Wayfarer By Faith: Summer

I will always remember Israel as an indescribably unique country, where all the major religions, cultures and peoples collide in one captivating, eclectic place. Whether I was out exploring the Old or New City of Jerusalem, wandering the cobblestone streets of Nazareth, Jaffa and Acre, hiking the scenic Golan Heights or the fortress of Masada, swimming in the salty Dead Sea or the Galilee, snorkelling in the breath-taking Red Sea, and finally living in a remote Druze village, there was always so much to see, so much to learn, and way too much to discover!

Beginning this year, I’d already been feverishly planning to backpack and volunteer in Israel during the summer months of June to August. Before I knew it, it was time for me to leave the winter cold of Australia and embark on my journey! After three weeks backpacking all over the captivating land of Israel and the desert scapes of Jordan, it was time for me to begin my one-month stay in a Druze village called Peqi’in – a quaint, age-old town of 5,400 inhabitants nestled between the hill-country of the Upper Galilee. The experience that awaited me turned out to be one of the most incredibly eye-opening, challenging and memorable times of my life altogether. I didn’t quite know what to expect, but one thing I knew for sure, I’d be the only native-English speaker around and everyone else living in the village would be Arabic and Hebrew speakers. That was precisely why I was going to Peqi’in: to teach and practice English with Druze children, as they usually never got the opportunity to interact with native-English speakers!

Staying in Peqi’in with a local Druze family was one of the best things I had ever done in the 20 years of my life simply because it was an opportunity that few people ever got – to live in a world so isolated and so vastly different to the world I knew back in Australia. It was quiet and peaceful, unlike the chaotic streets of Tel Aviv and the underlying tension one feels within the walls of Jerusalem’s Old City. I felt like I was in a totally new dimension of time – life went at a different pace. And it felt amazing.

During the week, I’d teach at the local matnas – or community centre – where children between the ages of 12 to 14 would come to learn in a special English summer program that we were initiating for the first time. Being a musician, I brought along my ukulele, and I’d play it in games and in our classes! Often on my visits to the families, they would also invite me to play and sing for them because they enjoyed music so much. It was always great fun to see the kids interacting with each other and to see their eagerness to practice English despite the language barrier at first. It was therefore an immense advantage that I could speak rudimentary Hebrew, because I did a university semester of Hebrew back home!

One of the highlights of my time volunteering was a village-wide treasure hunt that I and two other volunteers from the Czech Republic organised. The children were so thrilled about it and they really showed us their competitive side during the hunt! They never had a treasure hunt of this large a scale before. We hid clues all over the village: from the spring centre, to the Jewish cave, the post office, and the various fruit shops and religious sites that make Peqi’in the special place that it is. The point of the treasure hunt was to help the children practice their reading and problem-solving skills in English! They had to recall what we taught them about numbers, directions, nature, food and a myriad of other topics in order to successfully complete the challenges and find the clues. It was a really fun day running all over Peqi’in in the blazing summer heat with the kids and feeling utterly exhausted in the end, but I felt so happy to be part of something that had never been done before in this village.

In a real underground bomb shelter at my student (Kayan) grandmother's house!

I will always remember the generosity and kindness of the Druze people. Everyday after school, I was often invited by two or more families to their homes for lunch or dinner, or supper! And I couldn’t refuse. My students would walk with me to their homes and show me around the village. It was always great fun trying to communicate. As we practiced English, I’d take the opportunity to also pick up a few more Arabic or Hebrew words. There was also plenty to do on the weekends. I would travel to nearby towns like Nazareth, Tsafed and Tiberias or go to Druze weddings that the whole village was invited to. I even managed attend an engagement party up in the highest Druze village in Israel – right on the foothills of Mount Hermon and across the Syrian border! I thoroughly relished these opportunities to interact with the local people and to observe the Druze customs and the traditions.

I thank the beautiful people of Peqi’in for opening their hearts and their homes to a stranger like me, to someone who does not speak their mother-tongue and who does not share their unique customs and traditions. Through it all, I learnt an important thing: people are the same wherever they are, they want to love and be loved in return. If you are open to listen, to understand, to care about people– no matter how young or old, no matter their race or religion, no matter how different they are to you in a thousand ways – they will also open their hearts to you and partner with you to make some pretty amazing things happen!

I thought I was crossing the border from Eilat into the neighbouring country of Jordan. But I think I have actually landed in another planet altogether! I will attempt to explain why – but I think mere words and photographs will never be able to do justice to the reality of the wonders that my eyes have seen.

After crossing the Yitzhak Rabin border from Israel into Jordan, my mom and I headed straight for the Bedouin territory of the Wadi Rum desert!

