I Came to Help Build a Country. I’m Still Coming Back

Initially I was working with the irrigation team on kibbutz Elot. We started work before sunrise six days a week. Since I was young, fit and small, they had me running in the fields to make sure the sprinklers were upright and then to check the drip line irrigation holes were open. That water for irrigation was mixed with sewage water. Everyone could smell us coming into the dining room for meals.

The first time I came to Israel was in 1975. I flew into Tel Aviv and took a bus to Jerusalem. There I stayed in a hostel and met an Australian woman, Jackie from Perth, who talked about volunteering on a kibbutz. She said they needed workers especially in the southern kibbutzim.

It was just two years after the 1973 war and the Sinai was part of Israel, gained during the 1967 Six-Day War with Egypt. We were keen to help build the “new country” of Israel.

Jackie and I traveled together and were welcomed onto kibbutz Elot. We were assigned a room in the makeshift volunteer quarters. They were made of wood with corrugated iron roofs. No air conditioning and no running water. In those days our rooms were across from the cowshed. We needed to walk up to the shower, toilet block, and the other communal facilities of this young kibbutz. But we didn’t mind.

There were about a dozen other volunteers from different countries who lived and worked with us. English was the bridge language we spoke together while we slowly started learning Hebrew.

Volunteer quarters on Kibbutz Elot in the 1970s

Eventually I was rotated to other work teams in different locations. Since my Hebrew was improving, I was also made the “Volunteers Work Captain” reporting to the kibbutz work captain. I enjoyed living and working on kibbutz Elot, going on tiyuls in the desert, learning Israeli folk dances and songs, and going for camel rides led by Bedouins.

It was also a time when tennis was being promoted throughout Israel and Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin played on the new tennis courts of kibbutz Elot. He was an excellent tennis player. We had to watch from afar, but it is a memory that is still clear in my mind.

After a few months, the kibbutz asked if I would be interested in attending a course in Eilat. It was part of Hebrew University during those years. I studied at the H. Steinitz Marine Biology Laboratory after work. They conducted lectures in English and Hebrew. I was put in charge of an experimental crop of mangoes on kibbutz Elot.

As the summer of 1976 approached, I was asked if I wanted to join the ulpan on kibbutz Sdot Yam. The summer of 1976 was an Olympic year and Sdot Yam’s sailing team had qualified. One of my Finnish roommates there, Lena Kalliomaki, had a brother Antti qualify in the pole vault. He won the silver medal. It was an exciting time during the weeks of the Olympic games when we would all gather to watch the one TV in the Moadon.

After I left Israel in 1976, I wasn’t able to return for many years, but in 2005 I was invited to a reunion of volunteers and thereafter did clinical rotations for my training in Traditional Chinese Medicine at clinics and hospitals in Israel. As it turned out, I trained and worked on kibbutz Sdot Yam again.

In 2009 with Master Li Junfeng, his assistant Elena (originally from the Philippines and then Australia) and a group of Israelis; I participated in a Shen Zhen qigong teacher training on kibbutz Sdot Yam.

With Master Li Junfeng in Israel 2009-Photo by Elena Villacorta-Cortez

It was providential that I returned to the same kibbutz decades later. I wasn’t working in the communal dining room or nefting (desuckering with gasoline) in the banana fields this time, but breathing and moving in specific forms with Israelis and a few Americans, in the now expanded kibbutz Sdot Yam.

On kibbutz Sdot Yam, Israel with Elena Villacorta-Cortez in 2009

Since 2008, I’ve been a Specialist for the US State Department and the Center for Intercultural Education and Development working with the Education and Cultural Affairs Department as well as with Public Diplomacy and with Public Affairs Officers in a number of countries.

In 2018, I was selected for a special project in education in advance of the US Embassy move from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. In conjunction with an organization called “Pathways,” we trained teachers and students in negotiation skills. I traveled to all different sectors of Israel and visited schools in the public system and those with special character including Palestinian schools, religious schools, Druze schools and kibbutz schools. We consulted with Ministry of Education administrators and policy makers. I was also tasked for monitoring and evaluating the program.

Author with some of the teachers, Pathways colleagues, and US embassy PAO in Tel Aviv, 2018

I have returned seven times to work or volunteer in Israel since 2005, often while working in conflict zones including: Iraq, Afghanistan, Armenia and Ukraine as well as from Saudi Arabia and the USA.

In March of 2024, after October 7^th, I flew from Texas to Israel with a group, to briefly volunteer and support kibbutzim near Gaza and in the Golan. I was able visit longtime friends and listen to their experiences. I was taken to the Nova site, Hostage Square and to memorial sites on kibbutzim affected.

Like millions of others, I was deeply anguished and also angry that this could have happened, and that the response to Israelis and especially to Jews after these horrific attacks, was so appalling.

I continue, as a Catholic with Jewish ancestry and Jewish family members, to counter the monstrous narratives I read, watch and hear on media platforms about Israel and Israelis. On a personal level, I try to speak to those who only know about Israelis and Israel from those media platforms, and who have never been to Israel.

In addition, I write and speak about the dangers of radical Islam, especially for females. I do so from firsthand experience living in working in over 10 Islamic countries with sharia law.

This year I am honored to be invited to work on a book for Israeli (and possibly other) educators, and to speak and conduct workshops at Hebrew University Jerusalem during the week of November 15-19, 2026.

Having lived and worked in the education and health sectors in 21 countries, my personal observation and experience is that Israel leads the world in both health and education, as well as in many other fields. Israel is a true treasure for the global community and needs to be safeguarded and supported.

I feel it is a full circle for me. A continuing spiral of work, friendship, respect and love for Israel, and the many Israelis I have known over the 50 years of contact. I write about these and other experiences in my newly released memoir, “Traveler Off the X” by Jo Patti Munisteri-available on Amazon.

I am grateful I’m able to return and share what I have learned from those who have taught and continue to teach me over time.  Am Yisrael Chai.