The wheel of chaos within the chaos

Za'atari refugee camp

Sitting in the silver Pajero with UN staff was the tower of Babel you might expect. In the vehicle with me was a Pakistani, a Tunisian and Argentinian and a Palestinian, and we idly chatted as we drove towards the satellite towns of Irbid and Mafraq to visit Syrians with two UN representatives who were visiting from New York.

With a video camera and a stills camera hanging from each shoulder, a big backpack full of kit and a tripod slung on a remaining inch of shoulder, I knew it was going to be hot and highly charged in 40 degrees with an agenda that looked optimistic. The problem with visiting reps is they are always accompanied by an entourage. This day was no exception and we travelled in a convoy of 3 cars with many other personnel joining us at each stop.

It was interesting to see the kind of support the UN provides for Syrian children in Jordan, and our first visit was to somewhere called a 'child friendly space' - jargon for a room where children can have some organised playtime with trained local supervisors. It was impressive and the children looked happy, although it turned out to be the only place where I was allowed to actually film and take photos, which is ironic considering I had been booked for the day to film and take photos. Luckily I got a bit done there. I wasn't allowed into the flat to visit a Syrian family, so I hung about outside until they all came out - and then had to try and grab some shots of the reps getting in and out of cars. 

We arrived at Za'atari camp at about 1.30pm - already two hours late, and the main street, coined: 'The Champs Elysees' was eerily quiet. As we arrived at 'base camp' from where, behind barbed wire and railings, all the agencies function, there was talk of some demonstrations in the camp. We visited a small school where I wasn't really allowed to talk to children, or get them to talk to me, but I managed to get some quite rough footage and photos, dodging between the packs of photographers and other journalists who were there to film a Danish Princess who was also visiting that day. 

Then there was a press conference which the representatives led - and I was told with about a minute to spare, that they needed it filmed. So I jostled for space, with no time to put up a tripod with the other press, and filmed the conference hand held. By that stage it probably looked like I'd just jumped out of the shower and the last thing I felt like was lunch with the gang. 

So as they were having lunch I set up my camera to get at least one interview from one of the reps after he swallowed his last mouthful - with a dusty wind howling and the sun beating down on the hard, beige ground. There was much to-ing and fro-ing from people in different logo-ed vests and it was at that point the tragic story of the suspected Syrian government sarin gas attack, killing over 1000 people, broke. And there on the mobile phones of some of the UN workers, were pictures of lines and lines of little children wrapped in white shrouds, looking to a casual observer, as if they were asleep. 

I sat on a step, thinking of my own boys' faces when they're sleeping, and thinking how far away this aid circus felt from these daily tragedies: like Dunblane and Lockerbie and Hungerford happening day on day on day on day, but with no one taking account. 

Looking at the exhausted faces of employees of the aid scene - you can see how much they're trying to help. But you can feel the wheel of chaos within the chaos, and when you're there, you can't help but spin with it. You can notice order in the rows of tents and caravans in the camp, but these white carapaces are where order ends. And you can't help but doubt that the hardest work from the most qualified people in fluorescent vests, would ever sort this out. This crisis defies any good will or training or money, it seems.

After a snatched interview with one of the reps I had to rip home from Za'atari camp to send the video files to New York. The bandwidth here is slower than the US, and after a stack of technical hitches I was still sitting at my desk at 11pm talking to Pedro, the tech help in NYC. I resigned myself to an all-nighter and as the little green bars edged their way from 0% to 100% as the five video files snailed their way through, I made a loaf of bread, tidied my office and read some poetry. By 3.30am they'd made it and I lay down on our bed and ran over in my head,  the images and the sounds of the day.

As the little children in the UN child friendly space in Irbid sang, 'If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands,' in Arabic, their fellow citizens on the other side of the border, just an hour's drive from here, were lining up the tiny corpses for that day's horror to be seen by the world. 

Isn't it time that Ban Ki Moon and his bands of supposedly highly qualified, and very definitely highly paid colleagues and allied parties, did something more dramatic to end this hell?