Truly, truly, truly – the Wadi Rum desert, all 300 kilometres of it, is an other-worldly place of endless sand dunes in red, yellow, white and black as well as majestically towering rock mountains that change colours at different times of the day. It is also the home of the famously hospitable Bedouin folk - the original nomads of the land who have occupied the Wadi Rum desert for hundreds of years. Every man, woman, boy or girl seems to know each rock mountain and desert plain by name – and yes they literally have a specific name for each mountain that has been passed on from generation to generation. Our Bedouin guide Nadjah told us that he can drive in his jeep through the desert in pitch black night at two or three in the morning and know exactly how to get around or get home to his village and camp. It is quite cool to think that these massive rocks and mountains and ravines are their ‘street’ names!

It was an absolute privilege and thrill to ride in Nadjah’s jeep and explore the red sand dunes, canyons and rock mountains of Wadi Rum from afternoon till sunset. The place itself is so vast and so huge that you feel so very small – and the only way I could describe it is in two words: devastatingly beautiful. I feel it is appropriate to use the word ‘devastating’ because it gives an edge to the softer connotation that comes with the word ‘beautiful’. The words are a stark contrast to each other, and yet when put together, the two perfectly reflects the fearsome wonder of this glorious place which belongs to the Bedouin people.

In the sweltering hot summer day, it can get up to forty degrees and over! However, I am still really glad that my mom and I decided to do this. You can’t even put a price to this experience because it is truly a priceless one. Being out there in the desert makes you feel like you’re the only one on this Martian-like planet, and that there is no one else out here who will judge you or harm you or make life difficult for you – except the harshness of the desert, of course!

The stunning facades of the rock mountains and ginormous boulders are something in itself – just standing before one is enough for you to gape in silent awe. The Bedouin have a huge respect for these structures of nature – they believe God created them and left them here for a reason. It is devastatingly beautiful precisely because the place itself is very difficult terrain to live and survive in – no matter how much any one could admire and love it for its epic splendour. I honestly have a deep respect for the Bedouin now for all these years they have lived in this harsh desert climate and barren landscape. They do have seasons from summer, autumn, winter to spring. They even have snow in winter and flowers in spring. But it is still not a place one would easily raise children and find or cultivate food, shelter and water.

It can get eerily quiet and turn pitch black in the night as there are literally zero city lights or any kind of artificial light apart from our lamps or the generated electricity that lasts until after dinner time. But the most memorable thing about being out there in the desert at night is the incredible night-scape vista of thousands upon thousands of stars all illuminating the clear, dark skies. One could even spot the cloud-burst of star clusters that belong to the Milky Way surrounded by the mysterious shadows of the rocky mountains all around the Bedouin camp. It was really nice to sit outside with my ukulele in hand and play some worship songs in the night!

Surprisingly, it does get chilly at night, and a pleasant desert breeze blows through. So going to Wadi Rum in the height of summer wasn’t that bad at all. In the day time the sand can get scorching hot, burning the soles of your feet if you didn’t wear shoes (I liked wearing sandals). However, Nadjah was really clever to send me and my mom off to walk through a canyon that created looming shadows in between as a cool wind blew through the rocks in the height of the afternoon heat. So the desert summer temperatures didn’t affect us that drastically after all. We just needed loads of water (which Nadjah was kind enough to provide a good few bottles to keep us hydrated), a good scarf and hat, as well as of course a sense of adventure! After all, how often do you get to be out in a Middle Eastern desert, in a Middle Eastern summer, with an exceptionally hospitable and bright Bedouin guide who speaks brilliant English? (Nadjah learnt English only six years ago all by himself and practiced it with tourists passing through.)

Stay tuned for more stories of my adventures in Jordan! For more photos check out my Wadi Rum Desert and Wadi Rum Canyon albums.

One of the best things about Israeli hostels is their free breakfasts! And not to mention free wifi coverage in the whole hostel as well as really meticulously clean rooms, bathrooms and kitchen areas. I love the fact that I don’t have to worry about breakfast. It can really make a huge difference to the rest of your day, especially if you’re a backpacker on a shoestring budget! Before coming, I expected the ‘free breakfast’ to be really basic – toast, butter, jam, coffee and tea. But to my delight, they also provided three huge baskets of red capsicums, zucchinis and tomatoes as well as hard boiled eggs (or uncooked eggs if you’d like to make your own scrambled or fried eggs).

It’s seriously one of the best things a hostel can provide, because often when you are away in a new place, you don’t want to have to worry about hunting for places to get vegetables and fruits. And Israel seems to lack big supermarkets like Coles and Safeway where you can get cheap food to cook for yourself. So for me, it’s really nice to be able to have a good, healthy breakfast to start off the day – since I wake up at around five thirty in the morning! But that only happens when I’m backpacking! ;)

If you are going to do this whole backpacking thing in Israel, make sure you look for the hostels that provide free breakfasts and free wifi (so you can use Messenger or Whatsapp to contact friends and family instead of using your phone’s international roaming or buying a local SIM card). These two things can be a lifesaver, because some places can be really far from local markets or mini-marts. And especially because on Shabbat everything closes, you’ll be stuck in a hostel with an empty stomach.

