I have not posted many photos or stories from my time with Zeitouna to Flickr. I guess because most of my more interesting photos came from Istanbul while the better stories came from my time at the Salam school for Syrian refugees. So I share the Istanbul photos here and the stories on Facebook. But that isn't really too fair for my Flickr followers, who if they don't follow me on Facebook (and you are welcome to but look me up by my full name Zebidiah Andrews) have missed many of those stories, the adventures, the philosophizing that has come upon my return and the processing of those experiences.

But perhaps a recap is in order for those who are just now learning of the trip. I traveled to southern Turkey in June with a humanitarian organization called the Karam Foundation. They have a program called Zeitouna that works with a school of Syrian child refugees in the border town of Reyhanli, Turkey. Zeitouna assembles a team of artists, athletic coaches and dentists to travel to this school and use art and athletics to connect with the children and help them learn, play and deal with the trauma they are facing from their violent displacement from Syria.

There are over 400 students at this school. And that is an infinitesimal percentage of the total number of children who are displaced currently.

So I was invited to teach pinhole photography. I fundraised through IndieGogo to pay for all expenses and supplies. I traveled to Turkey with a 100 cardboard boxes, several hundred sheets of Ilford Positive paper and several hundred sheets of cyanotype paper. I ordered chemistry from a shop in Istanbul and had it shipped domestically to the school.

I worked at the school for four days, teaching about 12 classes over those days, each class about 30 students. I would build the cameras out of the cardboard boxes overnight and pre-load them with 4x5 paper. I set up a darkroom in a basement bathroom, which was really just a toilet somebody had slapped plywood walls up around. I had to wad up newspaper and shove it in the cracks between the walls and door to help lightproof the room and then taped up a single safelight to the wall. My workstation was a wooden board propped up on one end by the toilet and a overturned bucket on the other end. Oh yeah, my trays got broke in transit so I scrounged up two bowls that had been used for mixing paint. So I had flakes of brown paint floating in my chemistry. The darkroom measured about 3 feet by 5 feet and it was easily over 100 degrees in that small room, probably about 110. I have no idea what temperature my chemistry ran at, I never checked. But you know what? It worked.

But let me tell you a bit about the children. They were amazing. I have no ties to Syria. I was one of only about two people in the group it seemed that did not have ties, by blood or marriage, to Syria. And truth be told, I knew only vague details about the Syrian conflict before I went. I was happy to help do what I could to improve an awful situation, but my motives weren't political. I have a son. Seven years old. It was hard not to draw a connection between those kids and my own son. And so I went to help them.

And they were amazing. I can only begin to imagine what they have been through, what they have seen and what they have endured. The amount of courage and bravery on display by them, just in continuing to go about life as normally as possible in a chaotic world on its head is incredible.

We arrived on our first morning at the school. We stepped out of our van onto a sun-blasted, dusty hot street in front of a ten foot wall, topped with barbed wire and broken glass. Our group assembled outside the gate, through which we could peek into the courtyard of the school to see the children assembling for their morning celebration. Pretty soon the teachers had the kids singing and clapping, chanting along and laughing and it was about this time they let us into the school grounds. I'll never forget those first looks when the kids saw us coming in. They had been told of us beforehand and were expecting us. So many little faces lighting up even further. Big smiles. Waves. Kids breaking ranks to come over, some of them enthusiastically high-fiving us, some more formally shaking our hands, balanced between formality and delight. Pretty quick we were surrounded. But the teachers quickly got them back into order with more songs. The celebration probably lasted only another five minutes but it was so incredible, it felt much longer. And then the kids were dismissed to file into the school and head for their classes. All of us lined up alongside the stairs heading up to the doors of the school and a countless series of high-fives once again ensued.

