Palestinian hospitality is an exercise in bladder control

Lest you get the impression that it's all doom and gloom here and people just walk around cracking dark jokes, let me say that the first thing that struck me here was just how friendly and warm everyone is.  It's genuine friendliness, not the kind of friendliness where you're all chatting and happy and then 20 minutes later you realise the taxi driver/shopkeeper overcharged you by 100%.

Palestinians are also very hospitable, and accepting of hospitality as well.  What I mean is that, much like with Indian culture, if you are offered something to drink or eat it can be a bit 'off' to not accept it.  Saying you're on a diet/vegan/gluten free is just not going to fly.  On the other hand, perhaps it is fine to refuse a drink or snack but growing up with Indian parents I was conditioned to automatically accept if a host offered me something for fear of insulting them.  I don't know if Palestinians are quite as sensitive but when I went on a tour of some rural households a couple of weeks back I didn't really attempt to find out either.

There is an American doctoral student here, doing research for her PhD on treated greywater.  It's pretty interesting - my organisation has set up various household greywater treatment units - it takes all household water except for the toilet (kitchen sink, laundry machine, shower) and treats it through non-chemical means (filtration through sand and/or charcoal) so it can be reused for irrigation.  In conjunction they build mini-greenhouses so the families have a means to grow certain vegetables and herbs, generally for their own consumption.  For her research she had to survey some of the families on their use of the treated greywater, and take samples.  I had to do nothing - it was a free field trip for me.  Impressively, she was able to conduct most of the interview in arabic as well, so I really had nothing to do except stuff my face.  And stuff my face I did!

We visited about half a dozen houses and at every one of them we were offered tea/coffee, juice, maybe some cookies or fruit.  By noon I'd had about 6 cups of tea/coffee, some deadly wafer biscuits by the name of Ali Baba, a nectarine, and various candies.  We were actually in the village of one of the Palestinian employees and visited some of his sisters - who also offered us fresh baked bread and hummous.  That was the interview stage, however, when we went into people's homes.

In the afternoon we only visited 2 houses, where she took water samples.  At one of the houses lived 3 teenage sisters (with their other siblings, and God knows how many cousins).  They were interested to see us, asked us if we were married, cracked jokes about my colleagues missing boyfriend... and were generally really funny and sweet.  They definitely took a shining to my colleague and for her going away/birthday invited her to their house for a party last Saturday.

Giggling girls fascinated by the strange foreigners checking out their nasty greywater

We were greeted with all manner of cakes and dessert, a shit-tonne of friendly and adorable children and later in the evening some maqlouba - the awesome and delicious Palestinian national dish.

So much yum

Their friendlieness and hospitality was really overwhelming and I had a lot of fun for an afternoon/evening spent in the company of so many children without any alcohol.  You would think a people that is faced on a daily basis with so much hardship and injustice would become hardened themselves, but with Palestinians you see quite the opposite - why add more negativity to your life when you're surrounded by it anyway.  But lest we forget the political situation for one afternoon - the father of the girls above had been imprisoned without trial for 6 years, and his brother had served 10 years of a 32 year sentence, during which he will never be able to visit him as the prison is in Israeli territory.