Syrian Refugees – Jordan 2019
A COMMUNITY PROJECT
IN MAFRAQ / JORDAN
Birds of Hope
We invited kids from the neighbourhood to join us to paint the birds wall mural, many of them are Syrian refugees. We prepare the outlines and provided them the painting materials, so they can have freedom to fill in color and shapes as they want.
By the power of anticipation, they turned this wall into their own wall.
“It’s touching to see a boy came at his lunch break from work, he was shining and smiling all over his face while painting the birds wall mural.”
THE HIDDEN STORY - by Rahel Lam
What does freedom mean?
First we painted the garage white. Afterwards the dirty wall looked so clean! After that Damon painted black birds on it. It looked even nicer, perfectly pristine. Somehow it almost felt like we should just stop leave it like that.
In the afternoon Syrians and Jordanian kids from the neighbourhood came. First the boys came, followed by the girls. The teachers from the “learn to life” program helped us to give out the colours to the kids and some protection for their clothe, which they had got during the holiday time.
When they started to draw, I could see shock in the teachers’ eyes. They immediately tried to control the situation and stop the mess. The nice and clean picture got wild and crazy and nobody knew how it would end. I tried to reassure the teachers that it turn out fine and that it was ok to let the kids paint as they wish. But inside me there is always this moment where I have to also make the decision to allow them to be free! Even when they paint over something, even when they change it all, we give the freedom to paint and to put their fingerprints on this wall.
In this moment I thought about freedom. Controlling others is so much easier than giving each other the freedom to decide and to crate. We have all experienced a lot of controlling and we know what it means to be stopped. If we suddenly experience freedom, we often don’t know how to handle it. It can be chaotic in the beginning.
But after a while, sometimes even years, things comes together and if we look from afar we see a beautiful pictures of lines and curves. A pictures which calls life.
“A picture which nobody controlled, which has laughters, craziness, hurts, suffering, pain, happiness, tears, boldness, … inside it. ”
And so I felt about this birds. At the end all the lines came together and it looks like a volcano of colours and laughters. A place where kids from a background of war and distraction created a picture of joy and life and left their footprints behind.
OUR PROJECT TEAM
From left: Damon, Rahel, Johanna, Anna, Rebekka, Christoph, Jonas, Beat
ANTICIPATION:
50+ kids
are Involved in painting the wall