I have been watching, mesmerized, scenes broadcast live from Gaza. First, some days ago, from outside a hospital in Gaza City, and today scenes from a wide road as people streamed by, on donkey carts and mostly on foot, all heading towards the south and hopefully away from the bombardment.
The first impression one gets is that so many people have stayed put. There was no panic, people were not in a rush. Their walk was sedate. Children ran around, as children would do.
People carried few possessions, although the donkey carts carried more stuff. They had miles to walk, in blazing heat and women in those top to bottom dresses plus headscarves.
There is a huge blame game going on, going back to the beginning of time. At the end, it is the people walking south who are suffering. Imagine someone ordering all those who live north of Mosta to go and live in Marsaxlokk and you still have not got the tragedy entirely.
We do not know how all this will end and how many more lives will be lost. We do not know if the hostages will be returned to their families. We do not know the full impact on the minds of the children both the hostages and the orphans.
Beyond moving to the south, these people have no discernible future. The term Gazans is inappropriate for Gaza is not a state. Egypt does not want them. Gaza was already a prison compound holding two million persons. Now they will have to squeeze in a territory half of what Gaza used to be
Hamas, which ruled the territory ever since it was elected years ago without subsequent elections, turned the Gaza area into a sort of North Korea, with a huge subterranean city with machine shops producing rockets, the entire infrastructure on a war footing and an elaborate spider network connections underground.
Bar the very few with international connections, you can’t get out and have to make do with the trek down south to a future that is and remains uncertain.
Good news for the Maltese language
Until quite recently, many of us were sceptical about the future prospects of the Maltese language.
Even in the villages of the South today you can hear children coming back from school speaking to their mothers in English.
When you think about it, this is understandable for today’s schools are so multicultural that children are forced to communicate in English.
This and the bare facts of today’s world, from Maths and Science to mobile phone communication etc and you readily see how English has taken over. It is a rather pidgin sort of English but it’s definitely not Maltese.
So many of us concluded that the days of our language were numbered. Maltese is our most precious birthright, it is what makes us Maltese. If we lose it, we would have lost something essential and priceless.
Yet now there has been a development which should ensure that the language remains the most precious inheritance of our people.
I am referring to one or more websites where people come up with questions about Maltese and other readers come up with answers. I am referring to Kelmet il-Malti but there may be others beside it. Questions like what does this mean? How do you spell this? Which is the right way to write this?
The response is enormous and one can see how many have questions they have always wanted to ask and how many people have answers that would have been eluding many.
I have come to this website quite recently, though it may have been there for long.
One added bonus is that this and similar self-help websites were set up by the people themselves and are run by them. This is no class with a dominating teacher.
The tone is refreshingly civilized and people are generally gentle when it comes to correct mistakes.
Whoever created this deserves our thanks.
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