This is a personal account of a trip to Israel in 1979/80 by two friends who wanted to travel for six months without needing a lot of money. They decided to work on a Kibbutz in Israel which was easy to arrange, £200 secured them a return open air ticket to Israel and they could stay as long as they wanted. They were given work clothes and boots and worked in factories making irrigation pipes. They discovered a new way of seeing the world and things would never be quite the same again.
The European Grand Tour is not a new concept, as it was a traditional trip through Europe that wealthy people took to complete their education from the 17th to the early 19th century. Italy was a significant destination on this tour. However, we had something less cultural and more affordable in mind. If you wanted to travel across Europe in 1979/80, an easy option was to go grape or raspberry picking in France, Switzerland, or Scotland. However, the problem with fruit picking was that it was highly seasonal, lasting only a few weeks. Our plan was to have a trip lasting at least six months. Working a ski season or participating in Camp America was an option, but we ultimately chose to go to a Kibbutz in Israel because it was simple to arrange. We could secure a return open air ticket to Israel for £200, stay as long as we wanted, and it was warm.
The other option we had considered was hitchhiking. We had met a guy in a pub who had done a lot of traveling, and he was quite impressive. He believed that all you needed was the urge to go, and you could hitchhike anywhere and sleep rough in a sheet of polythene, at least during the summer. However, this first trip to a Kibbutz in Israel was going to be much easier than that. Little hitchhiking was required, as work, travel, and accommodation had been pre-arranged. More physically arduous trips would come later, culminating in solo trips to India. Nonetheless, this first trip was the biggest leap from what we were used to, and it made the biggest change to our lives long-term. We discovered a new way of seeing the world, and things would never be quite the same again.
Raising enough money to go
Project 67 a Kibbutz volunteer organisation charged £200 to place you on a kibbutz, this included an open return flight to Tel Aviv. Despite having a full time job as a Bank Clerk, I had no savings. I did have a 1969 BSA Starfire which was sold for conveniently enough £200. Arthur worked the summer as a labourer for the electricity board, mostly based around the Fossway in Byker. The world of manual labour was much a mystery to me as Banking was to him. After labouring Arthur worked on the bar at a club in Battle Hill. His bike was stolen, either from Battle Hill or was it from the sea front? One or the other, in either case it seemed like a major loss at the time, given all the work that had been put into getting it restored. We had both spent many hours with our respective Dads getting these machines roadworthy.
Travelling to Israel for six months seemed an exciting next step after bar work and bank work, a way to see a bit more of the world, to travel for 6 months without needing a lot of money. Anywhere warm would have done, but where else could you go for six months and only need £200.
Life of Brian
December 10th 1979, we left, caught a train from North Shields Railway Station. I like to think that our neighbour in Polden Crescent, Joyce, who retired that year from North Shields Railway Station, sold us the tickets. This was the year before it became the local railway network converted to being the Tyne and Wear Metro. In Newcastle we took an overnight train to London Kings Cross. London was a shock, couldn’t figure out the Underground, decided to walk instead. Baffling to find London car drivers seemingly hell bent on trying to kill any pedestrian stupid enough to try and cross the road. Our view of London as an alien and hostile place did not bode well for the future, in any event it turned out to be more aggressive and unfriendly than any place we were going to encounter on this particular trip. London certainly did not call us.
London Calling by the Clash had just been released, I can remember staring at it in shop windows. I had bought their previous two albums on release day, this time would be different. It didn’t occur to either of us that we should take music with us. In 1979 there was no personal stereos, or Sony Walkmans, no CDs. Anyone planning to carry everything on their back would baulk at the idea of carrying a 2kg cassette player, which probably would consume six batteries in an evening. In the end I would ask my sister to buy the record for me, record a blank tape of it and then sent it out by airmail. Such was the state of music technology at that time.
Our final evening in the UK we spent watching the Life of Brian which was touring to ecstatic reviews. Don’t think it occurred to either of us that the film had any relevance to where we were going. Our geography of the middle east was a bit hazy, we didn’t really know anything about where we were going or what we were doing. Jerusalem was the capital of Israel? That was news to us!
Haute Couture – Kibbutz style
We were met at the airport, by Hedva and her husband in a VW van. A friendly young couple, they talked to us incessantly on the drive back to the Kibbutz. Next day we were given work clothes, blue trousers and shirts and green army jackets, pictured. The more fashion conscious amongst the volunteers would bring army jackets home, there was an abundance of these jackets and they were deemed to be cool. Those with an eye for fashion would compliment the army jacket with an Arab scarf also known as Keffiyeh. The kibbutz didn’t supply ‘Keffiyehs’ so you had to buy your own. For fashionistas only.
