I saw the Dead Sea, and it was like visiting with an old friend. I've been to it tens of times, from 2004-2008, and always stared out at Israel thinking "God that's insane, that's Israel, so close!" To do the same, lustfully starting across at Jordan, was a trip.

• I woke up hazy from an afternoon nap to hear the Friday prayers booming in echo across the Ramallah hills. I couldn't grasp it all, but from what I could tell the imam was yelling his typical stuff about America and we are all mujahideen (nothing to fret, it's the same as fundamentalist preachers yelling about abortions and alcohol). However, set to the tune of this lovely diatribe was the sound of my American neighbor, quintisential Dad, yelling to his kids about someone finding him the extension cord so he can vacuum the car. I sleepily smiled at the irony and went back to the nap.

• I introduced a friend here to the idea of the leopard print Snuggie, which he somehow had not heard of, perhaps since Palestine has bigger concerns than couch-heat maximization. We then decided that a real leopard skin snuggie would be the perfect sartorial choice for one Muammar Gadaffi. Leopard legs? Gadaffi arms. He could both maniacally gesticulate and stay warm!

• I saw a Druze band from the Golan Heights. The Druze, for those who aren't familiar, are a very interesting, tiny population that deserve your Google. Hearing them play in Ramallah was alone pretty amazing. Hearing them play a rousing cover of "Get up, Stand up" while including the Egyptian chants from the protests, and watching the room just explode with energy, was soul-meltingly epic.