Unicef Ireland campaign

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151870896703350&set=pb.81357518349.-2207520000.1381321218.&type=3&theater

My pictures used for the campaign. The little girl on the swing may never know she was the face of it...

Diary of a school bag

http://childrenofsyria.info/2013/10/08/journey-of-a-schoolbag-in-zaatari/

A bake off and a little party

The alarm went off at 6am. It makes a sort of rainforest noise, which is not that different from the normal daily noises that emanate from our household, the main difference being that you can at least switch the alarm off. J and I catapulted into action and by 7am I had baked 24 blueberry muffins for the Lozenge to take to school as is the custom on a birthday. May Betty Crocker be praised. I don't think anyone noticed, and a fresh blueberry here costs approximately 50p a berry so Betty's mix was better value and a lot quicker.

Rashimi had a lie in after a later night than usual. I asked him if he'd had a nice lie in when I went in and he responded with: 'Rrrrraaaaaar!' I think he'd mistaken it for a li on.

He had breakfast on his own with me which must have been rather boring as he exclaimed: 'Lo Lo. Miss. Lo Lo. Miss. Daddy. Miss. Daddy. Miss.' I didn't take it personally since it's nice when other members of the family like each other. 

Fortunately the Glammy was here by 9 and they skipped off together and allowed me to begin the real bake off (the 6am was a mere dry run) for the party that afternoon. I was fairly pleased with the results and for once the Jordanian flour didn't play up. 

The Kinks were the most perfect soundtrack to my day - the first day in 7 I'd been in the house. 'Don't forget to dance. Don't forget to smile. Don't forget to dance,' sang the Kinks. And I did smile as I remembered Mohammad the professor's comment from the day before: 'For a careerist, you're actually quite thoughtful,' as I helped him wash up the plates after our picnic.

Poor J got stuck in a bus in nose to tail traffic for two hours but he made it back by 4.15 and over the next four hours we received a steady trickle of people from 70 to 1.5 years old who have made our time here in this city meaningful and fun. Countries represented were: Jordan, Palestine, Egypt, Syria, Iran, Sri Lanka, Germany, Holland and the UK. Rashimi scuttled around after me calling: 'Chewwweeeee!' and trying to pinch them all from the top of the cake. No tantrums and no talk of presents = a success in my book. The Lozenge was still holding his helium balloons when his head hit the pillow. 

By 8.30pm the balloons had reached bed level. I think helium they use here is imitation. And the Lozenge and Rashimi had eaten so much cake that....well, you can imagine, can't you. Let's just say, the Romans would have been impressed. Though Rashimi and the Lozenge didn't begin eating again until mid day the next day. 

I Detol-ed the house the following morning and packed my camera bags for another trip to Za'atari, wishing I could have made more cakes to take with me.

A new camera assistant and a farmer in the Jordan valley

On Saturday J and I went on a working outing to interview and film Abu Ahmad, a farmer in the Jordan valley, now in his 80's, who was evicted from Bersheeba in southern Palestine during the Nakba of 1948.  We went with the wonderful professor from Jordan University, also Palestinian, who was our introduction. Although my work and J's work overlaps at times, we've never actually worked together before, and it was fun to be in the back of Mohammad's antique Mercedes with all my camera kit piled around us, winding our way down towards the Dead Sea, the temperature creeping steadily higher as we descended. And I was aware of the luxury of having a trusted person with me to help me put up my tripod, translate things into real Arabic for Abu Ahmad, ask the odd question during the interview and give me a different take on things.

We had a fascinating time talking to Abu Ahmad about his memories of Palestine in the 1930s, of his days as a young boy, working with camels and other livestock, before their eviction in 1948 and their arrival in Jordan on the back of a truck. It was here in the Jordan valley where they began life again. He's been farming ever since, in a very different way, since he has no livestock here. He was a natural raconteur and unfazed by the camera - his gaze direct and unflinching, and enormous hands and feet from a lifetime of manual labour. He cried when he told us of his longing to return home. 70 years after he left, the memories still as clear as they were when he was a young boy. 'I have visions of my home sometimes when I pray,' he said. And almost on cue, the muezzin started calling and Abu Ahmad departed to the mosque for an hour.

Mohammad had brought us all a picnic lunch of 2 roast chickens and tomatoes, basil and grapes from his garden, and after a couple more hours of taking photographs and asking questions, we returned to Amman. On our way into town I managed to convince J to jump out and do some of the Lozenge's party shopping for his 4th birthday the following day - and after 2 hours in various shops we were standing in the street with 2 backpacks of camera kit, a tripod, 4 large bags of party shopping and 12 helium balloons. It may have been at this point that my camera assistant doubted his decision to accompany me on a work trip. But we managed to coerce a taxi into taking us home and only one of the balloons popped en route. 

