The desert surprises me, particularly the Negev. You find so many things that you would not expect to see here. Who would have known that people drive out to the middle of the desert for fresh farm-raised tilapia or goat’s cheese? When we stayed for a week in a desert farming community, we saw red-ripe tomatoes (yum!), crispy bell peppers (mmmm!), and beautiful flowers being grown out there. The Cambodian agricultural students there told me, “It is amazing the skill they have to make things grow out of the desert, in our country, we just defecate on the ground and something grows, yet we haven’t really learned to fully take advantage of even that.”
A few days ago, we had another unexpectedly pleasant time in the desert. On the way to Sede Boker (which, until this trip, I had incorrectly heard and thought of as “Stable Care”), our friends took us to a kibbutz where they raised goats for cheese and milk. The kibbutz even gave out samples for us to enjoy! My kids especially liked watching the goats being milked. I had expected that they would be milked by hand, but instead, they were all hooked up to a milking machine like the ones used for dairy cows—a real-life Mister Rogers Neighborhood experience.
At Sede Boker, we walked around the garden where David Ben-Gurion is buried next to his wife, Paula. Our kids had a wonderful time walking and playing with each other there. It was a beautiful place to be, quite shaded and cool and full of lush, green things growing out of rock. On our class hike when we first arrived, I remembered looking up from the valley of Wadi Chaverim at night and seeing the lighted garden and wanting to visit, so it was good to have the chance. It is a very fitting resting place for Ben-Gurion, a visionary leader who looked beyond the desolation and saw its potential, something that is becoming more and more a reality today.
After our walk, our kids played at the playground (I love it how there’s one of these everywhere!). Then we finished the evening with a dinner and conversation between friends. Sometimes it astounds me, especially when I take time to think about it, of all the momentous events that have taken place here. This desert is where Abraham raised sheep and received divine promises, where Elijah sought refuge in a cave and heard the Whisper, where some of the last great cavalry battles took place in the Sinai-Palestine campaign against the Turks, where David Ben-Gurion kept a home and lived and worked, and where some of the best medical students the world has ever seen are being trained. When I think of all these things, I feel blessed to be here in the Negev desert with family and friends. - Sakal Kiv, blogger of the month
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