The mayor of Za'atari

Killian Kleinschmidt, the senior field co-ordinator for UNHCR (UN's refugee agency) is a natural raconteur. You could listen for days. He started his career as a roofer, then a brief spell as a stunt man, and looking at the task he's now responsible for: making a makeshift city for thousands of Syrian refugees pouring over the border into Jordan's desert landscape, it would seem to me that no Masters or Doctorate degree could equip him better. After spending a few hours with him, you soon realise his every day is about keeping the metaphorical roofs on, and stunts.

He admits the job is a bit like assembling a 100,000 piece jigsaw with an image of endless rocky sand to follow. (Though he's no stranger to sensitive and complicated jobs, having built camps in Pakistan, DRCongo, Somalia, Sudan and so on), but this one, he says is as complex as any of them. 

At the moment, their main challenge is the violence over the caravans and trying to make people live together in relative harmony. But he says the problem with the way the camp has been built, is that it's based on communal living, with shared bathrooms, toilets and kitchens, and people don't want that. It takes a level of development to have been reached within a collection of individuals, for them to consider themselves a society ready to share things, he says. Syrian society is a traditional one, and men fear their women and daughters having to walk outside to communal loos and bathrooms in the night.  

Anecdotes abound.  Za'atari residents are extraordinarily resilient and canny. He talks about the infamous 'kitchen 77' which was dismantled and stolen to the last brick, during the night, so there wasn't even time to take a picture of it for reporting purposes; the cooked chicken seller who has taken apart the camp fences to use as the skewers for his rotisserie from which he's making an estimated profit of 300 Jordanian Dinars (£300) per day; the crooks who are siphoning off electricity from the mains, for free (over half the camp is now with electricity), and selling it on to people to run their TVs, shops, and washing machines; the bathroom taps and loos which are stolen from communal bathrooms to be used for makeshift bathrooms at home - and people are hooking their private sewers up to the main drainage which is infuriating neighbouring farmers. And so on. It's almost like a game of cat and mouse at times, he says. And as an outsider, you can't help but marvel at the cunning on both sides. 

The main street of the camp, known as the 'Champs Elysees' is now a buzzing, vibrant market place, with shopkeepers selling everything from kebabs to wachine machines. The more wily in the camp are making more than a quick buck. And although the white sea of tents and caravans can seem gloomy and overwhelming from afar, when you look at it in more detail, the extraordinary human resilience and ability to start up again from the dust, is never more apparent than here.  And although conditions are difficult, and recent histories tragic, there's also an extraordinary level of care here - from the 35.5 litres of water which refugees receive per capita per week (in one of the water-poorest countries on earth) to the selection of hospitals run by Medicins Sans Frontieres, and individual nations such as Morocco and Saudi Arabia. As I walked around talking to people and hearing their tales, from the aid workers to the refugees themselves, there were many who admitted that these conditions are better than some had back home, and certainly those that many rural Jordanians are living in right now.

But the situation is becoming more complex with no sign of abating. Mafia style groups in the camp are becoming more demanding and violent, and no one knows yet how much infiltration there has been from Islamist factions. But at any rate, they're not far away - just a short hop over the border, and that is undoubtedly Jordan's worst fear. The other concern is just the dizzying numbers. One UNHCR staff member said they started by thinking this would go on for a matter of months, but as the numbers of refugees coming into Jordan increase (they project it will be 1 million in Jordan by the end of the year), the hope dwindles. Resources are scarce, despite the goodwill, and around 22 million Syrians are still within Syria, wishing they weren't. It's an overwhelming thought.

Killian, or 'the Mayor of Za'atari' as he's affectionately known, seems like the man for the job and he has a hard working and experienced team by his side. And with his practical ideas towards effective town planning and civil engineering so the inhabitants of Za'atari can start to feel like they have ownership of the place they live in, he hopes, he says, 'to give the people dignity, not charity.' Let's hope that becomes a buzz word.