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How I remember it, with some writer's licence. Photos mostly plagiarised from the net.
I spent my first night in Eilat without a penny in my pocket. Travellers’ cheques and a visa card, but not a penny, nor an agora. And I wasn’t intending to turn the first two into cash. This was a personal challenge. I was going to earn my way. Without a visa or a work permit. I only dimly grasped the legal and moral implications of black market labour.
I’d planned for this. I took two shirts and two pairs of trousers with me to Israel. One shirt was white. One pair of trousers was black. In three months on a kibbutz I had scarcely touched them. I put them on and went looking for a waiter’s job.
It didn’t work. Scruffy trainers, no ironing, poor shaving, little Hebrew, and social ineptitude probably didn’t help. There was no work for me in hostels, bars, or the fairground either.
Never mind. I knew what to do. I’d read "Work your way around the world." I found the Peace Cafe, paid my last three shekels to lock my pack in their bag cage, and checked on the routine for the next morning. Then I headed for the beach. On the way I gave away my last food, most of a loaf of bread, to someone who said he was hungry. It was April, warm enough to sleep on the beach with ease. As I laid out my sleeping bag, I wasn’t the only one there. Jacky and Tomer, Israelis in a tent nearby, invited me to share their barbecue. It was delicious. They spoke little English, but I had enough Hebrew for basic conversation and thanks. My stomach was full and the golden rule was vindicated.
I was back at the Peace Cafe at 6am. The Peace Cafe was a bar run by a surly southern Englishman in the part of Eilat just beyond the backpacker hostels, on the edge of where real people lived. Most of its seating was in the open air. Early in the morning, it was a job centre for backpackers and Arabs. Gather on the kerb outside and one car after another would roll up.
- Rotzeh l’avod? Do you want work?
It was just like the marketplace in the Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard.
You could rush to be the first there, but you had to choose what you would accept. The going rate was six shekels an hour - three dollars, or the price of two felafel sandwiches. It was said that Arabs would work for four shekels. A seasoned backpacker said he now wouldn’t accept less than nine. It was wise to ask the nature of the work and the wages offered before getting in the car. Haggling skills would help but, with plenty of recruits waiting, the advantage was with the employer.
I got in a van driven by Yossi, together with Bill and Jim, two bearded Englishmen maybe in their 40s. We were going to help a family move house. Bill and Jim had done that plenty of times and told me about the pitfalls. It was just as well. Within three quarters of an hour they’d disappeared. I think that was before Yossi and I took the washing machine and the organ down three flights of stairs. In any case they’d told me that washing machines were the heaviest. At least there wasn’t a piano.
Yossi took the van off and came back with Tom, closer to my age and almost my double. Moving into the new flat was a breeze: there was a lift. Tom and I got on well. I couldn’t quite place where in England he was from. It was Sweden.
We worked together on another move and then Yossi took us to a very pink Scotsman’s house for lunch. He gave us cool drinks and topped them up with frozen water bottles. In the desert heat they quickly thawed. This was where he lived; he didn’t go back to Scotland much.
- Why are you living in Eilat?
- Because it rains about four days a year.
Eilat is Israel’s resort town. In Jerusalem we study; in Tel Aviv we party; in Haifa we work. The saying didn’t include Eilat; it didn’t need to. At the southern tip of Israel with Red Sea coral and endless sun, Eilat is where volunteers went after finishing at their kibbutz. Lots of Israelis went too, but I didn’t know so much about that; neither did I about the Arabs seeking work; nor even much about the tourists who flew directly in. As far as I could tell, people went to Eilat for sun, booze, and an easy hippy lifestyle. It was full of young backpackers enjoying, or wasting, their lives, and some who had grown old there. It would be easy to get sucked in. I wasn’t going to let that happen.
I got thirty-three shekels for six hours’ work. That night I brought food to share with Jacky and Tomer.
Click for Part II.
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