So far, I’m really, really glad that I decided to backpack in Israel! It is an awesome place to do it because they have an extensive bus network and a reliable train system too. The buses are pretty on time and very frequent, especially in the city areas. Also, most people speak pretty good English, so you can ask for directions or buy things without much drama. Another flipping awesome thing about travelling here is the blessed fact that you can drink tap water anywhere. Yes, yes, yes! You don’t have to buy water or boil water like you would have to in many other Asian or Middle Eastern countries. I filled up my bottle today at various rest stops while on the way through the Beer Sheva pass and the Arava desert today – and all is well so far!

So yes, there are many, many reasons why Israel is the place to go – especially in summer (well, simply because I love summer weather), but even probably all year round. I’m looking forward to discovering more and more good things about Israel as I backpack on!

People are not their politics. None of us have any right to hold prejudice or judgment against a people group or a country until we actually take the time to explore the place for ourselves, get to know the people, and try to understand the culture and history.

Again and again, I'm learning that travel isn't just about going places. It's about taking the opportunity to break the barriers of misconception and prejudice, to see for yourself what life is like for different people, to expose what the media portrays a certain place or people to be. This is the thing that I find most fascinating when I go places. Although I may just be passing through, I'd like to stay long enough to allow the people to touch my life in some kind of way - to illuminate my thinking, to provoke me to new understanding. Travel isn't about going on another holiday. For me, it really is about challenging yourself to get out of your comfort zone. Ever since I stepped foot in Australia six years back, I had told myself, I never want to stay in a place long enough to become so comfortable that I turn complacent - without even realizing it!

The direction you take in life is really determined by your intention. There's a great deal of power in intention, because it is driven by the will. If you do not live, travel, work, play and serve others with intention, you'll only be happy when things go alright, but crumble when things go wrong. You'll be wandering from one thing to the next, or even focused on doing the same thing, in the same place, with the same people, over and over again and expecting different results - but you won't really get anywhere, both on the inside and outside. And that, my friend, is a kind of insanity.

I think traveling is the coolest thing ever, but I'm not an advocate of living the backpacker life all your life and traveling indefinitely. Really. I don't believe in that. Personally, I would get bored. Without a purpose for traveling, I would honestly fall into the void of depression along the way!

I remember the turning point came for me when I realized this truth and it came to me in a moment of lucidity. I was traveling in Bangkok with my family two years ago. My sisters and mom were all shopping-crazed. They loved looking at all the stuff in shops and markets (and Thailand is pretty cray when it comes to this kinda' stuff - colourful, pretty, fashionable, intricate, everything!). After two days of going around with them, I finally said, 'Enough! I'm sick of following you guys around, this is such a waste of time and money, and I'm not traveling all the way just to go shopping!' I don't know, but I've always been like this. I can enjoy buying nice things, but I'd never, ever want to waste my time on a shopping spree - not especially when I'm in another country!

I ended up spending a lot more time with my camera in hand, observing people, walking around and taking photos. I love photography because it helps you see things a little more closely, a little more deliberately. It helps you appreciate the culture and take in the nuances of all the sights, sounds and smells that often just passes you by in a rush of excitement. Photography slows you down and teaches you what it means to really travel, to really go places.

I've found the answer to that. It is about seeing people as they are, accepting them, and allowing them to accept you. Often we go places for self-centered and self-indulgent reasons. We just want to do what we planned to do. But we really have no interest in the people - the very people who are receiving us into their beloved country or community. And I think this disrespectful attitude - which often isn't seemingly a big deal because you're just passing through - needs to be eradicated from our mentality. It's there. You just need to be introspective enough to see it, and address it.

I'm already learning a lot from my three days in Tel Aviv, Israel. And this is only the beginning of my two-month backpacking and volunteering odyssey in this beautiful, beautiful country. In between all my goings and adventures and discoveries, I'd like to write stuff like this - reflections and musings on life, culture, art, philosophy, faith, society and everything else in between.

Again, at every opportunity I have, I'd like to thank God again for His overflowing grace and mercy - for all these crazy opportunities I've had open to me as I learnt to seek, knock and ask. In all this, I am learning to do my part in the things that only I can do (like work and save up, plan and research, ask questions and make decisions, meet and befriend people). But everything else that is out of my hands, I am also learning to trust God with and walk by faith - with eyes wide open.

As my Dad always says, 'Faith isn't a leap in the dark, faith is a leap in the Light.' You may not always know what the end result will be, but you must know what the challenges and risks are ahead - and yet still take the leap, with God's help. That's why they sing the song, 'By the grace of God go I.' And now, with that, I totally identify!