It was easily one of the most incredible experiences I have ever been a part of. And perhaps a bit of that comes through in this description, I hope so. But there is more to it. I mean, part of what made it incredible was the contrast. Reyhanli is not a... photogenic place. It is a dusty, worn-down city in the middle of nowhere - except it sits on the edge of a country at war. Its population has doubled in recent years, from something like 20,000 to 40,000 people, the influx being almost all Syrian refugees. There is nothing really wrong with Reyhanli, but it still has a wasteland feel to it. Abandoned buildings, small tent communities, trash, worn-down, the general ominousness that emanates from Syria, a couple of miles away. Dirty, empty streets, barbed wire, hungry-looking stray dogs, unrelenting sun. There is life there, but it feels bleached out in some way. And then there is this school. An oasis in many ways. So much laughter, so many smiles, a steady heartbeat of hope somehow, miraculously. That is what made it all the more incredible, the contrast. And it was a stark one.

And that is what I have for you today.

Tags:   Turkey Salam School Syrian children hope

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I shall warn you before we even begin that the title for this image is highly applicable to the writing to follow. I was interviewed by Fox12 News this morning regarding my story, my trip, my thoughts on my time in Turkey. I think it went well, the proof will be in the tape I suppose, which ought to air in the next 1-2 weeks. Don't worry too much about missing it, I will let you know more when I know more about when it will air. But it seems to have... scraped something a bit raw, or at least put me in a mood to think about the experience and now I have words that need to be excised from my head. I'll do so the way I know best.

It is true, an experience like this changes you. That much I am sure you realize, or have surmised. But those changes aren't always good changes... or at least pleasant ones. I am not sure either of those words are quite as well-chosen as I would like them to be, but they are the two that come readily to mind. Maybe it is because I am dealing with the expectations of others that this trip was this wondrous, fantastic, life-changing experience - this magnificent thing for me. And that is one place where I struggle, because in many ways it was. But in many important ways it was not about that at all. You should keep in mind that I did not go to southern Turkey to take a vacation. I went to work with child refugees fleeing from a war-torn country, sometimes carrying nothing but the emotional trauma invested in them by the horrors that men will inflict upon men (and women... and children). It is one thing, to sit here in the states and read about the revolution in Syria, to read about the horrible, awful scale of the problem. It is then another thing to have a face put to that distant, abstract, awful event - about 400 faces actually, children's faces. That is a very difficult thing to see, but such an important one too.

I have mentioned to a few friends that one of the tough things about coming home after that is everything seems trivial by comparison, which I know is an unfair judgment, because what wouldn't be trivial by comparison to what is happening to men, women and children in Syria? But still, it is frustrating to come back to the self-created and self-indulgent parades of drama and melodrama that we so frequently participate in on a daily basis. Or to the myriad distractions we use to entertain ourselves, that keep us from realizing a potential greater than ourselves. Again, yes, I know this is not an entirely fair judgment but unfortunately nor is it entirely unfair either. Because I have been in a school full of child refugees. I have seen what a difference something as small as my presence there meant. I did something relatively small (for me), which meant traveling half-way around the world, but for those children it might as well have been the whole world because that is what it meant to them. And yes, compared with the grand scale of the whole problem, it was a drop in the bucket. But you don't look at it that way or you will go crazy or do nothing from sheer overwhelming apathy. You look at the smile in front of you and realize on this small scale you have done this grand thing. And then you multiply that by 30 amazing volunteers who have sacrificed in similar ways to achieve the exact same smiling result. Or maybe you multiply it by the 400 children whose lives you are helping to affect. Either way, it rapidly becomes something that words fail to adequately describe and convey, it is something that causes the heart to swell with hope, pride, love even while you are at the edge of a storm of violence and hate, dealing with the aftermath, the jetsam of violent acts committed elsewhere. You compartmentalize this. You have to. It hurt enough as it was to leave the school on my last day, to leave the children, knowing I would be going home to my safe, comfortable ... easy life and they would still be back there in southern Turkey, in limbo, scratching out what existence their parents could put together for them.

Did I mention that all the classes that I worked with that were 10th through 12th grade were all women? You know why? Because the boys had to work. School and education was not a luxury they could afford. It gets worse though because think about the 12th grade women. They are about to graduate. But just what do you think they are going to graduate to? College or university? Not hardly. They speak more English than Turkish. Not to mention they are not even legally in the country and far from being Turkish citizens. How can they possibly even begin to enroll into any sort of higher education. So they go to work I guess, right? What does that mean? Knitting scarves in a factory I suppose. Or working in fields farming. The options are grim. Now imagine this was your daughter, your bright shining hope for the future. You bundled them up, told them they were going on a short trip, it would last a couple of weeks. That was two years ago. There isn't an end in sight. That's a tough thing to think about too.

