Visit October 2018

 

My Gaza Visit in October

This time during my Gaza visit we centered on visiting two of the Kindergartens around the outskirts of Gaza city and also some families where we brought their monthly food bags to them.

The first Kindergarten which is called Hanna’s School we visited was one that had very poor possibilities and according to the sharing of the teachers, this meal is the only meal the children are able to eat during the day. There are about 100 children and they received their meal during our visit, the pictures speak for themselves. I have never seen children eating with such respect and dignity for their food. You could not hear one word during the meal. Even when the meal was distributed, each one waited its turn to get the meal, and it seems to me that the children were thinking and asking themselves in silence - will tomorrow have another meal? The Kindergarten class is very basic in this building, with no possibility for toys or material for the children, but the room is very clean and also the children were all clean. Their behavior was outstanding!

  

  

The schedule of food is that they receive food daily during kindergarten. Two times a week is a meal is with meat, once a week there is fruit and 2 times a week a sandwich of cheese or egg. Once a week the teacher can decide what they will give the children to eat and that depends on the money that is left for food during that week. So it could be another meal or it could be only a sandwich. 

The second kindergarten which is called the Musaddar School has 200 children and its place is within a development center and again it reminded me of my life in Egypt, when Caritas was giving health courses and doctors were checking the health of the children and of the village people. The people are helped to improve their daily life by education and awareness programs, yet many of their problems are solved among themselves. The people in Gaza are all educated and do not need to have programs for people to learn to read or to write as we would have had that challenge in each village of Egypt.