Ramadan: Surviving The Hussein Camp
Words & Photos By: Naseem Tarawnah
The Action Committee spent the past ten days in Ramadan collecting funds for Ramadan food bags and on September 20th, went down to the Hussein Refugee Camp to distribute them. The campaign, driven mainly through online activism with the help of Facebook, emails and Jordanian blogs, was able to yield two-truckloads of food to serve a lot of needy people in the camp. So a special thanks is in order to all those who helped donate to the campaign, be it through the donation of money, goods, their time and energy or just by simply spreading the word.
(click to enlarge)
A Little About The Camp:
Established in 1948, the Jabal Al-Hussein Camp is one of the oldest Palestinian refugee camps in the world. It has grown from 8,000 refugees to over 29,000 refugees throughout these past 60 years. Similar to the Wahdat camp, the Hussein camp has gone from a field of tents to a condensed urbanized area of Amman. In fact, few people know that directly behind the shopping streets of Jabal Al-Hussein is the camp. Having been engulfed by central Amman all these years, it is hard to tell the difference between the Hussein camp and the rest of the eastern parts of the city. Despite its condensed housing and poverty, it stands contrasting to some other camps in the country – such as the Baqaa and Gaza camps – in that its residents have Jordanian citizenship.
That being said, there are obvious commonalities such as poverty and the overwhelming culture of dependency on aid, be it in the form of the UNRWA, the Jordanian government, the private sector or local, everyday citizens.
Going in to these camps with a truckload of bags or boxes is like having a target on ones back. Everyone in the area knows there’s food to be given out and word quickly spreads. The people here are probably not as poverty-stricken as those living in camps like the Baqaa and Gaza, however, in these dire times, it’s hard to tell the difference anymore. Stopping just about anywhere in the camp will automatically draw attention and people will continuously plea to get a free bag of food. It is a sad sight to see and perhaps the worst thing about these visits is that you have to come up with excuses as to why you can’t. The gathering crowds usually do not respond positively when you tell them that there is a list of registered people who these bags are intended for. The Action Committee will tend to coordinate with a local organization such as an orphanage or a woman’s group or even the UNRWA, with a few quick stops at particular homes to let volunteers get a sense of the conditions.
During this visit, we got to sit down with a local volunteer and organizer in the camp by the name of Yasser, who guided us to certain homes and then to a center for orphans. Most of these kids actually have only a single parent, with usually the father having passed away leaving a family of eight young children and their mother with no source of income whatsoever. The mother is stuck between raising her kids on next to nothing or forgoing that in lieu of getting a job, which is also hard to come by normally, let alone for a woman in the camp.
This may be one of the first times for residents of these camps, and the years to come will be no better. The mixture of Ramadan, Eid and back-to-school, with the high prices, all packaged within the span of a single month is unbearable according to Yasser. And that reality is all to apparent.
Read More:
- Hussein Camp
- Action Committee
“It is a sad sight to see and perhaps the worst thing about these visits is that you have to come up with excuses as to why you can’t.” ….that’s rather heartbreaking :(
asoom: true. also, a lot of the women tend to carry around documents on them proving various things such as a mentally challenged son or a deceased husband or God knows what. they carry these documents in their pockets at all times, just in case they should run in to anyone.
What is the solution to giving these thirty thousand people in the Hussein camp a decent life?
What is your vision towards a plan/action?
Assume you have no conditions or restrictions. Pretend it’s an ideal world for a while….
the situation is beyond miserable, but who said angels don’t come down to earth? you guys are their angels in this month! it definitely takes a lot more than a one-month package of food to solve the problem but it helps. you’re making a difference, no matter how small or short-lived it is.
Well, I dont think that Hussein camp situation is that misrable! at least you dont hear or see health problems as severe as it is in other areas of Jordan… Hussein camp are the people who can actually survive and have access from people / organizations who are in Amman… at least if they get donations they can reach a store to buy food in this money..If you go south Amman in areas like Lyb, theban, and the small villages there, there are houses with yet no electricity, they dont have anythign to sit on, there are people living on mountains, in caves,they sit on the ground, with families of 7 or 9 3 or 4 of which have serious physical or mental problems… and somtimes all family kis suffer from severe mental or physical isssue…
they are not only orphans… its a series of problems that faces one family! from health to family issues, to death of family members,to no money ! even if you gave them money the nearest place they can reach food for is SOOOOOOOOO far!they dont have access for anything…. and reaching them is hard… after you see them you can only keep saying 7amdella for the rest of your life….
sorry i meant south Jordan!
great job, ya3teekum el3afyeh!
@”a lot of the women tend to carry around documents on them proving various things such as a mentally challenged son or a deceased husband or God knows what. they carry these documents in their pockets at all times, just in case they should run in to anyone.”
while using public transportation in Jordan, i’ve noticed that there were always some women who’d seize the chance, get on the bus before it moves, and start begging. The interesting thing is that they are always armed with such documentation as you’ve mentioned, explaining that the bread winner in the family is permanently paralyzed, blind, ill, or whatever “fact??” documented on that piece of paper.
