VN June 2020

Vetnuus | Junie 2020 30 The sound of lively chatter rose and fell in the small lounge where eight or ten people were gathered. The bouquet of a close gathering mixed with the aroma of fresh coffee and sweet cakes filled the air. The previous two nights we had stayed in a guesthouse on a kibbutz and I had just arrived at my new host. I was to get used to these gatherings and the guttural sing-song accent of the Hebrew people coming together like this almost every time we moved to a new host, usually the first event after we arrived to stay. They would invite their friends and relatives or work colleagues to meet us. This was after all one of the main purposes of our “Group Study Exchange”, to meet and share information and if possible friendship with another country. These informal meetings were often quite intense as we were bombarded with questions and expected to make explanations and we would often feel exhausted and quite emotionally drained after two or three hours and especially as they were repeated relentlessly as we moved from place to place. They were often followed soon after by a meeting of the local Rotary club to whom the host belonged. Here once again we would be questioned and one of us would be the main speaker at that event. During our visit in Israel, we probably attended at least two such meetings a week. The problem was that, except for the people sitting next to us, the rest of the floor and the business of the evening would all be in Hebrew, which, although I picked up a smattering during our two months there, was entirely Greek or should I say Hebrew to us. Probably the most boring evening we had to attend was the annual Rotary Conference where we attended the opening evening of speeches from 5 pm to 1 am with a short break for supper, all except one talk being in Hebrew. Some of the speakers were obviously quite humorous and there would be gales of laughter. Our host for the evening would then often try and explain the joke only to get lost in the middle while the next one was being told. Ever since then I have tried to avoid putting guests at any meeting through the same experience. The reason we had stayed in a guesthouse on a kibbutz the night before was because of feedback from the group who had visited SA from Israel before we went there. They had suggested we be put up in a neutral venue often to allow us to recover and rest from the stress of these constant meetings. And so our days were filled with visits to an amazing variety of places. We would find ourselves for instance at the police headquarters, viewing their mainframe computer room which consisted of a large room with steel cabinets lining the wall and large tapes spinning back and forth. This was way before computers came into general use and the entire power of that computer was probably no more than the chip in our cell phones today. Then on to a factory of some sort, or a housing estate, university or educational institute, research centre, the headquarters of the Histadrut (Israel’s equivalent of Cosato), maybe a mayoral reception, different kibbutzim and in between some tourist attractions and museums. Then in the evenings maybe a folk-dancing display, symphony concert, a movie etc. The amount of input grew till we were exhausted and our eager anticipation and excitement slowly waning. However we were really getting to know the country and its history and meeting many people. By the end of the trip I knew far more about Israel, its political thinking, history and accomplishments than I did about SA. Story Recollections 33: Imbibing Israel Ian du Toit