📝days 403-438: an epic (failed) journey to Palestine & the crash.
Last time I left you (it feels like I’m a parent holding your hand through this story, it’s fun) I had dropped you off 🔗📝when Pietro and Ole arrived in Georgia (it links to previous blog post). We had cycled around the marvelous green country for 3 weeks. Ole recorded and edited an aftermovie, I added some words on top. You can watch it again below.
🐐my failed attempt at “unwinding in nature”.
Excuse the apolitical nature of this episode of the sebbiebikes journey, but I thought it was too good of a story to keep hidden from you. And with some lessons, too! I’ll keep it short. Look. My thinking was: damn, I've just had a really challenging few months in Lebanon, Syria, and then that awfully hot desert crossing through Jordan and Iraq. I deserve time in the mountains, where I'll be with myself, the bees and the birds, to let my thoughts roam and reflect. So, I created an account for one of those Workaway platforms, paid for membership, and wrote to a nice-seeming lady who lived close to the Russian border. In between remote high white peaks and rugged mountains she had a tiny farm where “she did everything she could to give her animals the best life possible”. Okay, epic. Good stuff. Filled with anticipation at the prospect of finally taking time alone to decompress and reflect on everything that happened to me, I stepped in an overpacked van and for 8 hours drove to her.
Upon arrival I encountered a frantic lady who seemed to make it a sport to use at least 3 curse words in every sentence in a variety of languages (Russian, Polish, Georgian, English and Italian). There was a timid woman too, a bit younger than me, sitting next to her, appeasing her softly. What a strange duo, I thought. But maybe she’s stressed, or nervous, or exhausted, or all three, and with time, she’ll settle down? Soon enough, she started complaining about all sorts of people. The French in particular got it bad (they were lazy workers), but also different inhabitants of her town were conspiring against her, just like previous volunteers, the Russians, the Georgians, and anyone who was “lazy” was just out to make specifically her life more difficult She boasted about only sleeping a few hours per night, and took this as the measuring stick to which all others were measured. Hmm.
And from hour three this lady started crossing my boundaries. She started ordering me around, sadly not with coherent orders, but ones that conflicted. “Let the sheep out” and then five minutes later “Sebastiaaaaaan, why are the sheep out?”. Ai ai ai, folks. I wondered how the young woman, an American named Daphne, had lasted for more than 6 weeks. She herself didn’t really seem to know. It took a total of 3 nights before I made my escape in the morning, and took Daphne with me. The video I made of the whole tale is quite tragic, and you can see on my face that I was not having a good time.
The interesting thing though, is when I posted that video, dozens of people either reached out to me privately or left public comments saying they had a very similar experience with Workaways. And think about it! It makes sense! You're stuffed away, often far from the rest of society, usually alone or with only a few others, and are totally dependent on your host for food, accommodation, and sometimes even internet reception (as was our case). As it turns out, this is a recipe for exploitation, especially of young people who haven’t developed clear boundaries yet! The peculiar thing was that not a single review on her page mentioned anything about the abuse going on. Why? Another major flaw with the Workaday model: leaving a negative review is bad for your own future chances. It works like this. Both the host and the worker can leave reviews of each other, but the reviews only get posted if both parties write one. If you had a bad experience somewhere (like I did, I was called “a snake") chances are high that the host will give you a 1-star rating. You don’t want this on your profile, because future hosts will see it, and might not take you anymore. So, you don’t post about it when your experience was bad! I thought this particular case was so shocking that I wrote a 2500 word email to the company, but their reply was that “they conducted an investigation and found no rules being broken”. My ass.
So, take this as a lesson when you or somebody around you is considering a Workaway that's very remote: things can get gnarly, guard your boundaries, and be prepared to make your escape.
💣U.S. imperialism alive and well: Iran bombed & borders closed.