The dwarves went into a frenzy over Mohammad's grapes which were all dusty colours, shapes and sizes, and tasted like nectar. Rashimi now calls: 'gaaaaaaaAAAAAPEEEE!' whenever he wanders by the fridge. Mohammad also gave us an armful of branches of basil which smell like nothing you could find on a shelf in a shop anywhere in the world. A fragrant memory of a special day with two 80-something-year-old men with tales to tell.

Preserving childhood

Last week in Za'atari, one of the team who knows the place well, helped me clamber on top of one of the caravans to get wide shots of the camp which has quadrupled in size since this time last year. I squinted into the sunlight, tentatively shifting my body around to see the full white, blue and sandy brown 360 degree view. The rows and rows of dusty tents and caravans house over 120,000 people now, and while there's physical capacity for more, the struggle to provide for everyone - from water and school books to health and psychological care, becomes only more acute. And now the stifling heat of summer is over, and the bitter winter months approach.

Spending 5 days filming and taking photographs with UNICEF allowed a glimpse of what goes on behind the scenes. We saw groups of volunteers packing up rucksacks full of school kit; we met young midwives helping mothers feed their newborns; and a young Jordanian psychologist (the only one in the camp) who is helping as many children as she can, come to terms with what they've seen, heard and experienced, and enable them to grasp back what might otherwise be a stolen childhood. Behind every white canvas there is a catalogue of stories, and behind every face, a mire of confusion, frustration and pain.

But despite all this, there are inevitably always tales of hope. And we spent two of the days gathering material for a story about an inspiring young girl of 15 years old, the oldest in the family, who has courageously refused to let her father marry her off, at least until she's finished her education. She gave a very succinct interview and explained her reasons for not wanting to get married: the danger of  bearing children so early; the lack of maturity to deal with sharing life with a man; and the fact that she'd miss out on the rest of her school days. Her mother sat calmly beside her nodding, and in her own interview reaffirmed her daughter's views. Then we went back to their caravan to interview the father - a friendly man with twinkly eyes, who explained that he couldn't go against his daughter's wishes. Though for a manual labourer by trade, who's had no work for 2 years, a marriage of a daughter would have alleviated many a financial burden. Instead, his wife cleans one of the children's play zones in the camp, and the family scrapes a living with this tiny income. 

The girl's name is Anwaar which is the Arabic plural for Nur, meaning 'light'. She has a sister a few years younger, and I could see how Anwaar is indeed lighting the way for her family, as she tries to help them see sense in her decision. If they honour her choice, she'll be paving the way for her little sister too.

The following day we spent time in Irbid, north of Amman, and found two twin girls who live with their parents and three other siblings in a tiny flat on the fifth floor of a filthy apartment block. There is not one refugee family I've visited who hasn't made the best of the resources they have. Not one apartment I've seen which is disorganised or dirty, and not one place I've been where I haven't been offered food and drink. This family was no exception. The father, an engineer by trade, though also out of work, (Syrians are not allowed to get work permits in Jordan) was obviously well educated and spoke quite good English. He explained how they had fled the Ba'ba Amr district of Homs (like Fatima who I made another film about) while the town was being torn to shreds. As he sat with a twin on each knee, and his son curled up on the mattress beside them, he told us how he was worried about what his 12 year old daughter had seen in the streets of their hometown before their escape. 'People were fighting with their hands', he said, 'and she saw lots of people have their throats cut and fall into the gutter with her own eyes. My brothers and father also died in this way. I don't know how to shield her from these memories. She now has bad stomach pains, and I don't have the money to take her to the doctor.'

We gave him the money for the doctor and sat quietly in the room watching as he read an English text book to the twins, making them repeat the foreign words after his example. 'Where is your aunt?' 'My aunt is in Amman' he read from the book. 'Where is your aunt? My aunt is in Amman,' they repeated. 'Where is your uncle? My uncle is in Irbid...'Where is your cousin? My cousin is in Mafraq' and so on. 

If only these answers were as simple in real life. But he, like so many other Syrian parents, is valiantly trying to preserve the childhoods of his offspring, under threat of being lost in the waves of tragedy, like the other millions inside Syria and elsewhere in this region.

