Day 5: Mobile clinic close to the Syrian border

 

Today we operated in a clinic close to the Syrian border. Omar and Sobia were responsible for the children entertainment, while Jasser translated for the patients.

Even after our fifth day on the ground, it continues to be difficult to imagine that when speaking about “Syrian refugees”, we are actually dealing with around three million individual tragedies, and at least as many different stories. One fact that we are confronting rather frequently when interacting with the refugees is that a large number of them is originally from Daraa. Located in the south of Syria, close to the Jordanian border, Daraa is not only one of the poorest areas of Syria, but also happens to be the place where the civil uprising has started in March 2011 before it turned into a large-scale armed conflict. That Daraa has been a major center of the conflict is reflected in all the tragedies we get to go through talking with the refugees here in Jordan.

Many women from Daraa who have lost their husbands (in the most unspeakable ways), took their children and left their homes to prevent their situation from further deteriorating. Their first ports of call were refugee camps in the border region, only to realize that the situation for single mothers with children is unbearable, so they left the camps. Or that the time from registration with the UNHCR takes up to six months, meaning that they have to somehow bridge this gap. Or that the gap between their UNHCR extension can also take several months…

Orphanage and handicraft center…
Dr Hisham, a Syrian doctor (and refugee himself) and his wife, whom we met through the Syrian-US-NGO set up a center for widows, in which they can learn a handicraft (sewing, cutting hair, or cosmetics, so far), in order to help them to make an independent and sustainable living in Jordan. They soon realized that they needed to compliment the center with a child care, which takes care of the widows’ children while they received the training. Currently, 40 of these half-orphans in the age between 4 and 6 years are taken care of by a teacher, who is a Syrian refugee herself. Jasser, Omar and Saira (from Trinidad) visited 18 half-orphans today (who came with their mothers). Omar and Saira distributed gifts to the children, and tomorrow they will receive a full school bag each.

"Assembling" the school bags with some of the other mission members

Half-orphans above the age of 6, who have not yet received a place in a Jordanian school because these were over-crowded, need to stay at home where they wait for their moms, or they play on the streets… and they are numerous, as we were told… We would like to use your donations to change this situation, by equipping one 50sqm room in the training center with the necessary equipment (chairs, desks, a board, books (Jordanian curriculum) and a teacher, a refugee herself/himself) to them up to speed or to create a learning momentum, so that they can eventually move to the Jordanian public schools in the next school year...

Play center aka Trauma school
The third place we visited today was the “House of Tales and Music”. Together with Reem, we met with the president Rabeea Nasser. Reem, who is an Amman-based volunteer with the Syrian-US NGO, came up with the idea to start a “mobile play center”, aka a trauma school for Syrian refugee children, which would travel to different refugee camps in Jordan to bring some joy to children. Rabeea Nasser had run a similar programme, financed by Terre des Hommes, and accompanied by 25 volunteers. This is why we and Reem were interested in her experiences…

She told us that children loved it and that even their parents joined so that they could forget their problems for a couple of hours. We liked the idea but told Reem that we would help her to look for donators in Switzerland. Are you interested?!