Ya3teekom il3afyeh :D I’m sure the lightness you feel afterwards is not just from having unloaded bags and bags of food.
nadine: oh boy, if i could play policy maker!
well, given the element of the hussein camp, it would have to a multitude of approaches.
i think one of the first things right off the bat would be opening a dozen vocational training centers all around the area. there really needs to be a government-endorsed focus on capacity building when it comes to skill sets that many of these people can learn. a source of income is the primary thing that’s needed, so next to vocational training i would have recruitment offices and a labor transport system that could transfer these people to work in manufacturing in nearby factories. such a system could be created by local industry itself; they already have several in existance to transport indian workers to and from sites, why not a localized workforce?
micro-financing small businesses is another big element. many of these people operate their own small shops and i think if the Bangladesh experience of targeting mostly women could be implemented here, we would see similar results of self-employment and small-income generation. this would require training centers for capacity-building, mentoring, etc. it should be financed by the banking sector.
you also need a secular organization to operate there on a powerful, and well-funded level. something along the lines of ruwwad but on larger, camp-size scale. you need something that has the ability to break the stranglehold of the islamists there, who tend to do more harm than good. as it was relayed to us, the camp used to be better off when it was ruled by smaller political factions than a monopolized religious one.
i would also consider the idea of having government housing (tall apartment building style) instead of the scattered, shabby likeness we see today. it would help clean up the area, save space and create a more efficient delivery mechanism for public services.
last but not least, you have education and health care. more investment in schools and everything that entails, but there needs to be something that keeps these kids in school, and that would have to go back to vocational training. another approach to this is to recruit these kids in to the ministry of labor’s and jordanian army program, where, on the condition that they graduate from school, the can go to the army to learn a trade, while receiving basic wages that increase as they graduate from the program. i think it’s an effective way of giving them an incentive to stay in school, as long as their is the chance of immediate income to follow. that program has been working pretty well and i think they need to start expanding it to target young adults who make up the bulk of this society, with 17 being that critical age where they fall into the trap of unemployment, with no skill-sets and no education.
health care: i think its one of the most costly things for the government to handle so they need to start bringing in ngos like doctors without borders and mobile hospitals to operate in these areas.
lastly, while education and health care are key to improving a local economy, there also needs to be a heavy investment in awareness campaigns when it comes to family-planning. the reason it hasn’t work so well before and why it worked pretty well in countries like bangladesh, is because prices were not high enough. ironically, this may be the perfect time to refocus energies in that arena. women with less children on their plate can run businesses, family costs decrease, pressures on the educational and health care systems decrease, population intensity decreases, smaller class sizes, more money to go around, and also the less chance of a kid dropping out to help support his family.
anyways…this would be a start. if it was an ideal world
WOW. Thanks for enabling me to imagine that thirty thousand person neighborhood – in 3D and even an aerial view :) Cool. Oh, and if I squint I can smell Um Foud’s bakery by the way.
Keep pretending it’s an ideal world for a while Nas, what’s next?
back to reality i suppose
That was fast. I get way more levels in second life!
Why so grim?
This is great. I hope to work with you all again soon..collaboration is where it’s at. So many poor, so many hungry who were not poor last year, but this year are. Keep it up, keep up the momentum.
Mais, well said. My family in law live in Hussein and Baqaa camps and from what I saw, people in the camps, in terms of essential lving costs, are not doing as badly as this blog suggests. Sure money is tight, but people aren’t starving. And the children are going to school.
I wish there was something I could do about this.
By the way, I just joined your group on facebook and I've subscribed to the RSS-feed of your blog. Keep up the good work!
Thank you for a “friendly” post about Ramadan. I think it's pretty sad, that wherever I go – I see people saying bad things about us Muslims. Just stop it! Spend time with a Muslim, become a Muslim, read books about the religion of Islam – and learn about it. You can't say bad things about something you don't know anything about. Yeah, sure – some Muslims are terrorists, but the majority of us aren't. Quit the BS!
I just found out that my DISQUS profile is using my old name. Is there anyway you could switch my name to “ramadan” and link to “http://www.ramadanonline.com”? Thanks.
I wish there was something I could do about this.
By the way, I just joined your group on facebook and I've subscribed to the RSS-feed of your blog. Keep up the good work!
Thank you for a “friendly” post about Ramadan. I think it's pretty sad, that wherever I go – I see people saying bad things about us Muslims. Just stop it! Spend time with a Muslim, become a Muslim, read books about the religion of Islam – and learn about it. You can't say bad things about something you don't know anything about. Yeah, sure – some Muslims are terrorists, but the majority of us aren't. Quit the BS!
I just found out that my DISQUS profile is using my old name. Is there anyway you could switch my name to “ramadan” and link to “http://www.ramadanonline.com”? Thanks.
Knowledge gives weight, gives glory to achievement, most people only see the glory, not to weigh the weight! http://www.from-sports.com