After a three-hour drive we finally arrived in Mafraq, a town located in northern Jordan. As we were driving through the settlement I saw families buying groceries in the local stores and men and children coming out of the local mosque after attending the Friday prayer. As I observed the interactions in the streets of Mafraq and found it hard to believe that 10 miles north of this town was the Syrian border, let alone that the distance to Daara, the town where the Syrian conflict started back in March of 2011, was only 19 miles further!
We continued driving and shortly after leaving Mafraq behind we took a right turn off the main highway onto a narrower road. This road was completely surrounded by acres upon acres of olive trees. The temperature was so high that the shapes of the olive trees became distorted as I looked through the window. The dust thrown up from the road as we drove obscured their shapes even further, yet I was able to discern that the leaves were dried out and the exposed tissues of the olive trees were dark brown. The landscape anticipated what I was about to encounter at the end of this road. Fifteen minutes later we arrived to the Zaatari Refugee camp.
This was my first time at the refugee camp. I had come along with a group of four other students from the University of Jordan. In January of 2014, I decided to study abroad for a semester at the University of Jordan in the city of Amman. In March, I began volunteering with a local organization called Generation Foundation that, among other activities, distributed clothing items to the refugee community at Zaatari on a monthly basis. Thus far, everything I had learned about the Syrian crisis and its effects had come from media outlets or reports from various international organizations. However, what I witnessed in Zaatari was beyond what any article or report could describe.
The Zaatari refugee camp is immense and has only kept growing at a stunning yet unsustainable pace. With an area of 1.274 mi² and a population of more than 100,000 Syrian refugees, Zaatari is considered the second-largest refugee camp in the world behind Dadaab in Kenya and it is the fourth largest city in Jordan.
The offices of all the main international organizations such as the United Nations and the Red Cross are located right after the main entrance to the camp, along with distribution stations located next to the offices where items are delivered to the refugee community on a daily basis. A tall, lengthy wire fence separates the administrative offices and the distribution stations from the area where the refugee community lives in tents and concrete houses. The main route through the camp is a long, bustling concrete street that has come to be known as the Champs-Elysées. Here, more than 3,500 shops and stands have opened up – coffee shops, barbershops, bakeries, perfume shops, and more. Trade and commerce have always been important components of the daily lives of the people of Syria, and these refugees were able to develop and express that aspect of their culture even within the constraints of a refugee camp.
When we arrived at the Zaatari camp, it was the busiest time of the day. This street is not only a place where people buy goods, but it is also a public space where people seek to socialize and normalize their lives at the camp as much as possible. Families were strolling around the Champs-Elysées, children were playing soccer, and men were carrying different items from shop to shop. Yet, what struck me the most was seeing children, likely only eight or twelve years old, walking around the Champs-Elysées with two-wheel carts. I approached one of these children and asked him what the carts were for. He told me that his name was Mahmud, he was 9 years old and that the cart was for his work. Mahmud, like many other children in the camp, wanted to assist his family economically. These children have been able to make a profit by carrying the items that people purchase in the Champs-Elysées back to their tents or to their houses, because while the Champs-Elysées is a long street, it is not nearly the length of the camp itself. Some of the refugees who live at the furthest point of the camp have to walk for as long as three hours to get to the Champs-Elysées. Mahmud told me that he really missed school. His favorite subject back in Syria was mathematics. There are some schools run by international organizations at Zaatari, but when I asked Mahmud why he did not attend one of these schools, he said that class time coincided with the busiest time at the Champs-Elysées and that he chose to help his family instead.
I often read articles that describe the Syrian Refugee crisis as the worst humanitarian disaster of our time. It is not unusual to read that more than a third of the Syrian population has fled the country or become internally displaced, or that more than 600,000 Syrians have sought refuge in Jordan. Half of them are children. These numbers are an attempt to quantify the impact of the Syrian crisis. Yet, the refugee crisis is more than just a number or headlines in the newspapers. The Syrian refugee crisis is the changing and evolving realities of many Syrian children like as Mahmud, of men and women who left their homes and dreams behind in Syria due to circumstances beyond their control. The Syrian refugee crisis is the resilience and perseverance to strive in an environment where no individual ever imagined or sought to live in.
The olive tree is a symbol of hope and life in the Middle East. The olive trees that lead to Zaatari may have become withered and dry, but they are still standing.
Andrea Tanco is an international student from Veracruz, Mexico. Yet, she considers herself a world citizen after living abroad in Hong Kong, Jordan and the US. She has a ceaseless passion for traveling and photography. She has traveled to extensively across the Middle East and South East Asia. She is currently a senior majoring in Government and Arabic. She hopes to pursue a career in journalism and academia.
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