Boots were essential in the mud and allocated according to shoe size. We all had the same boots, though it’s noticeable that Lief (pictured) is wearing smart green wellingtons, not standard issue boots. In the UK this would mark him down as a member of the aristocracy, Lief was and is Danish so there must be some more insidious explanation. Denmark as everyone knows has no aristocracy or military to speak of, but they did know how to look smart at work or in front of some beautiful building.
Work Boots
Boots were essential in the mud and allocated according to shoe size. Some days I would leave the room early and in my rush to get to work, pick up the first pair of boots to hand, only later wondering why my feet we’re hurting.
A typical workday would start in semi darkness fumbling for your work boots which you would have cast aside carelessly in a heap the day before. Normally boots were left outside rooms to avoid the encroachment of noxious smells from the previous days work. Heaven forbid anyone would wash them. Boots tended to get left in a jumbled heap, which made finding your own difficult, particularly in poor light whilst nursing a hangover from the night before.
Trying to find your own boots was often considered an ambition too far. Success was finding a left and a right, even better if they were about the right size, too big was fine, too small not ok. An added bonus if they were actually your allocated boots, all allocated boots were the same make which made finding your own even more difficult, it wasn’t that we were lazy or anything.
Accommodation
Rooms, tended to be single sex with two, three or four beds, one in each corner. In the winter we were given paraffin heaters, which in our youthful enthusiasm or ignorance, we would leave burning overnight.
Nine Lives
One night I woke up unable to breathe, the room was full of paraffin fumes, to avoid asphyxiation I dragged the heater out of the room. It may have been someone else, but I like to think it was me. One of my nine lives gone and I hadn’t been there a month. Shortly afterwards I would get run over and later a blade from a Banana tree machete would sever mid strike and narrowly miss me flying through the air. Apart from those three mishaps we couldn’t have been safer.
Making Irrigation Pipes
Factories, specifically ones making irrigation pipes are often not associated with a Kibbutz, but agriculture is increasingly only a small part of the enterprise activities that go on in these communities. The ‘Store Factory’ as it was know was one of the main economic outputs of the Kibbutz. Always something of a surprise, that they would let volunteers loose on Fork Lifts, particularly as we had no experience. London taxis are famed for their ability to execute small turning circles, forklifts are even better at this than taxis. One day while executing one of these rapid and tight turning circles, Arthur neglected to notice that I was no longer sat on the back of the truck, but was actually part of the turning circle.
I registered the fact that a wheel was going over my foot, then I noticed with some amazement that I was being carried at speed to the Kibbutz infirmary in a fireman’s lift. Military training can be a wonderful thing. I have no idea who carried me, the next thing I remember was lying on a bed with people arguing about my foot. Somebody tried to examine it. Shock can do strange things to people, I wouldn’t let anyone near my foot. Then I was given some hefty pain killer and everyone, myself included relaxed.
At the hospital I was taken for X-Rays. Either the hospital elevator was broken or patients were expected to hop between floors. There was a lot of hopping between floors. Eventually a long animated discussion between Hedva the volunteers leader and the doctor, in Hebrew of course. I was expecting plaster and six weeks off work, what else could they have been talking about. In the end Hedva gave me the good news that it was not broken. A tribute to Arthur’s speed of executing that circle and my own steel like bones. My career in irrigation pipes was over.
Pots
Recovery from being run over was swift. Food delivery to the room was intermittent at best, the other guys had a lot going on. To ensure a regular supply of meals I had to limp my own way to the dining room. Within a week I was reporting for active duty once more, grateful to my room mates for the encouragement they had given. Pots were the solution to the problem of how to gainfully employ a limping volunteer. Pots were one of the few jobs that didn’t involve lifting heavy weights, but you did have to stand up all day. My Mum was forever grateful for particular work experience, as it transformed me from someone with no interest in washing up, into a self professed expert. The kitchen was a very communal place to be and I remember being introduced to a woman who had one of the ‘camp’ number tattoos. After 2 weeks in the Kitchen my injured foot was healed enough for me to go back on Bananas and join the real men.
