Ruhama (lit. womb>ie mercy) is the name of a kibbutz near to the Gaza border. When I made the call to Yossi, the head of the excavation, I had no idea as to where the place was, only that manual labour was being asked for, and though I doubted any intellectual skills on my side, I felt confident that I might recommend myself as a fellow-donkey in the upcoming three week dig-a-marathon. And so at the end of the summer I found myself sitting at a crossroads in Sderot, a town I had heard of, but not due to it’s lovely array of taxi cab’s or industrial complexes’ but rather by its being a favourite destination of the qassam missiles (that have maybe a little more direction than a drunk, blindfolded Irishman on St Patrick’s Day). I did not have to wait long before a van rolled up stuffed with exciting archaeological instruments of high quality manufacture; buckets, and spades, and buckets, and boxes, and coffee maker, and buck..
thats me making friends with my buckets....
I hopped in and introduced myself ….apparently they had all been discussing for some time how to spell my name, so I was obliged to spell it out and try to find an analogy that they could understand, it was either that or being called Roon!
So here is day one: where we sit and watch. The caterpillar driver was Muslim and about 60, it was an important fast day for them that day, and he worked the whole time in this intense heat with no water or food! I felt sure he was going to have a heart attack!!
and to end off- if you had any illusions of the stress, magnitude, and intensity of what an excavation really means, i hope this picture sums it up :)
here is what the site began to look like after a few days work..
