#26 - From Israël to Ivory Coast
Dear friends,
The last time you heard from us, we were harvesting dates in Israel. Today we are writing from Abidjan, Ivory Coast, where we arrived without incident three days ago. What happened during all this time?
After a month harvesting and sorting dates in Israel with Eyal and Ran, two farmers that have marked us with their intelligence and their permanent good mood, we went to Latrun Trappist monastery, the largest in central Israel.
The entrance of the monastery
Historically, since the Middle-Age, the development and improvement of agricultural techniques in the West have been made by many abbeys - primarily Cluny and Cistercian. The monks, working on huge agricultural areas, have played a leading role in the development of cereal and viticulture techniques and in the selection of animal species.
It is to learn more about the origins of modern agriculture that we wanted to work in an abbey and share the daily life of the monks living there.
Four languages are spoken here
We won’t hide anything from you and we must admit that the arrival in this monastery was a big shock for us! We were coming from an Israeli community, small but a lot of activity, where we worked in a really good vibe. Here we are in a huge and cold abbey where live a dozen Cistercian monks according the rule of "strict observance". This means in poverty and especially in the most total silence among themselves.
The wonderful place
An old Argentinian monk shows us the place at his own pace, and opens the rooms where we will sleep during our stay here. At least we have a room for each one and even a shower, which has not happened often since the beginning. Our first reflex when alone together is a good laugh: we might be accustomed to life changes after nine months of homelessness, but this new lifestyle surprises us a lot. Fortunately, Nasser, a Christian Arab with Israeli citizenship (can you follow?) who takes care of the place explains in more details how life is at the monastery, with a smile that warms our arrival.
The monks are no longer numerous enough to take care of five hundred hectares of land where grow vineyards and olive trees, and employ some Palestinian workers in the fields. So it is with them that we start harvesting olives in the morning.
We have often struggled to speak with our colleagues in the fields during this trip, including Mongolia, but here we get through a new milestone by working with a deaf and mute man. With our Mongolian experience, we quickly succeed in communicating somehow: "you take care of this tree, and I of that one."
A small break in the shadow
No work has been as relaxing since the beginning of our journey. We begin with extending large plastic tarps under the olive trees. Then and during hours, we "paint" the branches of olive trees with small rakes to make the fruit fall. No stress here: the workers are picky and no olive escapes their gaze exercised by years of practice. Each tree gives about two hundred kilos of olive that will give fifty liters of olive oil, pressed within the monastery.
Jules looking for the last olives
We then empty the tarps in big boxes
The workers and the result of their work
The best olives in the world
After work, we write many letters that have been sent since the, as we did in each country, to all those who supported us during the preparation of our big trip.
It is only after three days that we truly encounter the monks who live and pray in these walls. Brother Louis, first, of Lebanese origin, explains to us the radical life choice he made fifty years ago to live with God in this monastery. Then brother Paul, former superior of the abbey living there for 70 years and who was already there when the monastery was part of the Jordanian territory, before Israel extended its territory to the east. Brother Christmas and Brother Christian-Marie then, who strike us with an inner joy that is rarely found in the world. It is interesting that men living that reclusively explain that they could not be more free than they are here; that the means made available to men and women by modernity to enable them to live more comfortably also limit their freedom by distracting them from their inner questioning, the only true wealth. These beautiful examples of life nourish our personal thinking that keeps evolving since the beginning of the trip.
Brother Paul leads the way
By talking to them, we discover the extent of their role in the region. Having made vows of poverty, they are returning all their (large) profits - made by selling their wine and their oil - to poor Arab communities in the area and pay for education or medical care for the poorest. Without making noise or attracting attention, these men of God are working everyday to struggle their own way against poverty. The only thing they reproach to us is not to have arrived earlier and not to stay longer: we could have helped during the vintage during which they more than hundred people work every day. If you go to Israel one day and want to work in peace and silently, far from the loud bursts of current events, you should definitely stay a few days at the Abbey of Latrun!
Jules in the vines
The monks are not only silent but also vegetarians to devote themselves to God without sacrificing anyone in the human world. However, our new diet cannot be as good as the one we had in our moshav, with fresh vegetables and delicious dates. Simultaneously, we feel a loss of energy linked to this diet change.
We realize this way how much our relationship to food has changed since the beginning of our journey, mostly since our first month of traveling in Uruguay. Fred and Uta, in the Isla Verde, have in fact been the first to make us aware of the importance of nutrition for our bodies, with particular emphasis on the need to eat fruits and vegetables "still alive", that is to say freshly picked, and not cooked for hours. We remember our surprise at their refusal to eat the ratatouille we had prepared with love. "It's dead, it's overcooked, you removed all the energy from the courgettes and tomatoes," they explained to us. Now we understand.
Fortunately, we get back our energy with some dates jealously stolen from fields where we worked before.
After a week, we leave Latrun for Tel Aviv, where we fly to Abidjan. Used to long layovers in airports, we are surprised to learn that the company offers us to stay in a hotel while we wait in Cairo between two flights. As soon as we get to this beautiful hotel, we rush to the buffet. Imagine two cavemen in a star restaurant - yes I exaggerate a little - and get a vision of the scene.
Arrived in Abidjan, after some visa problems quickly resolved, we are greeted by Christiane, Jules’s uncle mother. Arrived from France in Ivory Coast in 1958, Christiane never left the country, even in times of crisis, and can tell us in details all the events of the last decades in Ivory Coast. She leads us to her home, which will be our base camp to finish organizing our stay here. As we told you, presidential elections are approaching here, and all those to whom we speak do not recommend us to go to the countryside in this context, in case something bad happens. We decide to leave for Ghana, where we found a cocoa plantation to work in with local farmers. We take the bus tomorrow at dawn to Accra, and should start working on Wednesday morning.
We are therefore not sure we’ll be able to give you some news in the weeks to come, this will depend on factors we do not control.
Of course, we’ll do our best to tell you as soon as possible how everything is good on!
Thanks for reading us, we’ll be back soon