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Zaatari: Thoughts from a Refugee Camp

2016-06-07 · documentary visit · John, Ubay, Aida, Musa Mohammed · 3:30 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Global development · mode: Personal essay · tags: on location, heavy topic, recurring series, guest or collab

John recounts his visit to Jordan's Zaatari refugee camp, where refugees told him their worst struggle is being dehumanized, and argues that human nature is not a fixed force but something we create by how we treat each other.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Greeting; drive from Amman to Zaatari camp (80,000 refugees, mostly children); 15-year-old Ubay's photography class and fear of child labour; overcrowded, underfunded schools

  • ★★ John says that while in Jordan he drove out from Amman to visit the Zaatari refugee camp just south of the Syrian border. — 00:00:00
  • ★★ John says Zaatari is currently home to about 80,000 refugees, most of them children. — 00:00:03
  • ★★ John met three teenage boys in a photography class taught by refugee volunteers; 15-year-old Ubay had dropped out of school to work but joined because he missed learning. — 00:00:09 · education
  • ★★★ Ubay says his biggest fear is child labour: his generation will become more illiterate year by year and be unable to help Syria afterwards. — 00:00:22
  • ★★★ John says economic pressure makes keeping refugee kids in school very hard, worsened by underfunded, overcrowded schools: two shifts, a few hours a day, often over 100 kids per classroom. — 00:00:32 · education

00:00:52 — Aida's family and the barrel bomb that drove them out; John cannot picture it but says we need to know it is real

  • ★ John met Aida, who lives in the camp with five of her children, including twin five-year-olds who found Snapchat filters hilarious. — 00:00:52
  • ★★★ Aida: Asked why she came to Jordan, Aida asks John to picture a barrel bomb falling on his roof and checking whether pieces of flesh in the house are from his family. — 00:00:57
  • ★★ John says he cannot truly picture that: he can try to imagine war and dislocation but does not know what it is like to be a bombed-out 13-year-old who drops out to earn $3 a day. — 00:01:15 · perspective-taking
  • ★★★ John says we cannot imagine those things, but still need to know that they are real and that this is happening. (hedged) — 00:01:37 · perspective-taking

00:01:43 — The camp's vibrant marketplace and pizza; people are complex; refugees' biggest challenge is feeling dehumanized

  • ★★ John says Zaatari also teems with life: its main marketplace sells TVs and solar phone chargers, rents wedding dresses, fixes bicycles and shoes, and has a delivery pizza restaurant. — 00:01:43
  • ★ John jokes that the camp's delivered pizza is phenomenally good, better than any delivered pizza in Indianapolis. (playful) — 00:01:55 · Indianapolis
  • ★★★ John says people and their lives are complex, and refugees told him again and again that a main challenge is feeling dehumanized: distrusted, disbelieved, seen as objects of pity or fear. — 00:02:00

00:02:15 — Musa Mohammed's family: a daughter starting university, hope in education, 'refugees are people'

  • ★★ John visited Musa Mohammed's family, whose 18-year-old daughter was about to begin university; they had a two-storey house and a car in Syria and now have only hope in their children's education. — 00:02:15 · education

  • ★★★ Musa Mohammed's message to people in the US and Europe: refugees are people, and being a refugee does not set him apart from any other human being. — 00:02:30 · United States, Europe

    “refugees are people. And that being a refugee does not distinguish me from any other human being.”

00:02:40 — Pigeons trained by kids; the excuse of 'human nature' and treating 'them' as less than human; human nature is something we create together; sign-off

  • ★★ John saw a flock of pigeons he took for an accident of natural beauty, then learned kids train the pigeons to fly in patterns: an expression of a kid's joy. — 00:02:40
  • ★★ John describes the usual excuse: horror is unfortunate but unfixable 'human nature', and protecting 'ourselves' justifies treating 'them' as less than fully human. — 00:02:57 · othering

  • ★★★ John says Zaatari reminded him that human nature is not just a force acting on us but something we create together in deciding how to treat each other and the world. — 00:03:14

    “Human nature is also something we are creating together, as we decide how to treat each other”

In the description and comments

  • ★ John's description thanks UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, for allowing him to visit Zaatari and for all its work. — video description

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: dehumanization · human nature · othering · refugee · Zaatari refugee camp

Also: People: Aida (refugee interviewee) · Musa Mohammed · Ubay

Organizations: Snapchat

Concepts: child labour · education · perspective-taking

Places: Amman · Europe · Indianapolis · Jordan · Syria · United States

Events: Syrian civil war

Only in the description or credits: Thoughts from Places · UNHCR

Also centred on dehumanization: An Army of Mindless Drones · What Does It Mean to Be Human? · Aida and Majeeda: Thoughts from the Azraq Refugee Camp · The Psychology of Package Thieves · Uncertain and Afraid · Moving to Hope from Hopelessness (3 ways)

Also centred on human nature: Broadly in Favor of Humans

Also centred on refugee: Volunteering (In Your Pants) · THE PROJECT FOR AWESOME 2013 IS UPON US! · Understanding the Refugee Crisis in Europe, Syria, and around the World · The Refugee Crises: Project for Awesome 2015 · Aida and Majeeda: Thoughts from the Azraq Refugee Camp · The Extraordinary Story of Hussam: Teenager, Writer, and Syrian Refugee

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