We drove past a metallic blue warehouse with a whole ripped right down the middle; it had been bombed at some point and never repaired. The bus parked in front of a low crumbling brown wall with a section missing and the broken pieces scattered around the opening. A stable next to this wall had one horse staring over at us and provided a great manure smell as we walked through the hole towards the WALL. The definition of the word "wall" continues to take on new meanings every day that I am in its presence. I walked over to stand right beneath it and stared up and down, over and around its looming power as the other members of the group I had tagged along with milled around and took pictures or read the various graffiti. Ziad took my camera and snapped a series of photos while I stood there. The rest of the group was there but I seemed very alone under the WALL.

Earlier we had stood at a cemetery on the back border of the Dheisheh camp, a cemetery built for those killed, martyred in the violence of the area. Several open graves were waiting for the next victims claimed by the violence to make their homes there. From the cemetery you can see the expanding settlements off in the distance, rising above the Palestinian land.

We piled into a mini-van taxi, me and 7 Palestinians, most in their white, red and black Ibdaa basketball warm-ups. We were on our way to Ramallah to see the opening ceremonies and the first game of the next basketball championships. This would be my first excursion out from the Bethlehem area. Ramallah is basically straight north of Dheisheh but because there are certain roads and areas that Palestinians can't travel through, we had to travel east through the hills before heading north. A trip that used to take 30 minutes, now takes roughly an hour and a half and there are checkpoints. The poorly constructed roads snake up and down through the dusty brown rocky hills, nothing grows in these areas. Abu Moad told me later that you know it's a Palestinian road if you feel the car jump and jolt around and you know it's a road that the Jewish use if it is smooth.

We avoided the first roving checkpoint but got stopped at the second, my first real checkpoint. The soldier looked at my passport quickly and handed it back while he studied more closely the Palestinian ID's (which are written in both Arabic and Hebrew). We were only stopped for about 4 minutes at this checkpoint. But at the second roving checkpoint the soldier motioned us off to a parking area and took all of the Palestinian's ID's to another soldier sitting under a makeshift tiny command post covered in camouflage mesh webbing. We were made to get out of the taxi by the soldier who spoke only a little Arabic; he made the "get out" motion with his hand while Abu Yusef (who speaks a little Hebrew) tried to tell him we were just going to Ramallah. We gathered in a spot on the side of the road while another soldier dressed in army green fatigues that looked very bulky (he may have been wearing a bulletproof vest) covered us with his AK-47. The other soldier searched the taxi and finally we were allowed to leave. We passed the third checkpoint, this time the "official" checkpoint with no trouble.

The sun was setting after we finally got past the third checkpoint, casting a harsh glare over the desolate hills. A silhouette appeared on the hill in the distance as we raced around the slow traffic. I thought at first that it was just an oddly shaped rock but then its neck moved and I realized that there were three camels standing by the side of the road. After the stress of the checkpoints, this simple image brought a smile to my face.

Because of the checkpoints we missed the opening ceremony.

There are so many more events to tell about, both large and small but since I actually do work here (for those of you that have been reading the blog and just think that all I do is basketball!) and we leave for Ramallah again at 5 for Ibdaa's first game of this championship I will have to save them for another day...

But one note of concern lately is that Ziad is very sick and not sleeping so we are all a little worried...