| An emergency hospital transformedt | A coloured street, a (more) coloured life |

How 8 plain containers were transformed into an emergency hospital.

It took a team of young Belgians and Palestinians one week of hard labour to prepare the premises of the Al Shifaa hospital. UNRWA dropped 8 containers on a fallow ground, which form the basis of the very hospital. In order to transform the plain containers into a hospital, we dragged stones, dug, filled and emptied wheelbarrows until we had a proper bottom layer and could start pouring concrete. Mixing mortar and concrete, pouring it and even building a brick wall; we were truly amazed by the result we accomplished. The finishing of the roof was passed onto real craftsmen but everything was paid with the financial aid we provided them with, even the water pipes, air-conditioning and connection to the state’s electricity grid. On the first of August doctor Tawfiq and his team could finally move into the new facilities. They have proudly sent us the first pictures of the workings in their newly-built hospital. Congratulations to the entire group of volunteers.

A coloured street, a (more) coloured life?!

During our 2008 work camp we accomplished a second, additional project: we painted the house fronts of an entire street. The accomplishment of this special and symbolic project took us about three days. Its symbolic value is priceless as it was the very first street in the camp to which the inhabitants returned. We therefore wanted to add some cheerful colours to this particular street’s façade so as to stimulate the rest of the inhabitants to finally return to their camp and thus help to rebuild it. Ironically, choosing the colours appeared to be rather difficult and time-consuming as it took several hours of discussing and a good night of sleep before finally achieving consensus. But, at the end of the day the result speaks for itself. The inhabitants admired our project and wrote us a truly touching letter of gratitude and even awarded us a special thank-you memorial on one of the street’s fences. As a finishing touch, we made three murals at the entrance of the street. The first one represents the Palestinian figure Handhala, hand in hand with the Belgian ant of “Les Fourmis”, a Belgian Scouts to which Zaki and Wahiba belong. The second mural involves a combination of both Belgian solidarity and the inhabitants’ demand for a fast reconstruction of the old camp and the right to return. The third mural is a representation of Wahiba’s shadow holding a Palestinian flag.