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Every day, 49-year-old Samih Mesad travels from the Palestinian village of Jalama, north of Jenin, to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) school and back, desperately trying to think of answers to his pupils’ questions, which usually revolve around why they are living in a refugee camp and what life was like in their towns and villages before 1948. Mesad has been working in UNRWA schools for twenty-four years. In 1995, the Palestinian Authority took over an education sector in ruins: “Some buildings have actually collapsed and others threaten to do so,” comments Mesad. “Going to school, particularly in villages, is extremely hazardous.” Conditions for Samih Mesad and his pupils in the Jenin refugee camp include overcrowding, antiquated equipment and a lack of open play areas In the Jenin camp in the West Bank, where 12,000 Palestinian refugees live, frustration reigns due to the lack of progress in the peace process and the hope the refugees had pinned on it to improve their economic situation. Housing in the camp has the appearance of a shanty-town. Recently, the inhabitants were gripped by a thirty-day epidemic after waste water from the sanitation works leaked into the antiquated drinking-water system. 
Eleven hundred pupils attend the three UNRWA primary schools in the camp. They share twenty drinking-water taps and toilets. According to Mesad, overcrowding - “the average number of pupils per class is between 45 and 50” - antiquated equipment, a lack of open play areas and recreational facilities are the norm. Exposure to conflict, Mesad says, means his young students always seem to be interested in violent games. The image of the armed revolutionary has become a model for them. “I have gradually overcome these problems by involving the pupils in organized, communal games, treating them with friendship and compassion and concentrating on non-curricular teaching in order to change the way they think”. Unemployment makes the general outlook uncertain for Mesad’s pupils, many of whom, until recently, left school at the age of 10 or 11. “They constantly question the benefits of an education that is unable to provide even university graduates with a job,” he remarks. “I have listened to heated arguments amongst the children, in which they express this negative attitude.” But Mesad feels a great pride in those who manage to complete their education. “The feeling that I am helping to build my society and the respect with which I am treated by my pupils who graduate from university and embark on working life are enough for me.” The combination of a Palestinian pay scale with an Israeli cost of living means Mesad finds it hard to make ends meet. He believes a fair wages policy should be employed. “I would also like to see computers more widely used to open up new horizons for teachers and pupils, and budgets established to develop laboratories and establish libraries.” |
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cyberschoolbus@un.org
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