Back in March, before I got caught up in planning my trip to Egypt and completely lost track of my blog’s former punctuality, my dear English friend and former fellow trainer at Ayn al Basha came back to Jordan after a 6 month leave. As Nicholas and I were catching up, it turns out that he had actually been back “in” Jordan, however briefly, back in December 2009 when I was in America on holiday. He was part of the massive Viva Palestina international relief mission from his hometown of York, bringing supplies to the beleaguered people of the Gaza Strip to mark the official one-year anniversary of Israel’s horrific attacks on the Strip.

I wish I could say that I had been more punctual with this entry, but I wanted to specifically wait until I had permission from Nicholas to post these two Powerpoint files. A few days before I left for Egypt, Nicholas threw a special seminar detailing and describing his journey with the brave women and men journeying from Europe, America, and Turkey into the Occupied Territory. The people of York donated an ambulance, which you can see in several of the slides.

Without further ado, please take the time to download these two Powerpoint files, reproduced here with permission from Nicholas, his fellow travelers and hopefully the creator of the files (Stephen Shroud, judging by the name in the .pptx metadata). This first one is about 20 MB and serves as background information, and the second one is 25 MB and contains maps, excellent photography, and some soundclips from the trip. I only wish that I had some way of also reproducing Nicholas’ mesmerizing way of describing everything that he saw and experienced!

If you want more information on the Gaza Strip, and specifically Viva Palestina, please check out my friend Adriano’s website, The Sitch: Gaza Dispatches. He and used to be fellow college activists together in the Campus Antiwar Network, and he was part of Viva Palestina’s American contingent…way to go!

From the Introductory powerpoint