Bananas
The working day started at six and finished at midday, with a break for breakfast. If you were working Bananas you had to be dressed, boots on by 6, a white Subaru Van would come and we’d pile into the back. Bananas was physically quite hard, especially if you were struggling with a hangover, it was easy to trip and fall over while carrying a bunch. Falling over didn’t hurt it was when you tried to correct the fall that you were in danger of putting your back out. We had arrived on the kibbutz in a group of about ten volunteers, mostly Australians. Shane, pictured, really took to Bananas, a vocation for him. Years later we would bump into him in a London tube station, sometimes it’s a small world.
Our volunteer cohort from London consisted mostly of Aussies and Kiwis, rather than Brits. There was one Brit who was trying to get into the police force but just needed something extra for his CV to spice it up a bit. Relations with the Australians and New Zealanders were particularly good and we soon learnt to tell a kiwi accent from an Aussie one. The kiwi’s in particular had taken the english language to new heights. Regularly used phrases included “one hundred percent shite order”, “just going for a shit, shower and a shave”, and that was just the women. Many of them had heard of Newcastle, having passed through the Tyne Tunnel in their combi-van on the way to Edinburgh from London. When we asked our antipodean friends why they came to the UK, the answer was usually ‘culture’. There you have it, the Brits had culture, our place in the world, it was nice to know, even if it was slightly puzzling. Perhaps we just didn’t appreciate where we came from.
More Volunteers
Nick – Australian
Nick was our first room mate, blond haired he looked a bit like a hippy version of the golfer Greg Norman. Nick had smoked too much dope, he was our first room mate, we had never to this point smoked dope or met anyone who had, so his worldview took a bit of getting used to. Like many people fond of weed he could see conspiracies everywhere, but he could also see things that others didn’t notice, things that were actually the case. He was genial, good humoured, softly spoken. He had travelled overland through Afghanistan and had the baggage, mental and physical, to prove it. He used to say the word ‘fuck’ a lot, he would draw it out to two syllables, with the emphasis on the first syllable. He would say ‘fuck’ when other people would say ‘awesome’, He was completely happy dancing with himself, like he wasn’t aware of anyone else. Lebanon was to be his next adventure, shortly before he left, he tried to give me his Afghan coat, but it would only have been a weighty burden. In 1980 Lebanon was not a particularly safe place to visit, everyone who knew of his plans, tried to dissuade him from going, but he was determined. Much to our surprise he returned to the Kibbutz, in one piece, a few weeks later, with wild tales. He had found a prostitute in Beirut and started living with her, seemed unlikely but what did we know. . Aside from being our first room mate , Nick was remarkably thoughtful and interesting to talk to, we were in awe of him. He suggested Plato’s Republic, ‘the most profound book ever written’, well he was right about that.
Andy – Derby
Andy, a joiner from Derby, was 23. At the time we thought he was really old and wondered what he was doing here. Like many kibbutzniks he could grow a full beard in a weekend, this of course made him look older than he actually was. Andy loved to drink and tell jokes, he had an irascible sense of humour, his advice to the volunteer leader on time. “Kitzi if you want to lose 35 pounds of ugly fat why don’t you cut your head off”. I have pictures of Andy looking particularly grim, most of the time though he just made us laugh.
Graham – Blaydon near Newcastle
Graham looked more like a Comanche warrior than a Geordie from Blaydon, long black hair which he kept out of his eyes with a multi-coloured headband. Looking a bit like Rambo, he was a wild character. Strictly speaking Graham was an ex volunteer, he had gone down to Eilat to work, then travelled in the Sinai to Na’ama Bay where he had drunk too much Arak and stayed in the sun too long, he had the burnt look to prove it. We got to know him because he had come back to the Kibbutz and wanted to stay, at least for a while, the Kibbutz could be flexible about letting people come back, particularly if you were a good worker and he was. Graham had an unmistakeable Geordie accent, he refused to believe I was from Newcastle, because I didn’t have the same accent. It was impossible to imagine him working in a call centre or even an office, building site ship yard perhaps. Living as hard as he did he didn’t look like the sort of person who was going to reach old age.
Anthony – from Australia
Anthony was an Australian volunteer, a teacher, very political and despairing for the future of Israel, particularly the young. At least that was the impression he gave on the way to Jerusalem, Christmas Day 1979. Not all volunteers were that concerned about Israeli culture and politics. Anthony was, we had met by chance at the bus stop on the Kibbutz, we were both our way to Jerusalem. He was travelling to Jerusalem for a few days holiday and I tagged along with him, I had no idea how to get there. There was a train, which we took from Hadera all the way to Jerusalem, it was kind of surreal as it went through the Judean Hills and all you could see were shepherds and sheep, it all seemed very biblical. Even though I would be returning to the Kibbutz later that evening, this was a big adventure for me. I went with Anthony as far as his hostel, then he told me he was going to sell his blood, at the hostel, to the Arab proprietor. Did I want to sell mine too? I didn’t, I’d come to Jerusalem on Christmas Day expecting dancing in the streets, or dignified religious processions, if there were any I missed them. I should have been in Bethlehem for Christmas, but I thought Jerusalem would be close enough, it wasn’t I saw a single Christmas bauble hanging from a window and that was it. Without a guide book, wandering around blind, at least I still had eight pints of blood.
