Next stop was in another part of Gaza City, where ANERA renovated the sewage network. Before, a school and neighboring streets where flooded with sewage, spreading bad smell and diseases. The janitor of the school told us how he even had to make holes in the walls in some classrooms to try to get the stinking sewage out.

I took photos of Ibrahim the janitor and some children.

 

Then we went around the corner to a little dusty gravel street where a whole hamula (extended family) of 500 persons were living. Some of the men sat on the small stairs up to their houses, enjoying a cigarette or a glass of tea in the shade. Children played everywhere. They gave us a warm welcome and offered us sweet tea spiced with sage.

 

And they explained how they now have regained their streets and their primitive, but nonetheless priceless, porches where they spend so many hours. Before, the street was awash with sewage water, preventing them from sitting outside. Two children nearly drowned when they fell down in open wells, made invisible by the sewage water. Now, there are no open wells, no stinking sewage. Only shade and playing children.