Refugee Camp alchemy

Growing up in the Shuafat refugee camp in Jerusalem is growing without understanding the language of those who live on the other side of a huge gray wall. It is walking along narrow streets on the walls of which are glued posters of martyrs who are sometimes your friends. Shuafat is the only refugee camp in the city of Jerusalem. Most residents have blue IDs that allow them to work in Israel on the other side of the wall through a checkpoint but do not allow them to vote. This possibility of going to work on the other side is causing many Palestinians to pour in and apartment blocks are sprouting up like mushrooms without a license and in chaotic conditions where safety standards are set aside. For fifteen years, drugs of all kinds have appeared in the camp, followed closely by weapons. Regular settlings of scores are causing casualties and Israeli authorities seem to ignore this crimes. The Palestinian Authority does not have jurisdiction in this area but the Municipality of Jerusalem does not do its job either: the garbage collection is not done and the inhabitants are obliged to burn their garbage on site. At the corner of an alley, a man of a certain age opens the sewage pipe in front of his house. Electricity cuts are frequent and access to drinking water is not systematic. This refugee camp was established in 1965 by the Jordanian authorities and the United Nations to house Palestinians from the Old City of Jerusalem. They were 20,000 at the start and it is estimated today that between 60 and 80 000 people live in this area of lawlessness considered by the Israeli authorities as a «terrorist pool». Almost daily clashes take place: assault rifles and tear gas against fronds and Molotov cocktails. According to ACRI (Association for Civil Rights in Israel) more than 80% of children live below the poverty line in this camp. In a small room in the Palestinian Child Center of Shuafat refugee camp, twenty-year-old rapper Mohammed Hamouda is sitting in front of a rudimentary computer and mixing sounds. For him, «outside, it’s the jungle. To survive, you have to fight, it’s the culture of violence. Even at age 7 or 8, you have to show that you are not afraid.» Hamouda learned English through YouTube and that’s how he discovered hip-hop culture. In his neighborhood, it is the identification with the Afro-American culture of ghettos that has allowed the development of a new form of expression. The main activity of Hamouda is to teach rap to a dozen teenagers in the camp. They come several times a week to write their lyrics, sing them and record them. «I try to explain to them that creativity is more important than violence. At first they only had that in mind. We talk a lot about their feelings. Little by little the lyrics of their songs have changed. Now they talk about frienship and more positive things.»

Thanks to Kenneth Krushel