Back at the hostel, it was time to ponder my next move. The world had got a stark reminder: U.S. aggression was still alive and well, it hadn't gone anywhere. This time, together with Israel, it decided to bomb Iran for 12 days straight, displacing tens of thousands of civilians and killing in the thousands. Now clearly wasn’t the right time to visit Iran, the place which I’ve had pure awe for since I learned about its existence when I was 18 years old. Its place in international politics, its millennia-old civilization, its science, architecture, food, hospitality. Besides it being inappropriate for me to visit, it was also no longer possible to acquire a visa, at least for the time being.
Hm. Okay. Stuck in Georgia. What now?
Ever since I’ve read 🔗📺The Palestine Laboratory (links to my video) by our comrade Antony Lowenstein, the Israeli occupation of Palestine has gained another sinister and depressing quality for me: the fact that there, on Palestinians, new tools of mobility control are tested out. The tools that make borders possible, because they police who goes in and out. Those gates that scan your face at airports? Probably 🔗📰tested on Palestinians in the West Bank, before being rolled out to other places across the world.
This was the reason that I threw my plans around, and would backtrack through Türkiye, Iraq, Syria, Jordan and from there try and access the Occupied Territories. I explain my thinking in the video on the right which I recorded a week before leaving!
It took some weeks to prepare, but this summer was also a time of temporary connections: Nicki (Australian), Daphne (American), Ami (Kazakh), Vins (Ukrainian). I thought hostel culture is strange, alienating and shallow, but with these people I somehow managed my way through it. Hostel/travel culture truly deserves an essay of its own, but not here, not now. I’m sure you, reader, have many stories too.
Vins, the young Ukrainian woman traveling as cheap as she could, had a paid photoshoot with me! I figured I could use some photos to use for… I don't know, various purposes. You’ve probably seen these somewhere if you’re active on social media, they made quite the rounds (somehow, the post announcing I’d hitch-bike to Palestine almost got 100.000 likes with these photos?) Anyway, check 🔗her profile out!
🍉 my attempt to spread the gospel that, yes, we can actually resist
the Geef Tegengas manifesto
You see, if you’ve caught on to, well, my essence, it is that I follow the tradition where everything is political. I think I was growing a bit frustrated at the sentiment online, where we looked at the ethnic cleansing campaign in Gaza - and in a less accelerated fashion the one in the West Bank - and threw up our hands in the air saying “God, there's so much violence, there’s nothing we can do!” I think this is a problematic attitude and one that I think we should all try very hard to change.
Here, I point you to the breathtaking manifesto of Dutch action group 🔗Geef Tegengas. What I like so much about their analysis which you can read on the right, is that they point to very real and material places that facilitate the subjugation of our earth that we can block: canalized rivers, XXL warehouses, megaports, highways, and the like. The uniforms, stun grenades, bullets and armored vehicles that settlers in the West Bank use, have to appear from somewhere, and that place is these seemingly neutral “logistics hubs” such as the ones in Rotterdam, the Betuwe cargo train line, or the Ruhr area in Germany. d
Why is this relevant? Well, my plan was to make daily videos while I was cycling and hitchhiking my way to Palestine and discuss the different ways to show solidarity with Palestinians. Both highlighting organizations on-the-ground in Palestine, such as the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), UAWC or Faz3a, but also talk about resistance movements in The Netherlands, Germany and other places that facilitate the ongoing colonization of Palestinian lands. I was going there to do a 2-month shift with ISM, but truth be told: there’s only so much you can do as a “solidarity activist”. The times where people with European passports showing up to witness the settler violence and having a deterring effect 🔗seem to be gone (links to an Instagram video by solidarity activist Andrey).
and so, the 3000km+ journey began.
For your viewing pleasure, I’ve compiled all the different daily vlogs into one, long video. If you watch it, you get a sense of what I tried to do! My shift with ISM started at a certain date, which explains my rush. I didn't really expect it to go this smoothly, but apparently hitchhiking with a bike is more doable than we might think.
Hmm. Yeah. What more is there to say apart from what I said at the very end of that video? The gratefulness for the support I received from the community online, the fact that we raised more than 25.000 euros by that point. But also, looking back, I see a deeply exhausted soul (and one with a concussion, though he didn't know it yet). I’ll leave you off there.
