Jamilia from Spain: Why did I choose Palestine? ” I am Jamila, I am French-Algerian currently living in Barcelona, Spain. Before living in Spain, I spent 14 years in London hence my fluency in EnglishJ. Why did I choose Palestine? From a very young age, my mum talked about the unjust plea of the Palestinian people which somehow had a big impact on me.
As an adult, it became a dream to come and see for myself what being and living like a Palestinian meant. I became intrigued about how a people could survive in such “extraordinary” conditions. And here starts my story with the “Excellence Center”. I wanted to find a way of exploring the Palestine culture, perhaps brush-up on my Arabic whilst giving something back to the people.
My dream came true, within a few google searches I found “The Excellence Center” in Hebron (South of Palestine in the West Bank) who seemed focused on welcoming non-Palestinians to discover their country whilst helping the locals to learn English. They find a host family for the stay of students/volunteers making it much easier to organize (there aren´t exactly lots of hotels in the area).
The excellence Center offers various “formula”, I chose “Writing articles about Palestine” and teaching English classes to the local schools/Excellence Center pupils. This also gives me time to visit the sites/cities and get to know the local people. It is only my 2nd day here but I get a sense that those who come here never forget their experience. In fact, in seems there are quite a few volunteers/students repeating the experience various times. There is Owen from London who is here for the 3rd time learning Arabic. I dare say that as an Arabic person, it feels strange to have “westerners” speaking better than I do…Well done them! And as for me, I´d better get to work!
