Started work on a mural at Ayda refugee camp. Nidal and Shara from Lagee (refugee) centre, seemed very disappointment with my hurried design made in felt tip pen drawn out at 1am the previous morning.

I made the design using drawings by the children of Ayda camp made during a workshop we made last week. 'It looks like a happy tent' Nidal finally replied in all seriousness.

I promised it would look better than that on the wall. Children do have the habit of depicting everybody happy and smiling all the time.

The theme along the 28-metre wall is the refugee story, covering pre-1948 Palestine, rural life and tradition, the destruction of Palestinian villages, exodus of the Palestinian people, refugees in tents with UN aid, the development of Ayda camp, from concrete boxes to the houses we see today, resistance and protest, and the segregation wall.

The last space on the mural will ask 'what lies in the future.' I suggested maybe someone could write a poem. They thought that was a great idea and that I should do it - next time I will keep my mouth shut!

I left Ayda camp with Nimer, a 13-year-old from Aza camp. He told me about his feelings of being cut of from the rest of the world and imprisoned.

He thanked me for coming to help and talked of other international volunteers who have come to work at Aza camp, including the much American creator of the iconic 'Hundala' character.

He invited me home where his mother almost expected me as if she was used to her son bringing back strange foreign men.

It is the summer holidays and the hot and smelly litter-ridden streets were full of noisy children. 'I don't like the holidays' Nimer's mother complained as she served me a much needed cold fruit juice.

'The children have nowhere to play, but here on the street. There is only one park in all Bethlehem. Inshallah! peace will come, but we have to live in these cramped conditions while the leaders dance on war.

They never dance on peace.

Paul Gent