Sderot Blog:

Wednesday, the day a Kassam rocket hit my home

 june 05th 2008

Lea Buganim 44, mother of 3.Manager of the Rehabilitation Department at Gvanim Association.

Earlier that morning I drove my kids to their schools in Kibbutz Yad Mordechai, which is near by Sderot. Just as I was getting back into my car, a friend of mine called me and asked if I was all right. For those of us living in Sderot, that can only mean one thing.

Apparently, while I was out doing my morning chores, my house was being bombed. Shocked and shivering I drove back home and saw clouds of smoke coming out of the roof.

The Kassam penetrated into our neighbors` bathroom, but the explosion must have been so powerful that it blew up everything that was on the roof, including the satellite dish, the water heater and the air conditioner. All the windows were shuttered, the walls cracked and everything was coal black.

Astonished, I stood there just staring at my house, feeling violated and vulnerable, but at the same time I was grateful that no one was home at the time. Imagine what might have happened if the kids were there.

 We all have our own ways of dealing with the attacks. Some of us repress it, like my husband and me, but my youngest son did something that was odd. He spotted two little holes in the floor, probably from the fragments they attach to the rockets, in order to maximize their damage and burned them with some matches. Since then, every time we have house guests, he takes them to see, what he refers to as the explosion site.  

 I've been living in Sderot for 40 years now. We moved here from Tangier when I was 4 years old. Back then there were only 10,000 of us living here and it was a tough place to grow up in, but at least we had these amazing landscapes and during the summers, when the sprinklers were on, we'd run through the opened fields. Nowadays kids can't do that, we can't let them run through the fields, it's just not safe. On the other hand, if this experience has taught me anything, it's that keeping them in the house all day, doesn't guarantee their safety either.