The End of the First Session at Seeds of Peace

Every night, after we’ve turned out the lights, two of the Muslim kids in my bunk take out their mats, place them near the foot of my bed and do their nighttime prayers in silence.

This is one of the things I’ve appreciated the most about this camp: the diversity of people and the diversity of experiences. The cultural and religious differences. The music that I would never normally listen to. The excessive (or maybe appropriate?) amount of dancing. The incredible discussions these kids get into. It’s been an unbelievably rewarding experience.

These guys got here and it was very apparent that they were mistrustful of each other. They were very guarded around people of other delegations or of “the other side.” It’s funny how it was the small things that finally helped them get comfortable with each other: talking about girls late into the night, pulling pranks on each other, being able to complain about the same things together, and dancing.

The events here often break out into large dance parties. When the delegations arrived, all of the campers got off the bus to all the counselors playing music and dancing and they all jumped in and for the first 20 minutes after they arrived we all danced. We also hosted an international night where all the delegations prepared food from their own country, and all the campers were allowed to wear clothes from their ethnic region, and the night culminated in another giant dance party. We'd hold concerts for them, and they performed in talent shows, and somewhere, somehow, dancing was always involved.

One of my campers, a Palestinian, was very proud of the Debka – a traditional Palestinian dance. He would often talk about teaching me how to do it (which we never actually got around to), but he performed it at the talent show with many of the other Palestinian campers. The Indian delegation performed an incredible Bollywood dance (which apparently they had been practicing for for 2 months.) The Afghanis and Pakistanis performed traditional dances from their own countries. Two Israeli girls and a Palestinian girl performed an incredible ballet piece to Imogen Heap’s Hide and Seek. These kids were unbelievably talented!

The entire camp culminated in three days of intense competition called Color Games. All the campers were divided into two teams – either green or blue, and for those three days they competed in everything from athletics to cake decorating and everything in between. Once the competitions were over and the winning team was declared, all the campers ran into the lake fully clothed in a very emotional celebration. Everyone was hugging anyone they knew; people were laughing and crying. It was a giant wet love-fest.

A Quaker service was held in the Big Hall the day before the campers left. These services are generally characterized by sitting in silence, and individuals speaking when the feel led to say something to the group. As we all sat quietly, campers slowly began to speak up and talk about their experiences: their growth during camp, the relationships they’d built, their hopes and fear about going home.

On Tuesday we said goodbye to our campers. After having the responsibility of looking out for these kids for three weeks, it was difficult to say goodbye knowing what we were sending them back to. And while I love the vision of Seeds, and I feel that it is incredibly important, I also recognize the burden that we are placing on these kids. We give them three weeks of paradise, where there is no conflict and where there is no enemy, and then we send them back to their home communities where no one will understand their experiences or their perspectives. We are, in sum, isolating these individuals. This is all done with the hope that these experiences will also empower them to pursue change and lead their communities into reconciliation, but it doesn’t dismiss the fact that while we might be freeing them in one sense, we are burdening them in another. And life for them will probably be more difficult when they return home than when they left.