Their goats supplied them with milk, meat and skin, for their own use or for barter to obtain wheat, olive oil, cloth and other basics. They were perhaps lucky enough to enjoy the fruits of one or two fig trees standing next to the house and prickly pears from the cactus shrubs that separate them from the next house. Did they have grapevines? Did they have any hens in their yard?

It is difficult to imagine these three shepherds going to school or receiving any sort of education. The closest they could come to civilised surroundings could have been on Sundays when they went to church. They had no reason to go to the closest “city”, Nablus an hour’s walk away but a mainly Moslem vicinity, and perhaps never saw Jerusalem, some two or three days donkey-ride away. They could certainly not afford to have a horse.

By any measure those were very dark days. Palestine had been for centuries part of the province of Syria in the Turkish Empire which was by then crumbling precipitously. The major events of that period, Napoleons expedition all the way from Egypt up to Acre in 1799, the Egyptian rule over Syria (including Palestine) in the 1830’s and the power struggle between Druzes and Maronties would not have affected people in Rafidia.

Progress was slow
The two following generations, roughly up to 1860, did not fare much better; if there was progress it was very slow

During those days there was no Catholic Convent in Rafidia to help with schools or social care. The Eastern Church, which had always been there, was too poor to take care of its followers. There were no population records, births, marriages and deaths. Things changed after the Latin Patriarchate was established in Jerusalem in 1847 and opened a parish church in Rafidia some years later. The Catholics started schools and helped the poor so it was not surprising that many, perhaps the neediest, of the Soudahs joined that church.