ACT News Update

Jordan/Iraq 0104

‘Give us a place that we can call home’

Geneva, February 7, 2005--If the place where you are currently living is known as “no-man’s land,” you wouldn’t expect to find much warmth of hospitality. Add cold weather during the current northern-hemisphere winter, and physical warmth is also hard to come by. But a member of Action by Churches Together (ACT) International working in Jordan provided some much-needed warmth to refugees of the Iraq conflict during a January chill.

On January 18, the Middle East Council of Churches (MECC), a member of ACT, a global alliance of churches and related agencies, distributed winter clothing to children of two camps in the desert area of Jordan where it is working. Both camps house refugees who fled Iraq because of the U.S.-led war on their country. Camp A, 75 km inside Jordan, hosts mostly Palestinian refugees who were living in Iraq. Camp B, in the so-called no-man’s land on the Jordan-Iraq border, was intended to accommodate refugees whom Jordan was not willing to host in its territories for security reasons and currently hosts mostly Iranian Kurds.

According to MECC, strong winds, accompanied by temperatures as low as five degrees below zero Celsius, were making it difficult for the refugees to handle the harsh living conditions in the desert, where nighttime temperatures are often low.

MECC staff surprised the children in the camps, who had gathered in a large tent, with the distribution of winter clothing. “The smiles and excitement on their faces while lining up and receiving their new clothes and trying them on on the spot makes one’s heart fill with a mixture of happy and sad feelings,” Wafa F. Goussous, coordinator of the MECC Amman office, said. “They could not wait to go back to their tents to try the clothes on.”

With funding from ACT Appeal MEIQ-41 - Relief & Rehabilitation, MECC distributed the clothing to 450 children between the ages of one and 18. Each child received a jacket, winter underwear, a winter training suit, and a hat and gloves.

“An eight-year-old boy tried on his shirt that was obviously too big for him,” Goussous said. “We suggested to him to wait a bit - that maybe we could exchange it for someone else’s, and he said to me, ‘First, thank you for the gift and for talking in Arabic with me, and second, it is OK - I will grow up so it will fit me.’”

In a report after the distribution of winter clothing, Goussous said, “The 750 people, mostly Iranian Kurds, who have been stuck for 20 months in a no-man's land between Jordan and Iraq are going through severe depression, as well as the 150 Iraqis of Palestinian origin who are occupying refugee Camp A at the Ruwayshed area.”

Goussous reported that, although the smiles on the parents’ faces showed appreciation, “Their eyes were saying, ‘Give us a place that we can call home.’”

In its work within Iraq, before Christmas, MECC also distributed 10,500 school kits, which included some winter clothing, school uniforms and other items, to children ages six to 12. In early January, MECC purchased food supplies under its supplementary feeding program, and just before Idha, a Muslim celebration following a period of fasting, it distributed the items to two public hospitals. The items included sugar, milk, tea, high-protein biscuits, cooking oil, cheese, tomato paste and noodles. Three more hospitals were expected to receive the food parcels, and this final distribution was to bring to a close MECC’s programs in Jordan and Iraq under the current ACT appeal.