Tag: humanitarian
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If It Was Just The War
Medford, MA – April 2020 It is hard to watch COVID-19 unfold everywhere because you know it will get worse, and there is nothing you can do. I feel helpless watching the case numbers go up and up. The tree outside my window is blooming with tiny white flowers. It’s beautiful. I wish I knew…
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The Day Rafat Left for Canada
Or: My Crash Course in Having a Poker Face 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…
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The Refugee, the Arrest & the Carrot Seed
Amman and Zaatari Camp – June 2018 CONTENT WARNING: domestic violence Monday. When I arrived to Zaatari on Monday morning, some of the refugee staff at our youth center told me Hashem* had beaten his wife so badly that she’d called the police who’d detained him in the nearby Mafraq prison for one night. Given…
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How I Ended Up So Far From Home (Part 2)
Working in Zaatari Camp for Syrian Refugees in Jordan This is Part 2 of my Far From Home series. Read Part 1 here. There was the look of it: an ugly desert plain with tin trailers crowded on top of each other, clotheslines strung up between them, and people walking heads bowed along the dusty…
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How I Ended Up So Far From Home (Part 1)
Working in Zaatari Camp for Syrian Refugees in Jordan Freezing cold: winter in the desert camp. I am standing in a tin trailer in the drafty wet drippings of winter. Rain slides down off the edges of the roof. The staff meeting is about to begin and people are milling about, coming in and out…
Curious Georgie 
–مرحبا سلام Thank you so much, what a lovely comment to receive! I think you’re right; we can’t always be…