A border tour took up most of the day and we found ourselves constantly in a state of mild delusion as we got on and off the bus at various borders. The humid air hitting us like a brick wall as soon as we opened the doors of the bus and stepped down the trecherous stairs onto hot tar roads. We would spend about half an hour sitting uncomfortably on the rocks, or the pavement watching cars drive pat, only vaguely paying attention to the endless stream of historical facts and emotional stories told by our madrichim. I felt my mind drifting many more times than just one as her eyes filled with tars and it became harder and harder for her to form sentences in a language we would understand.
I remember the long walk up a hill I had climbed under very different circumstances just three years earlier with a very different group of Jewish Youth. I saw the huge metal structure of a Dinosaur thing, and remembered fondly a boy who I spent a good few weeks in the hottest part of summer with, and the message he sent me before I left south Africa. Something about Pizza and how he felt in those years. Someone was shouting about Machon and I thought about another boy who I was desperate to avoid, and how all my emotions in one moment could change so drastically, and then if I was suffering from a terrible mental illness. I thought instead of how everyone's feet sounded against the ground.
A large fence stretched as far as I could see, and although we were essentially standing next to the border between two countries, the sound of construction on a new house was drowning out the historical information to back up my previous statement.
I was cold and tired, uninterested in politics.
