“My sister was the rebel in the family. She smoked, had many tattoos and got pregnant at nineteen. My parents were always afraid that she would be a bad influence. If anything, I felt she was a good influence. She made all the mistakes for me so I knew what not to do. My entire family always had big hopes for me. I was the first who was eligible to pursue an academic career. After high school graduation I wanted to study fashion but because of the admission procedure I had to wait one year. My parents accepted my decision to study fashion but they didn’t allow me to not study for an entire year. To satisfy them I decided to randomly pick a study so I choose law. It was a mistake from the beginning and soon I started to skip classes. I didn’t wanted to disappoint my parents so I didn’t tell them I was spending more time at my job in the post office. After a year I got accepted into the fashion academy. I might never be a lawyer but at least I do something I enjoy.’‘

“I want to become a veterinarian so when Beau gets sick I can cure him. Maybe one day when your doggy gets sick, I can cure him too!”
“Well thank you so much.. but I don’t own a dog..”
“That’s okay, I can cure your other animals as well..”

“The conflict we are dealing with here has more to do with our governments than with the people. Nobody wants war. War is a nightmare to all of us for multiple reasons. When there is peace I have a good income. When there is war there are no tourist, which means I don’t earn anything.”
“How do you deal with that?”
“In Arabic we say: ‘save your white money for the black days.’ So that’s how I handle it.”

– Jerusalem

“I have been in love with her for more than 30 years!”

– Jerusalem

Welcome to Jerusalem where my journey together with Carl and Epiphany from 365docobites starts. This means that for the next two weeks portraits from our journey will be up on Humans of Amsterdam combined with docobites (2-4 minute film portraits.) Combining photography and film is something I always have been very interested in so this was a wonderful opportunity to do so. Feel free to share your feedback. Please remember that the idea of this project is not to make a political statement of any kind or to represent a people or a nation. Our true intention is to simply share the human stories from the people in these areas that we met along the way.

*Also I would like to give out a special shout out to those who got involved by voting or contributing financially to this project.

“As a teenager it wasn’t always easy to combine school and soccer. I was lucky to have Mister Langendijk, my high school mentor who believed I could finish my diploma.”
“What’s the most important lesson Mister Langendijk has taught you?”
“That even though you might be a good player it’s still important to get good grades. He always said: ‘There needs to be a balance. Once you will manage to succeed in school, you’ll succeed on the soccer field’.”