Existential Crisis

In theory, I'll be working with 8, maybe 9, Bedouin women's groups.  At this point, I've met with 5 of the organizations.  Each meeting goes something like this...

Amny, my colleague from Shatil, and I arrive at a meeting with a representative of the organization.
The representative sees Amny and her eyes light up with recognition.
Then the representative sees me and her eyes say, "What's he doing here?" They wouldn't actually express that out loud, so I could be projecting because...
Once I see the look in their eyes, I briefly panic and think to myself "What am I doing here?"

Turns out there aren't a lot of American men hanging out in the Bedouin women's groups in the Negev. 

My lack of fluency in the language, culture, and politics of the region has definitely created bouts of insecurity and some degree of an existential crisis in the early stages of this project.

Turns out I'm not the only one wrestling with those issues.

"What exactly is a Bedouin?" is a question I've asked several folks.  I did a bit of reading about the Bedouin before arriving, but I still couldn't easily define them. 
The first couple of folks I asked were non-Bedouin and they had a difficult time answering it. 
They could tell what they're not:  Bedouins have "old" customs and traditions, but they are not defined by adherence to a single set of traditional religious principles, like the Quakers.
They could tell me what they used to be:  Nomads.  Herders who wandered the desert.
They invoked the concept "culture".  Bedouins share a common culture, but they couldn't really describe the culture, so it wasn't of much help.

Today I attended a workshop led by The Right Question Project for some of the representatives of the women's groups.  During one of the breaks I posed my question to one of the Bedouin women.  Surprisingly, her responses were similar to the others I'd gotten.
Bedouins were nomadic herders that have become sedentary for a variety of reasons.
Bedouins don't share a common religion.
Bedouins do share common traditions: some healthy, like being extraordinarily hospitable; some unhealthy, which I'll categorize in general terms as denying women some of their basic human rights.

What I gathered from our brief conversation is that the Bedouin have not been able to clearly define themselves as a group since losing their ability to be nomadic herders of the desert.

Our independent existential crises give me some solace.  They allow me to reframe my initial separate questions from "What is he doing here?" and "What am I doing here?" into one shared question: "What are we doing here?"  That's a question that implies unity and co-creation.  And it's one I look forward to answering together for the next 9 weeks.

Here is a picture taken at today's training of some of the women I'll be answering it with.