March 20 | Libraries used to hand out calendars annually to institutions around Gaza. This year, though, there is no new printing happening and so we no longer receive this gift that we had come to rely on.

Since the closure of the crossings into Gaza, our office has had a chronic shortage of office supplies – stationary is out of stock, ink is very hard to find – and we have to wait for visitors to carry things in with them when they come see us.

Last week, the head of all of ANERA’s Middle East programs came to visit. He had to carry a suitcase filled with ink cartridges for our fax and printer, a laptop for our in-kind program, and other miscellaneous things that we can’t get here.

When the electricity goes out we turn on our generator, which needs gas to run. Because there is such a terrible lack of fuel, we ration its use by operating the generator for only four hours at a time, giving it a rest for the remaining half of the workday. When things are good, the regular electricity service switches on to bridge that time.

I guess the upside of this fuel problem is we don’t have any more traffic jams in Gaza, even during ‘rush hour’!

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