Rob – New Zealand
31 was old by volunteer standards, Rob was a striking looking Maori, he wore his age well even though he was just above the official age limit for volunteers. He had been on other Kibbutzim, almost like he was on tour. Rob was friends with two of the Kiwi volunteers who endorsed his good character. He had a gift of talking to people and could be very funny. A lot of Kiwis are landscape Gardners and New Zealanders have their own vocabulary and Rob was no exception, his favourite word and past time was routing. “We did a lot of routing mate and not much else” he would say laughing. It took a while for the penny to drop, ‘routing was not some obscure DIY skill peculiar to New Zealand, it was a basic activity common to just about everyone. The problem was he started ‘routing’ his way through many of the female volunteers. Joy would turn to misery as he made another conquest, once the number of discarded females reached a critical mass then it became time for him to leave. ‘Doing’ a Rob became shorthand for sleeping with lots of people.
Volunteers tended to arrive in batches. There were already a load of Swedish volunteers there when we arrived. In February a group of Dutch volunteers arrived. It was easy to tell the new volunteers because they tended to be pale, it would be a couple of months before they developed a more healthy looking hue. When the Dutch volunteers arrived we initially thought they were all sick, as in not well, turns out they were just lacking in sun.
Most of the Scandinavians had been on the Kibbutz longer than us and many were in relationships. Mystifyingly they seems immune to the charms of the Brits. Rather irritatingly, the Swedes spoke better English than we did. A Swede caricaturing a Brit would launch into a stream of profanities. If Swedes thought Brits had limited vocabularies, they were bolstered in this view by our incessant questions about how to say various swear words in Swedish.
Norwegians seemed rather more reserved and quiet than their Swedish neighbours. There was even an Icelandic guy on the kibbutz, he entered our room triumphantly one day with an enormous ghetto blaster on his shoulder. “It cost nothing” was his favourite refrain.
Mystifyingly Swedish girls seemed to like the younger male Kibbutzniks, who were mostly tanned, bearded and incredibly fit from army training. Male Swedish volunteers, whose first names invariably ended in Björn were characteristically tolerant of this, though prone to lapse into alcohol induced melancholy. Male and female Swedes alike were intensly proud of Abba and were often overcome with emotion when Dancing Queen was played at the Friday night disco. This probably all changed when ‘a-ha’ came along. A bitter irony then that they thought the Brits were uncultured, at least we had a range of pop music to choose from.
Fortunately the Dutch female volunteers were more appreciative of the unique British gift for combining drinking, satire and humour, good job somebody was. One of the male Dutch volunteers used to embellish the ‘i’ in his name with a flower. We thought this was odd, in our minds he should have just added the letter ‘p’ to his name ‘Wim’.
Purim
Purim is an important jewish festival, which we were completely ignorant of. It was we were told an opportunity to perform and party. We didn’t need to be told twice. There were seemingly unlimited supplies of Goldstar beer available which Arthur and Andy, another English volunteer, were quick to ‘commandeer’. Arthur sought to epitomise the English talents for satire, humour and drinking by performing as Jake the Peg with the extra leg. No one except the Brits had any idea who Jake the Peg was, but it was well received. Shane, Australian volunteer, took the opportunity to display his impressive physique and Monica the Swiss passion for Neutrality.
It would be misleading to give the impression that this was the only party we had, in fact they were rife, there always seemed to be a reason to throw one. The trip to Hadera on any workday afternoon would often result in a long convivial drinking session. Friday nights there was usually a choice between traditional folk dancing in the Dining Room or a disco in the Volunteers Bar. Christian, a South American volunteer, was one of the greatest disco dancers I’ve ever seen
The Bomb Shelter
For obvious reasons, Israel has lots of bomb shelters, some of them doubled as volunteers bars, the one pictured was a Gym. It was here that I used to go most afternoons, sometimes with Josh, an American volunteer with an enviable build. One time whilst bench pressing, on my own, I got stuck underneath the barbell, not a good situation. Mostly though I just plugged away and tried to build an enviable physique, listening to cassettes I’d been sent from home.