The truth over there is not pretty at all, it is not glamorous or exciting, it isn't happy. But then again it is, because this child is standing in front of you smiling, happy to see you, excited to see you. You have made his day, his week, perhaps - hopefully - more than that. You did this by giving up so little. You took a couple weeks off of work. You fundraised for a month and a half. You spent 25 hours flying and waiting in airports. A pittance. So little accomplishing so much. And you are surrounded by these other amazing people who have made the same little sacrifice to the same great effect. And this you realize is what thirty motivated people can do. And how desperately it needs to be done.

And this is part of what you carry home. You have seen one face of the problem and you have seen one way to alleviate it. How do you not come home hoping, longing, expecting more of those around you, fairly or not? And if you detect an undercurrent of anger here, that is because there is one. How can a reasonable person not be angry at what is happening in southern Turkey, in Iraq, in Syria, where children and all other good people are forced to live in dark places. Or even be slightly angry that these problems are allowed to persist through the inaction of a majority of people, including people you know and know well.

So this is what I struggle with. I struggle with describing to people something that has to be experienced and cannot appreciably be described. I struggle with being patient with those back home as they engage their own problems or get lost in their own follies, while half a world away there are those in great need. And I struggle with finding and using the right words that may inspire those around me or push buttons (posts like this are not for your entertainment, though I suppose some will use them for little more than that) that will result in further action.

Somewhere around the world I know of 400 children who have the courage to face each day and build what future they can from rubble and waste. Who are we to not be brave enough to help them how we can?

Tags:   Reyhanli Turkey Salam School hope

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So here is what I am posting for the Fourth of July, my country's independence day. I had a bit of an internal debate about it this morning. I have a photo of the Istanbul skyline at twilight with fireworks exploding over the Bosphorous that I thought about posting as well, in place of this image. But I can't really stop thinking about these children today, while I and all my neighbors around me, the city and the state and the country are filling the day with celebrations of freedom and independence, I think back on these children, whom I spent a week with not too long ago. I think about how they have been forced to flee their own country for fear of violence; violence committed not just by revolutionary fighters, or insurgents but their own government. I think about stories I heard of neighborhoods being bombed by government helicopters. I think about stories I heard from people who had family members abducted by the police and disappear for months... or forever. I think about how they struggle for basic rights, like an education... or the right to be happy.

And yes, it is unfair to think about them and then look around at my fellow Americans sitting around their barbecues with their beers and fireworks. It isn't a fair comparison. We are so rich with freedom we are bound to take it for granted. How can you expect a man to appreciate every drop of water when he has an ocean to swim in?

But the truth is, our luxury is a testament to something we have done right, right? As much as we complain about our politicians and our government, as imperfect as they are, they have done something right, because look at us, look at what we have to celebrate and enjoy. And if you don't believe me on that, make a trip to Reyhanli in southern Turkey, spend some time with some children who are struggling to scratch out an existence as refugees from their own country. Have them teach you what it means to appreciate freedom and the surety of a nation to call your own. I cannot count how many times I saw the message "I love Syria" printed by the children on their transparencies. When presented with the opportunity to create something, or to record what they were thinking or feeling, they printed messages of hope and love for their home country - a country they long to see free one day, but is currently anything but. It will make you think and feel a bit more strongly about your own freedoms than you did previously. And that is not a bad thing, not one bit.

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So, I am home again, safe and sound. It is good to be back on familiar streets under familiar skies (and clouds). It is good to be home... then again, it is good to have a home.

