January 10th - Small People on Stilts
The circus in the Childhood Voice youth centre and art school.
Exhausted. Today I tied seven thousand* children to stilts, helped them up, walked them round, fended off the hordes of other kids dancing around my feet and their stilt bottoms and tried to remember which order I promised the next few kids a go in. Peat is a superstar. Luis did funny stuff with a didgeridoo and chains.
(* A small exaggeration for dramatic effect.)
One of the boys in the youth centre in the afternoon joined in with my tumbling show, taking a run up for a cartwheel that ended with a jump, landing in the splits, followed by a somersault, landing on his arse. When we left the kids were begging us to come back tomorrow and if not then when? In the morning we had dozens of kids playing parachute games on the roof of the Childhood Voice school. I think that counts as a good day.
It’s interesting having new people around, because they see all the things I’ve stopped noticing, like bombed buildings. We passed the remnants of the Ministries of Industry and Higher Education – you can see how the latter would be an essential military target – and the others were asking what they were. Strange how soon you would forget that bombed buildings weren’t always the backdrop to your life, which I suppose is why it’s so important to bring childhood back to the lives of kids whose entire existence has been war.
Nadeem came by for breakfast. He quit his job and went to university this year but, he says, he wonders whether there’s any point in being a biology student where there is no lab equipment. A couple of months ago, he says, people were torn between wanting to leave Iraq because of all the difficulties and wanting to stay to rebuild the country. Now, he says, people just want to leave. They’re too depressed, too sad, too tired.
Fadhil showed us the primary school near the Korean embassy, next door to his office. Now officially a target, the embassy is surrounded with concrete walls, sandbags and tanks. He acted out what he was saying, the way he always does. “The children used to come along here skipping and singing. Now they creep along with their eyes on the tanks.”
There are a lot of fighter jets overhead tonight. The local power brokers within the Abu Ghraib area have read the report on the health survey we were doing, decided we weren’t from the CIA and welcomed Hekmet home.
(* A small exaggeration for dramatic effect.)
One of the boys in the youth centre in the afternoon joined in with my tumbling show, taking a run up for a cartwheel that ended with a jump, landing in the splits, followed by a somersault, landing on his arse. When we left the kids were begging us to come back tomorrow and if not then when? In the morning we had dozens of kids playing parachute games on the roof of the Childhood Voice school. I think that counts as a good day.
It’s interesting having new people around, because they see all the things I’ve stopped noticing, like bombed buildings. We passed the remnants of the Ministries of Industry and Higher Education – you can see how the latter would be an essential military target – and the others were asking what they were. Strange how soon you would forget that bombed buildings weren’t always the backdrop to your life, which I suppose is why it’s so important to bring childhood back to the lives of kids whose entire existence has been war.
Nadeem came by for breakfast. He quit his job and went to university this year but, he says, he wonders whether there’s any point in being a biology student where there is no lab equipment. A couple of months ago, he says, people were torn between wanting to leave Iraq because of all the difficulties and wanting to stay to rebuild the country. Now, he says, people just want to leave. They’re too depressed, too sad, too tired.
Fadhil showed us the primary school near the Korean embassy, next door to his office. Now officially a target, the embassy is surrounded with concrete walls, sandbags and tanks. He acted out what he was saying, the way he always does. “The children used to come along here skipping and singing. Now they creep along with their eyes on the tanks.”
There are a lot of fighter jets overhead tonight. The local power brokers within the Abu Ghraib area have read the report on the health survey we were doing, decided we weren’t from the CIA and welcomed Hekmet home.