Zaatari Camp and Amman, Jordan – 2018

Rafat and I are sitting on the bench outside the kitchen trailer. It’s sunny and warm – April. Zaatari is just a massive trailer city on an otherwise empty stretch of desert flat land, so the afternoon sun always beats down and makes it warmer than Amman.

We’re going over a printout of his personal essay that is part of his application to a Canadian scholarship program. I knew of a lot of scholarship programs for Syrian refugees during the time I worked in Zaatari, but this one was the best one I knew because its people worked hard, with and for, each of their students.