Others and one's own

After a short-lived lull at breakfast together on Monday the week turned into one of those ones where you wonder how you managed to plan as much for 7 days without thinking it might be an impossibility. I spent four days taking photographs and filming in Za'atari camp and a town north of Amman called Irbid which has one of the largest populations of Syrian refugees of all the host communities in Jordan. I left home every morning at 7.30am, returning at 7pm, and headed straight to my computer to transfer all the files, edit and send to Unicef. St Grace, the Glammy and J, between them shared all the moments and jobs I would normally be doing.

Stepping out into the cool morning air with a huge backpack of camera kit and tripod felt freeing on the one hand, although a wrench leaving the dwarves and our little morning rituals behind. Every morning without fail, Rashimi and St Grace were in situ at the window, waving at me from our 2nd floor window until I rounded the corner and set off in search of a taxi.

Over the three days I worked with a fantastic team from Ireland, who were as dedicated, thoughtful and professional as anyone I've worked with. We threw ourselves at it, and with any luck will have gathered the material for a hard hitting campaign in Ireland that will raise lots of money for the likes of the hundreds of men, women and children who we interviewed, filmed and photographed over the week.

Every evening I returned covered in dust to a bundle of boy energy, with a few minutes to bundle them into bed with a story, my mind still rolling over the hundreds of faces and thousands of words that filtered into my mind like a flick-book. Each night I lay in a stew wondering if I was being irresponsible taking on this much, while knowing that I couldn't help but get amongst it, being here, right now. But the balance of being useful to one's own and useful to others, is as ever precarious and uncomfortable.

Here are some of the others.

Spoonfuls of honey

The final weekend before J returned to us seemed like an eternity but we stuffed it full of as many adventures as we could. One of these was to visit a little souk in the old town where there's a man who sells honey comb. The dwarves love it, mostly because there are some stunt bees at work in a glass fronted comb, like a bee-equivalent of a fish tank, and even more mostly because the rotund and homely stall owner gives them tiny plastic spoonfuls of honey to taste. So after about 6 of those each, they careered up and down the alley veering dangerously close to Jordanian ceramics displays until we reached the end of the road. Then we were given some samples of equally sweet guava and banana smoothies. Rashimi has been nicknamed 'tetta' by the Glammy, which means 'Grandma' in colloquial Arabic. This is because he always wants to find a place to sit down and have a drink and a biscuit at any available opportunity. He shrieks: 'Sit 'eeeeeere! Sit 'eeeeere!' until we sit and produce a snack. But the drink is often a bit too cold, and the biscuit a little too crunchy, for his sensitive teeth. So tetta the Lozenge and I sat on little stools in the market and watched the world go by.

We headed back home along the busy main road that dissects Amman, and from the back of the car I heard wails of 'COC! COC!' from Rashimi. He'd opened the electric window and lobbed one of his Crocs onto the dual carriageway. There's not much you can say to a nearly 2 year old when they get unruly. It doesn't mean much to Rashimi that a pair of Crocs in his size here in Amman costs £65, if you can even find them. But we had a little chat when we got back home and I asked him what had happened. 'Window.' 'Woad,' he said, with a knowing look.

Sunday dawned, which is the equivalent of a Monday in the UK, and I spent the day filming in the gallery where I'm making the documentary. It was very hot but I was collected and dropped in a sleek Mercedes, and often turned around to find a little glass of mint tea or water perched on a wall on a tray near to where I was filming, delivered silently by one of the loyal staff there. It's a different experience from filming in Za'atari camp. But there is so much to the place, and so much to get to know and understand, that I find myself in wonder and slight awe at the prospect of doing it justice with a film.

The Mercedes dropped me home and I crashed back to earth as I climbed back into the red hot Chevy and paced it to the Lozenge's school where I wanted to meet his teachers. I walked in the tiny green gate and heard peals of familiar laughter coming from the pre-tennis class with 'Coach Mohammed'. There was the Lozenge wielding a plastic racket and swiping it in vain at a huge inflatable ball. I watched surreptitiously from behind the wall as he and the six others formed a queue, the Lozenge at the back, sniffing the hair of the boy in front in a feral fashion. Then they all filed out, and I saw his little friend Alejandra from Spain being met by her mother too. I asked him if he wanted to ask Alejandra to play one day and he said yes, he would, but added: 'Mummy that ith not her name. Her proper name is Aleeee-han-drop, okay?'

J arrived at about 1am on Monday morning and I felt the atmosphere in the house warm up, as it always does when all 4 of us are here in this city, just getting on with doing our thing independently and together.