The Dam

So, I'm on my way. Teaching qualification in one hand and my thumb stuck out of the other... Well, OK, I took the coach to the Netherlands and have been chilling here with my good friend, checking out the flower markets, going to a couple of talks, I even helped teach my first lesson to some Dutch children. It would have been nerve racking but it was in such a chilled out school, based on Dalton with a splash of Montesoury to it. IT WAS AMAZING. What a good school, a little primary with its own gym teacher doing the rings judo and vaulting all at once, children joining in with lessons when they want to but mainly studying voluntarily, no bullying in the playground, smiles allround. And this was a state school. I just kept asking myself; "why didn't I grow up in a school like this? Why don't we all do something more like this? How has Britain's education system become so pants?" Apparently if you have a group of 40 interested families living in proximity they will get enough funding to collectively educate their children with state funds, or start a school of their own.

It has been sunny loveliness since I've been here, and I spent a day in the tropical museum - which pretty much documents the main cultures of each continent with a special vodou exhibition (now spelt vodoo) with some real human skulls, which is always fun - reminded me of medical school and the mostly compassionate sanitised and evidence based modern day shamen that use skulls there. Also had a quick look around the Van Gogh gallery - not such a pretty name when you pronounce it in Dutch, the Japanese stuff was cool.

This is the last stop before I charge down to Jerusalem hopefully for the 5th of April or something. I was thinking about hanging around for the G20 and Climate Camp and the Put People First march in London, which will be amazing. The gentleman with which I was supposed to be hitching with to Palestine has been held up until then, but I just want to get there now - it's been too long and the more time I've got there the better I'll know what's going on etc.

So the plan is leave Amsterdam around the 21st, then hitch down through France and Italy to Naples where I'll catch the boat to Egypt then shimmy up to Jerusalem. I am tempted to go through Germany as well... Hmmm... Lotsh of exshiting poshibilitiesh (Dutch accents are lovely).

Amsterdam has treated me so so well, I've been to a little party on a big boat (where you can live in little cabins like an apartment block - housing is in short supply here so you see containters with windows in and many many house boats along the canals) two people have cooked me up some vegan pastry things, a vegan pie... mmmm. Ok Tom, focus. So, I'm off to see a trial at the Hague of Lukunda of the Lord's Resistance Army in the Eastern side of the Democratic Republic of Congo - this was thought to have been a paramilitary wing of the Tutsi government in Rwanda taking revenge for the Hutu massacre in the Genocide in the '90s on the Hutus that fled the country for the Congo accross the border. But the Rwandan Government had a large hand in turning him in after tacitly not condeming what he was doing for a considerable time. He used a militia whose front line was mainly comprised of co-erced and manipulated child soldiers. I don't know how many of them are still fighting looting and raping on his behalf at the moment. The trial is ongoing for about a week or so - so I'm not sure how good it will be. I'm a bit aprehensive of it having a bit of a public execution feel, but I'm going mainly to find out what he did rather than boo and hiss.

OK, so, I'll put another post up in a few weeks.