There was something of a gap in fitness levels between the volunteers, most of whom were aged 18-26 and the Kibbutzniks, especially those of the same age, who had either just finished or were on a break from military service.
We heard hair raising tales at work of the first six weeks of basic training. My initial doubts about these stories evaporated one day when I was witnessed a display of one armed push ups. It’s all technique I thought, strangely though, one I have never managed to master. Feelings of inadequacy were compounded, by the more swarthy look of some male young kibbutzniks who seemed to have no trouble growing a beard over a long weekend. There was a gym in one of the bomb shelters and I could often be found there on quiet afternoons pumping iron, but short of joining the army, there was not way I was going to catch up fitness wise
Communication with home
One of the lifelines we had was letters from home. To get letters you had to write letters, so we spent an unprecedented amount of time writing them, an art sadly lost today. Incoming aerogrammes were distributed in the Dining Room at lunchtime. On a good day you got an aerogramme from home, on a bad day you didn’t, it was that important to keep in touch with home. There were no mobile phones and long distance calling was for emergencies only, thankfully there weren’t too many emergencies and those that there were didn’t require any phone calls.
Cultural Trips
Kibbutzim that accepted volunteers had to organise four trips a year. These were cultural trips used to show you the length and breadth of Israel. Given or initially poor grasp of geography this was something we needed. Imagine arriving home after six months having not seen the Dead Sea or Jerusalem. Inevitably the trips involved us seeing some of the more contested areas of land. Kibbutz volunteer leaders were compelled by law to carry weapons when escorting volunteers. Wandering into an Arab cafe in Old City Jerusalem with two heavily armed guards was not well received, but what could they do? Leave the weapons lying on the bus?
Sinai
The trip included not just Sinai, but Masada, the Dead Sea and Jerusalem. In 1980 Sinai was part of Israel and there were no plans to give it back, the Sinai was a magical place, unspoilt, dramatic mountainous scenery, a few huts made from reeds, a few bedouin, blue coral sea and not a lot else.
Today’s Egyptian Sinai looks more like Torremolinos, a concrete jungle. In 1981 we would hitch-hike through Torremolinos on our way to Morocco and wonder if it could possibly be the same place that James Mitchener wrote about in The Drifters. Just goes to show what 20 years can do to a place.
Independent Travel in Israel
After a few months on the Kibbutz we had built up enough holidays to go on some independent travel of our own. On our way to the Dead Sea we stopped in Jerusalem to buy a sleeping bag from a stall-holder in the old city. During the haggling process I admitted to the Arab stall-holder that I could not read the ‘high quality Israeli Army’ label because it was in Hebrew. This delighted him and I got a great price. The sleeping bag fell apart shortly afterwards.
Pictured in Ein Gedi with Dutch volunteer Karin, picture taken by Finbogi from Iceland. It really was like the league of nations.
There was a Dutch volunteer called Mario who was planning to cycle through Africa. Mario used to tell us blood curdling tales from his six month road trip to South America. One time he got a lift from a truck, a tanker carrying petrol. The driver would only let him ride on the roof, after six hours Mario said his arms were nearly dropping off. Mario left a tape he had made himself of Darkness on the Edge of Town. Music was a precious scarce commodity in those days, it became my favourite album, over the years I’ve been to see Bruce more times than I care to remember.
Most of our ‘mass media’ entertainment came from the Radio, specifically the English language ‘Voice of Peace’. I can remember whole nights spent listening to Michael Jackson interspersed with pleas for a peaceful resolution to the Middle East crisis in the company of a lucky female volunteer. It became the soundtrack to some memorable nights.
Movies
The Kibbutz had a television, in a room where you could write aerogrammes and drink tea, no one ever seemed to watch it. Once a week there would be a movie, played from a projector in the dining room. People sat around eating sunflower seeds, the kind that had to be cracked open before you could eat them. Splitting sunflower seeds for the nutty kernels became the sound track to most of the films. Films on the Kibbutz were often obscure, some were dubbed and with subtitles. If you were lucky they would have english subtitles but other times there would be an original language, a dubbed language and a subtitle language and none of them would be English.
On one occasion there was a trip into Hadera to see the Deer Hunter at a movie theatre. During the infamous ‘Russian Roulette’ scene, I had my eyes shut, the audience however seemed to love it, there were great cheers. I’m still not sure what happened but it wasn’t good.