Naturally, lots of people are asking me, How was the trip? Oh, what a question. It is a frustrating one to answer. Part of me doesn't want to answer at all, that same part of me doesn't want to write what I am now writing. It doesn't want to talk about the experience. In part because how can I possibly sum up what I saw and felt and experienced in a handful of humble words. It won't do the whole thing justice, not at all. Or worse, it might belittle the experience, if that makes any sense to you. That same part of me isn't yet done processing the whole thing, making sense of it all. The perspective of the world I was given by this trip has raised lots of questions, which I have still to figure out an answer (and to some of them probably will never figure out a sufficient answer). But I understand the value in talking about this, writing about it, sharing the perspective with those around me, granting them a bit of the experience I was so lucky to have had myself, because it will help educate and evolve our way of looking at the world.

But that question, How was the trip? That is a frustrating one because unless you want to go have coffee and sit down with me for three hours how can I possibly answer that? What do you expect me to say? The trip? It was great! Or, lots of fun, thanks for asking. Or, it was quite the experience. Or, it was tough but rewarding. We ask this question so casually, but in this case a casual answer isn't at all appropriate.

But how was the trip? I'll do my best to answer that question again, here for those of you curious to know.

The trip was really two trips: my time with the Syrian children in southern Turkey and the few days I had to myself in Istanbul. The former was the real trip, the latter a chance to decompress and assimilate the experiences I had into what I knew. The trip to Reyhanli to work with the Syrian children was difficult. It was hot and exhausting. I would finish my days physically and emotionally spent. It was heart-wrenching and heart-warming. I saw children thrown into awful circumstance still full of life, laughter and love. I saw children who have seen firsthand their country violently torn apart by the people entrusted to care for it, still proclaim their love for Syria. I had children running up to shake my hand and high-five me, me a complete stranger to them - a foreigner. Yet they not only trusted me immediately, they were happy to see me and the group I was with. They jumped into the activities we brought with us: our boxing, music, storytelling, drawing, and photography with a gusto matched by children anywhere else in the world. And yet there were wounds and scars. One girl missing a leg. Another boy with bloody scabs covering recent wounds. A young girl writing the world Syria with a bloody pool leaking from it. Another boy drawing bloody stick figures of people being bombed by cartoon airplanes. A teacher who had seen 20 of his students killed in a chemical gas attack on their school in Syria.

The school was an incredible place. Hundreds of refugee children brought together to learn and be children, run by teachers and administrators who were refugees themselves. Supported by donations (most of which come from the Canadian government). The courage and perseverance on display was humbling. These were adults who themselves had been traumatized, were still being traumatized dealing their students' trauma and yet they came to the school every day and gave it 100%, they danced and sang and laughed with the children - all for the children.

I spent four days at the school teaching. I worked with 2-4 classes a day, generally about 30 students a class. My morning classes were younger children, grades 1-4. With them I did sunprints. We would either go out into the grounds around the school and collect branches or leaves we could lay on our cyanotype paper, or I would have them draw on transparency material that they could lay over the paper. The afternoon classes were older students. They used cardboard box pinhole cameras that I would assemble the night before back in my hotel room, or sitting in the shade at the school between classes, and we would make 10 second exposures. Then using a small darkroom I built in a basement water closet, we would process the paper from the cameras. The conditions were less than ideal. My makeshift darkroom wasn't completely dark, but it worked. It was also unbearably hot. Sweat would constantly drip off of me while I was in there loading cameras or processing paper. I had to limit my time in there to 10-15 minute intervals just because I would overheat and start to feel the effects, or because sweat would drip off onto the paper I was trying to work with. But it worked. We developed paper in there, and the students got to see it in process as I could take 2-3 into the darkroom with me at a time.

I drank unbelievable amounts of water. I came back to the hotel everyday caked in dried sweat. I would rub parts of my face raw from wiping sweat and accumulated salt from it so many times over the course of a day. Not to mention the area we were in was conservative, so we wore pants the whole the time, no shorts and certainly no tank tops.

But it was worth it. How can I not say that? What is it being a bit hot compared to what these children dealt with? And that was tough. Sure, it was great to see them laugh and have fun, it was even better to be a part of the reason why they were having fun. But it was so difficult to look at them and not think about leaving and the fact that they would still be there, in the same situation. Neither here nor there. Refugees from their own country, illegally in another country. This was felt the most strongly by the older girls.

