We started jobs on Sunday, February 12. I got the petting zoo job with Arielle and Jake!! The thing about the petting zoo, though, is the job was meant to be only Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays (I’ll tell you about Tuesdays below), so for Sunday we went to Yitz’s autoshop. (This whole Sunday thing was later changed to starting at petting zoo and coming to Yitz at 10, then to someone (me!) staying at the petting zoo all day and others going to Yitz after feeding the animals.) Why do they have an autoshop? They know many of the students will not attend college, so they teach them trades to prepare them for work when adults. Yitz was great, very funny, extremely nice, and always impressed at how quickly we finished assignments. He taught us Hebrew and we taught him English. After lunch, he brought us clementines. Most of the day, Arielle and I painted tools to be separated into sets. We also brushed rust and chipping paint off of mysterious objects. We had a lot of fun with this work, but I really just couldn’t wait to get to the petting zoo.
Monday, we started at the petting zoo! Our boss, Akiva, took us around to see all of the animals. He showed us what to feed them, and I held as many as I could. This started with the rats, who are in the room also used for food, tool, and random crap storage. Then we went to the line of cages of parakeets, pigeons and rabbits, a ferret and a cat (Matilda, who we let out), and a chatamon (chatuman? South American coati). Past these cages is one of chickens, more rabbits, and guinea pigs; past that cage is one of doves and pigeons. (We learned the Hebrew for pigeon is ‘doar,’ the word for mail.) After the cages, we fed the ducks, which are in a fenced in section with a pond. There were also chickens, peacocks, and a turkey running around free. We then saw the goats, which actually belong to the yeshiva, but they’re close so we can play with them.
The whole area is run down and dirty. We spent this day completely cleaning and organizing the rat room and cleaning out the rabbit cage- it had been far too long since it was last cleaned. But the real need here is the land- raking and weeding.
While first semester, Tuesday nights we had “Erev Nativ” programming, second semester Tuesday is Yom Nativ (Nativ Day). For our first one, we had a programming workshop, brainstormed goals and ideas for our programs, and were broken up into groups of 3 or 4 to organize and lead a Yom Nativ. My group is with Leah, Aryeh, and Aaron. Originally, it was supposed to be “Religions/Minorities,” but we couldn’t agree on anything different from the “Culture” group; thus, we decided to make a new topic for ourselves. We’ll see how this goes.
On Wednesday, Arielle, Jake, and I started our raking. In one day, we made a huge difference. We’re also working on making a path to all of the cages. Also on Wednesday, we met Harari, who is also sort of our boss. Let’s compare Akiva and Harari so you have an idea of what our job is like.
Time: Neither are with us every day, and if one is, not for long.
Feeding: Harari arguably overfeeds the animals and Akiva arguably underfeeds.
Personality: Akiva is quiet and sweet. Harari is crazy: he lets the chatuman out to run around, he squirted goat milk into Jake’s mouth, and he will hand a chicken to you (me) by the feet.
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Expectations: Neither push us to work hard or timely. If an animal dies, Akiva wants us to bury it; Harari wants us to feed it to the chatuman. Harari wants us to feed the cageless chickens and peacocks; Akiva says they find enough food around the land. With regard to the cages with double doors (so a back door can be closed before the front door is open and birds don’t fly out [which we do not have for the parakeets, and on the day I write this, we lost a parakeet to the door being open too long]), Akiva says to put the padlock on the outer door, and, of course, Harari wants it on the inner door.
Thursday was another day of heavy raking. Akiva was back today, and asked if we could come by Friday morning to feed the animals and just check on the place. I was more than happy too. Though we have no requirement to work on Fridays for Nativ, I really want to be there for the animals. So on Friday, Jake and I went (Arielle was leaving that morning to go away for the weekend, but otherwise she would have come), accompanied by Lucy and Maya because they wanted to see the animals. As soon as we passed the gate, we saw that the turkey had been attacked and killed. Minutes later we saw that two pigeons had also died in their cage, probably due to the wind from the storm the previous night. This was a hard day, a horrible day. In such a short time we had come to feel that these animals were ours. The turkey was especially difficult to handle. He was our only turkey, and in just three days we had learned his personality. It was a bad day. Still, despite this day knowing we will have to deal with more dead animals in the future, I cannot imagine being nearly as happy with any other job on the kfar.
Later this day, Alysa and Dana came to visit from Karmiel. Soon, Shabbat arrived. Most of our Nativ group davened with the Nativ group, but I went to the kfar synagogue to see what services there were like. They were nice services, but nothing special by my perspective. They sang less than my favorite services, but I really liked the tunes they did sing. There were few people there for the amount of space, and only one other woman- Tamar, Benny’s wife, with whom I talked during the dvar Torah.
I spent most of Saturday at Beth Mitah (For the non-Hebrew speakers, this is a common way of making my bed sound like a synagogue. Nativers are also big fans of “The Horizontal Minyan,” “Rodfei Chalomim” [Dream Chasers] “Beth Lishon” [House of Sleeping], and “B’nai Pajamas.”), pretty much just getting up for food and bathroom. My room usually had many people coming in and out to talk, so it’s not like I was being antisocial. It was a good day.
Trivia: What is my normal bedtime at the kfar? Around 10 o’clock. Last night most of us went to Chaifa for bowling in honor of Barry’s birthday, and not wanting to pay for a cab, I took the more time-consuming buses and did not get back to my room until around 11. All of my roommates were asleep and I could barely believe I was awake so late.
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