I frequently think back of my teenage years in Israel living in a kibbutz near the Jordanian border. It was a small community my kibbutz, enclosed by a fence meant to keep certain people out and keep certain people in. With a population of no more than 200-300 people everybody knew everyone. As a collective community everything was shared; main meals were consumed in a large central dining hall, – we usually only consumed meals at home during the weekends – the laundy was done in the communal laundry house and nobody had a privately owned car; we had about 20 cars mostly Mazda’s and Subaru’s, and you had to order one if needed. Children were raised from infancy well into adult life in ‘children home’s’ by nanny’s, while the parents worked the land. This was how my father spent his childhood.
I had a hard time adjusting. Coming from Holland as a thirteen year old, I had to try and fit in with peers who had been raised from infancy together. It didn’t quite work out. After a while, the sunny weather and the private pool offered little comfort and soon this little secure paradise became a teenage hell. Now thinking back, I try to remember mostly the good stuff, stuff I frankly miss in Holland.
I loved the land, the environment and the work. Our kibbutz was located beautifully on a hill overlooking the Jordan valley. To the south you could see the old city of Beit Shean, with in the background the Gilboa mountains, a setting for many biblical scenes. It was here where King Saul lost his life after losing battle with the Philistines, after which his body was hung on the walls of Beit Shean.
Hamadia had two factories, one manufacturing doors and the other producing fiberglass, but the majority of our shared income was made by Agricultural products. We grew olives, mango’s, avocados, watermelons and dates and many vegetables. In the surrounding hills we had large herds of cattle and down in the valley we grew fish in fishponds, and we also had a chickenfarm raising chickens.
We went to school four days a week and the fifth day was reserved for work. I started working immediately at thirteen. My first job was on the chicken farm, it was a dirty job which caused me to stop eating chickens for a long time. The coops were hot and stuffy, crowded with panic stricken chickens flapping their wings, the air dense with the smell of chicken poo and feathers.The dead chickens were buried in a mass grave for chickens. I liked to collect them because I often got to drive the tractor to the burial site, a big thing when you’re thirteen. Driving the tractor was actually the main attraction of many jobs in the kibbutz.
The job I held longest and loved most was working with cattle. Often we travelled on horseback across the hills from early Sunrise till sundown. We spread out with our horses and sometimes on foot to retrieve the many cows from their hiding places and guide the herd to their pens for periodical checkups or to round them up for winter quarters. The immense feeling of freedom and a oneness with nature experienced while on horseback surrounded by the hills and valleys under a burning sun has been unrivaled since.
These are the moments I miss most living the city life in the flat domesticated land of the Netherlands.
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