All of my classes beyond the 9th grade were young women. I did not see a single boy in grades 10-12. They didn't go to school, they worked. But what of the 12th grade girls? They are on the cusp of graduating from this school, to what? Where will they go next? They don't know. Many speak more English than they do Turkish. They do not have Turkish citizenship or any other legal documentation. It is not like they can go on to college or any other higher education. So what is left? They don't know. Manual labor jobs knitting scarves in a factory? That about sums it up for many of them. And that about sums up the frustration of being there to help. It feels like such a small scale to be contributing on in the face of the humongous issue. It can be depressing, even amongst the uplifting little examples of humanity all around you. But you tell yourself that that is how big problems are tackled, through little contributions. And that helps, a bit.

An experience like that gives you a great deal of perspective on the life and the world. It makes you realize how trivial some of the things we get hung up on really are. I am going to have less patience now for people who use the detestable phrase "first world problem". We take for granted just how lucky many of us are. Even in Istanbul, a whole other world from Reyhanli or Syria for that matter, people there are affected. I rented a flat from a pair of brothers, pretty awesome and generous people themselves. I enjoyed spending time with them and they invited me to an amazing breakfast with friends the Sunday I was there. The last night I spent in Istanbul I was sitting in their living room watching the World Cup with them and talking about random things. The owner of the flat admitted to me that he didn't think the world was beautiful, that it was an ugly place full of violence and death and all manner of unjust things. I empathized with him, it would be tough not to feel like that living in a place where you are surrounded on all sides by such events, from the fighting in Syria to the fighting in Iraq, Israel, Ukraine... Seeing and hearing about fleeing families and tent cities and atrocities committed. Surrounded by that it would be tough to see the world as a beautiful place.

That can be tough to balance. But as I pointed out to him, there were lots of beautiful things in the world, they just tended to be smaller but more numerous. I mentioned the breakfast we had all had together. He agreed that was a beautiful thing.

And that is how that works. The ugly awful things do tend to be big. War. Genocide. Oppression. But while they have scale, they are outnumbered by children smiling, or friends and family sharing moments together, or a group of 34 volunteers traveling from around the world to help a school of strangers. And these beautiful little things add up to give us renewed hope.

So the trip? It was good. I am glad I went. I learned a lot, and took a lot from it. I have a different perspective, or rather a new facet of perspective to add to that which I already had. I don't know how to describe everything I saw, or felt. I don't even know if it makes any difference to do so, but I would like to think that it could. There are some big problems out there. These children were just one tip of one iceberg, and they were some of the luckier ones. It is going to take lots of little contributions to help balance out the larger issue.

But I am thankful for all that I got to see, especially those gems of moments with children like Ahmed, watching him excitedly make his sunprint and then proudly display it. Teaching others how to create for themselves is grand under normal circumstances. It was indescribably better in this circumstance.

And so despite having written all of this, which for many of you more than suffices to answer the question, I think the word I would feel the most comfortable using to answer, How was the trip?

Indescribable.

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When I learned about the makeup of the students I would be working with: 300-400 total, ages ranging from 3rd grade to 12th grade; I had to make a decision on whether I thought it feasible to teach not only so many students pinhole photography (along with the making and loading of the cameras, and the processing of the paper, all within 45 minute classes) and whether pinhole was appropriate for the younger students. So I decided to keep the pinhole for just the older students, grades 6 and up. With the younger kids I took cyanotype paper for making sunprints. Then I also took along overhead transparencies and markers. Those children then could draw or write on the transparency material to create their own negatives and then the class could go outside and expose those negatives onto the paper. A couple of quick reflections on this process.

1) The sun in southern Turkey was amazingly intense. I had tested the exposure on the paper back home in Portland on a perfectly clear and full-on sunny summer day and arrived at times of 5 minutes or so. In Turkey those exposures were about 60 seconds.

2) One of the children's favorite things to put on their transparencies was either their name in English or the word "Syria" in English. Many of these children couldn't write in English, so we would write Syria on the board for them to copy, or they would call us over to spell their names for them in English so they could write them down themselves.

3) I quickly learned the Arabic word for "another".

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