5 months pregnant

After I had left Hachshara, they invited me on to their week long trip south, ending in Eilat. Since apparently this is where all of our money for the year went, I decided to join. It was a pretty fantastic tiyul.

Instead of spending money on a bus, we took what we had for the year affectionately called the "hachmobile." This van, which saw almost all of its brothers and sisters of the same make and model painted with rainbows in the sixties and seventies, while transporting hippies throughout Europe and Asia had through some miracle of nature managed to survive until the late nineties. It was the only van the kibbutz had that would fit around thirty people in it. There's normal seats in the front, that will hold ten people, and then in the back are two long benches that run the length of the van.

Between the two benches is a floor, roughly 15' by 6'. The money that we saved by not getting a bus was spent on going to some side trips on the way, and the mountain of food that sat between the two benches.

We brought too much food. It got to the point where on one of the side trips we discovered that the meat would not last much longer, so we gave around twenty pounds of Tirat Tzvi steaks to some Bedouins. Tirat Tzvi is the most expensive meat in Israel.

Apparently, this is normal for kibbutzniks. No, not having food that costs over ten dollars a pound, but just having an overwhelming amount of food in general. But there was one other thing that we found insane about the kibbutzniks, and remember this is after we'd spent over four months working with/for them.

We had to bring kibbutzniks to watch us. One of them happened to be five months pregnant. OK, if you're five months pregnant, it's questionable whether you should spend eight hours a day in an air conditionless van, through a desert, with twenty loud teenagers. Be that as it may, it's one thing to listen to Bedouins and other speakers who had come to talk to us, or go relax or shopping in Eilat. Maybe you could take walks on the beach, go swimming in the Dead Sea, or maybe even snorkeling in Yam Kineret. All of which, she, and the rest of us, did. I think the line was crossed and ignored though, when she followed us through the grueling hikes, the mountain climbing, and the repelling down the mountains, all of which we took through the Negev Desert.

It kills a great deal of the pride of accomplishment from these things when you see a lady halfway through her second trimester doing the same things, at the same time, better than you.

Her husband was not on the trip, but he knew exactly what we'd be doing. I never saw any of the other kibbutzniks tell her to take it to easy. Granted, I think she already had seven kids (normal for kibbutzniks), so maybe she knew what she was doing. This did not take away from the awkwardness of a situation where somebody in a position that makes us consider them more fragile or even disabled, doing things that we were sure a woman in her condition should not be doing.

Maybe this is the kibbutz form of abortion. On the other hand, maybe this is done to make the fetuses, and then the children, stronger. Maybe. It's still odd to see the clearly pregnant woman stoically doing physically strenuous activities for fun.

I think the most ironic thing about this though, though I realize, as a man, I am quite aware that I cannot even imagine the pain involved in this, and it's probably more complicated than I'm making it, not to mention I suppose that it's none of my business, etc. Anyway...why is it that kibbutzniks will do these strenuous things while pregnant, but none will try Lamaze?

Get me outa here!!!

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Michael Kadish

"Whenever I hear the word culture, I reach for my revolver." -- Shlageter, by Hanns Johst. Falsely attributed to Hermann Goering

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