videos, the internet, and what it means to be a woman

the projects here, under the guise of the balatacamp.net umbrella, are going swimmingly. mika, the bloke who runs the show, is running three or four workshops a day with people in the camp ranging from journalism with young girls to internet and web site construction with women to film workshops with little boys. the camp's children are back in school after a session of exams and then a winter recess, and everyone has quite a bit of energy to crack down and make some media...

today my friend abby and i met with three young women to do our first of a series of video workshops. they knew little to nothing about video, and were very attentive, though abby's arabic is pretty elementary (way better than mine, which is nonexistant) and they spoke little to no english. finding words for 'capture', 'raw footage' and 'editing' was a bit difficult, but we struggled through the language barrier and by the end of the (too short) hour we had them making their own cuts and transitions. tomorrow we will meet again and they will shoot some video, capture it into the program and make a short video. things are moving faster than i had expected, and there is much these young women have to say.

though they have a lot to say, hearing them is, in the camp, quite a task. women in the camp, which is very poor and highly conservative religiously and culturally, are not often encouraged to participate in projects with digital media. there are two internet cafes in the camp, but they are restricted to men and boys only and most girls and women do not frequent the city of nablus, which is only a five minute, 6 shekel ($1.50) cab ride away. therefore most of them haven't much experience with computers, let alone programs to create video. this is thus a great opportunity for them, and they are readily lapping it up.

tomorrow morning i will go and lead some games with children at one of the nursery schools in balata camp. we'll see how my arabic compares to that of the 4 year olds...movement, snapping and clapping are universal languages, however, and i think we will rely on these quite heavily.

the army hasn't been around during the day lately, but apparently they were doing some practices invasions last night in balata, driving jeeps in and out and doing a bit of shooting. practice makes perfect...

i wonder anxiously what they are practicing for.