My Kibbutz Experience - Part 2

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My Kibbutz Experience - Part 2
"Our social life in my kibbutz revolved around the 'Dining Room' and other interesting places..."

Somehow, just like in many homes all over the world, the Kibbutz family life and social life revolve around the 'dining room', where families gather to eat and talk about the happenings of the day and many other things.

At least in my case, that's the way it was back home where I grew up in Mexico, although not in the main dining room, which was only used for special occasions, but in the smaller dining area/breakfast table by the kitchen. That was the place where we'd eat all our meals, did our homework, talk about our day and, were told what chores to do and also... where we were told off when not behaving...that was mom's domain!

The 'communal dining room' in my kibbutz was a similar thing...
Apart from having our meals there, our jobs were assigned there, and working rosters and any other announcements were placed on a noticeboard at the entrance. It was the place where we could meet all the members and celebrate whatever festivities were taking place...
It was a massive room (see picture above) that could house about 300 seated people to have a meal at one time.

I was assigned several jobs, right there!..
After working in the cotton fields I went to work in the fish-ponds, catching fish at 3 o'clock in the morning in the freezing water! Not necessarily 'my cup of tea', I'd say...I also did about 3 days in the night-shift, from 10 pm to 6 am at the fibre-glass factory (most boring job ever!) and then I spent most of the rest of my working time in the chicken-house, gathering thousands of eggs daily and putting them up in cartons!...
They simply put me there because the manager of the chicken-house was Argentinian and needed someone who spoke Spanish...THAT'S ME! I can help, I said...
Julio, was his name, (top right picture) an interesting fellow, who rode his pushbike to work and who gave us beer for our coffee break...Cool guy! ... most of the jobs were something I had never imagined I'd ever do in my life​...

However...Life in the kibbutz was more than just work...

We also had some social activities after working hours...
As volunteers, we had our own 'hang-outs'.
One of the Volunteers' houses was used as our 'common room' where we could go to after work and 'watch a bit of telly while having a cuppa', (learned to say that there from my English friends).
We'd only turned the TV on if there was something in English and cool to watch, like "Fawlty Towers' …that program was my introduction to 'English sense of humour.'

There was also a "record player' so we could play some of the vinyl records that were there... (yup, vinyl LP records, not even CDs and no internet or Netflix back then).

I remember clearly one of the girls' favourite songs was one by Eric Clapton 'Let it grow'...
At first, I was taken aback a bit when I saw the girls singing along...and dancing and swaying to the tune...but after a couple of times of seeing that...I was singing along too!!... "Let it grow, let it grow, let it blossom, let it flow..."(music clip below)

We also had a sort of disco/nightclub inside our kibbutz...it was inside a 'bomb shelter'!
Yup, a BOMB SHELTER!
There were several bomb shelters scattered all over the living grounds of the kibbutz in case of an attack...most of them were kept clean, prepared for any incident, and... closed!

We, the volunteers, had one to ourselves, to party in!
Yes! Every Friday night, after 'Shabbat Dinner' we all went home for a bit, and soon after that we'd head down to the 'bomb shelter'...
I remember the first time they told me about it, I thought they were kidding...
A "bomb shelter"? I said...Really? what for? ...and they looked up at the sky...

It was a spacious room a few meters underground, there was a narrow entrance, above ground that led you down the stairs, it was a very dark room with colour lights like in a disco/nightclub....it was about 70 square meters (a rough guess, about 7mt by 10mt)…there were some chairs and a couple of old sofas by the walls and a couple of small tables and... there was a tiny room, I guess what may have been at some stage a toilet, it was used as a DJ room, they had a record player and some other music equipment in there.

There were a couple of large loudspeakers at each end of the room and the sound wasn't bad at all.

There was usually a young 'kibbutznik' (a kibbutz member) in charge of the place, who was also the DJ and he played the records we'd request or what he felt like.

It wasn't disco music at all but... we'd dance to music by Led Zeppelin, Janice Joplin, Dire Straits, Bob Marley, and some others. I had never thought it was possible to dance to some of that music, especially Led Zeppelin but... I recall clearly that we'd all go nuts and danced like crazy when they played 'Black Dog' by Led Zeppelin...that was really something! (music clip below).
We'd all bring down a few beers and danced and talked till late at night...we had Saturday off...

I was also introduced there to the unfamiliar concept of 'dancing by yourself'!

When I was a teenager in Mexico, prior to my trip, I was sold on the idea that in order to dance you'd need a girl to dance with, and if you didn't get a girl to dance with you were not to dance at all! You'd just sit or stand there watching others dance...
I even remember the embarrassing moments of asking girls to dance, only to be rejected by a mere "not now thank you" or "maybe later"...

Well, in my kibbutz I learned from my European friends, that if you heard a tune that resonated with you …you just got up and danced no matter what, and ... everybody did exactly that!
So liberating and it felt so right! Then others would join you and, all of a sudden, there were a few more people dancing all over the place, jumping and making all kinds of unorthodox movements which they called dancing...
I'm sure I'd never seen that before in my life and at first, I thought....'Bunch of weirdos'! ...
But then, before I knew it, I was doing exactly the same and it felt so good... there goes the saying...
"Dance like nobody is watching..."

Every Friday night, was somehow different and we'd sometimes come out of the shelter to find my roommate Arthur, out there sitting on the grass, with some people singing along to the tunes he was playing on his guitar (he wasn't much of a dancer)…so, we'd go along and join them and start singing with them, or in my case 'sort of singing', as I barely knew any song, let alone the lyrics! 

Things were changing in me...
I was beginning to understand that paradigms can be broken...like the one of 'not being able to dance without a girl'....
Breaking that paradigm meant much more than just that...
I was beginning to understand that there was a different world out there...outside of the social system I grew up in...and that there would be a lot of paradigms that were about to be broken in my life's journey...

I was beginning to realize that this adventure was much more than just a trip...
It was the beginning of an entire journey that was to transform my entire life...and, I understood that many more unplanned experiences were just ahead...

While I was in Israel, I did not only stay in my kibbutz, I also visited some unreal and beautiful historical places...more about this on my next story...

In the meantime...
​Play the "black dog" song below and... 
"Dance like nobody is watching"!
"Hey hey, mama said the way you move...Gonna make you sweat, gonna make you groove"

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