Because Beebo was speaking Arabic to the group I assumed that I had no way of speaking or understanding. It took me awhile to remember that most of the people there are Syrian Kurds who speak Kurmanji Kurdish dialect So we did (sort of*) have common language.
*many of the words are different or said differently and of course, my Sorani Kurdish skills are not that great. But it was better than nothing!
The tent that is the school room during week days. It is covered with a huge blue tarp to prevent the heavy winter rains from leaking through.
Gosia (with the mike) is our CPT intern from Poland. She sang a childhood Polish song.
After many children had stood with the mike and shared their talent the dancing started. But it soon became very warm in the tent so the dancers headed outside to enjoy the sun and blue sky.
The little girl started out being very shy, but Gosia won her over.
The dancing moved from modern jumping type ...
to quite accomplished Kurdish dancing.
One boy who spoke very good English looked at me and then at this little girl and said, "Your faces look just the same." So I had to have a photo taken to see if he was right.
Then, if a person gets tired of dancing, there is always plenty of dirt and sand to dig in.
This was one of the drawings decorating the walls of the school tent. Two days earlier the region had experienced torrential rainfall for two days. This is a fine rendition of what life in the camp would have been like on those days.
A picture of a small part of the camp. Every few tents have toilet to share with water tanks on the room. There are also water stations where tanks are filled by water trucks.
Two days after we visited the camp the "resh ba- black wind" began. I was out walking on the first day of the wind and at times I could hardly stand up. The next day the temperature dropped which along with the wind made the air very cold. I could imagine how uncomfortable it was in those tents with the cold air moving through the cracks and the wind whipping the tarps all around.
