The Road to Erez – Mime – מַיִם

Israel in June 1987 was apparently in the grip of a heatwave with temperatures exceeding the seasonal norm and humidity an unbearable 98%, not the best place to go for a stroll lugging your worldly possessions, particularly after a night of no sleep and too much alcohol. We didn’t know it at the time but we were becoming dangerously dehydrated.
In hindsight, the indications were clear although they could and we did attribute them to other factors. We were tired and lethargic, hardly surprising when we had both been awake for two days. We both had headaches which we attributed to the onset of hangovers. We had both decided that in order to make a good first impression we would stop the intake of alcohol, for the time being, and try to appear sober to our new hosts. We had both been thirsty and instead of drinking water we had kept with old habits and drunk several cans of coke. The general dryness of skin and mouth we blamed on the desert air.  We were in fact getting ourselves into a very dangerous situation and had absolutely no idea what to do about it.
The last thing either of us would have thought of at that point or indeed earlier when we were stood in the supermarket would have been to reach for a large bottle of water. Our mindset at that time firmly followed the “fish fuck in it” train of thought. That attitude we quickly learnt could get us killed.
Then from behind us, we heard the growl of a diesel engine. We stopped and placed our bags on the ground as a strange-looking panel truck slowed down and cruised to a stop.
As the driver had approached he had stuck his arm out of the window and banged on the roof of his cab a couple of times.  Strange behaviour? What we had witnessed we later learned, was a secret message in “hitchhiker speak”.
The message the driver was conveying to us as he approached was that his vehicle was full and the only place he could fit us would be on the roof.
But this was the desert and there are certain rules to be followed so instead of speeding past in a cloud of dust the driver pulled to a stop and wound down the window.
He looked us up and down and obviously decided we were in trouble because the next words out of his mouth offered us the solution.
Unfortunately, like so many of his countrymen, of a certain mature age, he only spoke Hebrew, so the sentence, we later learned it was in fact a question, was
“Do you guys want some water?”, in Hebrew.
In amongst the confusing and guttural sounding bundle of noises that came out of his mouth, we were both able to distinguish one word. “Mime”.
Now I cannot speak for Dingo here. I have no idea what went through his mind at that point. Suffice it to say it was clear that as always, we were on the same page in the story because we both looked at each other and then facing each other we raised our hands and started to do the invisible glass wall.
What the driver thought at that point I have no idea and although I stayed on that kibbutz for a very long time I never once came across him again and was therefore unable to ask him. Whether he was simply a visitor from another nearby settlement or just spent the entire length of my stay avoiding me is one of life’s mysteries.  I suppose we should be grateful that he was at least kind enough to wait until I had finished my pushing a rock uphill and Dingo had done his fight with the umbrella on a windy day before he drove off.
We both stopped what we were doing.
“Tough audience.” I said.
“Never really works without the stripy shirt and the white face makeup,” Dingo replied.
So both dissatisfied that our attempts at impersonating the great Marcel Marceau had failed so miserably we collected our bags from the verge and we walked on down the road.
We had not got much further when a second pickup truck pulled up.  A guy wearing aviator shades stuck his head out the window. “Volunteers?” he tried helpfully in English first. We both nodded our heads. “Put bags in the back and get in.” We complied with the instructions.  His English was heavily accented but had a vague American twang to it.  This was something we got used to quickly.  Most Israelis only aural exposure to the English language was from Hollywood movies and American TV programmes so you could hardly fault them if their accent had that vague mid-Atlantic twang that is favoured by crappy radio DJ’s and ageing British rock stars.  We climbed into the cab and settled ourselves among the general detritus that seemed to fill all the kibbutz working vehicles. These ranged from broken bits of irrigation machinery to odd-shaped tools, a short-wave radio that chirped and warbled away and the ever-present water carrier.
Our driver had just helped himself to some water and passed us the square-shaped container.  About a foot square and encased in polystyrene, there was a screw cap on the top and a tap on one side.
“Drink”, our driver urged us. “Here in the desert, you must drink more than you need.”  He nodded with approval as we quickly got the hang of the contraption and managed to take a mouthful each without totally soaking our shirts in the process.
“You must always drink more than you need.” He repeated it like some sacred mantra.
This was not the last time we were to hear this immortal phrase over the next few days and weeks and I must confess we did take the words to heart and over the next two years, we tried our hardest to live up to them.  Of course, our driver was talking about water but we took his words more literally and drank “more than we needed”.

In fact, in hindsight, we probably drank “more than was humanly possible.” But that is getting a little ahead.

Between 1967 and 2000 some 350,000 young people volunteered in Kibbutzim and Moshavim in Israel. I first joined them in 1987 and stayed for a few years. In my time there I met and talked with many volunteers and since returning home I have spoken to many more. In 2017 I marked the 30th Anniversary of my arrival by starting this blog and then as a tribute to all of you, the hard-working volunteers I decided to document some of your stories and the character of Billy Randell was brought to life.
Yeah, sure, there are parts of me in Billy but there is an equal part of all of you who have shared your stories here and on other social media.
The Eilat Trap, A Pocketful of Charm and Khamsin are just the story so far. All available from Amazon as Paperback and E-Book