A Volunteers Perspective

It was the end of January and 2015 was still new and fresh. Immediately I knew this was something I wanted to do…BADLY! Having followed Dumyé, a beautiful little business where organic, hand crafted rag dolls are created, for just over a year, I had fallen ever so slightly in love with everything this little company represented! I mean, could the dolls be any more gorgeous!? What I was yet to learn was how much the dolls would mean to 261 orphans and in turn how much the dolls would mean to me. 

Four days later, I kissed my own precious daughter good bye at Dubai airport and set off, Beirut bound. I honestly don’t know what I expected, but I just knew it was something I had to be a part of.

The first morning I was met by Nicola who works for START. A charity based in Dubai who pairs companies just like Dumyé to organisations who benefit the most from this type of project, as well as Nicola's Beirut based colleague Raji. Raji is one of the most generous souls I have ever had the pleasure of meeting.

As we drove through the streets of Beirut, chatting in the car, I couldn’t help but take in the beauty of what was once a very grand city, flanked by the coast. This was my first visit to Beirut which had been likened to Paris and I can see why. Grand old buildings, tree lined boulevards and an air of nostalgic opulence…except Paris isn’t scarred with the evidence of war. Bullet holes in walls, heavy military presence and barbed wire fences were a startling reminder that this country is still very much at war. So very different from my own peaceful world.

(PICS FROM WS.01)

The first workshop was held in a day centre for approximately fifty street children of Lebanese and Syrian decent. The day centre was in an old building, a room on the top floor, where the lift was broken and there were no lights in the stairwell to light the way. I soon come to realise that as basic as the place looked, the day centre was a safe haven for those children. A place where, for a few precious hours, the door was open for them to be educated, to be safe, but most importantly to be children. 

As soon as we walked into the small room it actually erupted! Fifty plus children cheering, stamping their little feet feet and clapping their hands and this carried on for over twenty or so minutes as Raji whipped them into a frenzy! Raji visits the centre once a week and It was obvious that the children absolutely adored him. I have no doubt he is the highlight to their week. I was grateful for that immense, deafening noise, that disruption...because once the room had settled and Raji and Sahar (Dumyés founder) started to speak to the group about the workshop and the dolls, my conscious mind crept forward and i started to scan the room. I couldn’t help but notice that most of the children were under the age of seven. A big majority were as young as four years old. Old clothes, dirty faces, hands that looked like they belonged on the body of a fifty year old. What had these little souls seen? What had they been subjected too? What abnormal had started to become their normal? I stood in the corner of that room, little faces looking at me that I couldn’t communicate with as i don’t speak a word of Arabic and I forced myself to smile, the biggest smile…because tears were forming and waves and waves of emotions were consuming me and pity was not what I wanted those little loves to feel from me. I couldn't lose it. I had to channel my sadness for them, into giving them something. Something just for them. I smiled so much my face actually hurt.

(DRAW)

The workshops were broken down into three stages. First the children were given a sheet of paper with the outline of a doll. The children were asked to design their doll, for it to be someone they aspired to be, someone they loved or someone that loved them. Pens and pencils were placed into grubby hands and the designing began. Once this stage was complete the children were asked to write on a small piece of fabric a wish, their wish, which was to be sewn into a small pocket at the back of their doll for safe keeping. The final stage was to select fabric and make clothes for their dolls.

(PURPOSE POCKET)

With a career in design spanning 15 years I was in my element! This was something I could do and do well! Picking colours, selecting fabrics, cutting, sewing and choosing outfit styles for their dolls! Never exchanging words, just actions and somehow managing to figure it all out. In the chaos of the workshop one little girl, sat with her doll unopened. We couldn’t figure out why? Had she not understood what Raji had told her? Was she unhappy? After some convincing she explained that she didn’t want to take her doll out of the clear plastic wrapping. She didn’t want to draw on it. She liked it just the way it was. Clean and brand new and hers. She had not been given anything new for three years. Three years is 50% of your life when you are only six. It made me think of all the unopened gifts my daughter still had left over from Christmas because she had received so many. How could the imbalance between one little girls life and another be so enormous?

Day two and three took us to a camp based inside Beirut where roughly 20,000 registered Syrian refugees were living. I was told in reality, the number is more like 50,000 refugees. The 200 plus children that we were going to meet with over the next two days had been forced to flee Syria mostly due to chemical warfare that had been dropped on their homes causing either one or both of their parents to be killed. Can you actually imagine? I can’t…

The refugee camp was not as I expected. It wasn't a camp at all. It was more like being in India. The buildings were badly built, stacked flimsily on top of one another, where no regulations or safety had been put in place. Where people, in small, cramped and chaotic conditions, were just trying to survive in a foreign land. What added to the chaos of the landscape were the miles and miles of twisted and knotted electricity cables that hung overhead like a scene from The Matrix. I later learnt that thousands of people were electrocuted every year because the government did not have the money to make the cables safe. Rain was now their new enemy.

By now Sahar and us team of volunteers had figured out how best to run the workshops, so we could give each child as much time and attention as they deserved to make the dolls they wanted. The intensity and chaos of the workshops would put me into ‘doing mode’ hand sewing mini trousers and crafting doll sized kaftans, that I was momentarily distracted from those small bodies, with eyes that hid the most devastating experiences, and stop my mind from repeating the obvious truth of ‘what awful things have these little souls been subjected to’? For most of the time I could be tricked into believing I was in any normal class of eager and excited children. But reality was forced when one little boy drew bullet holes all over his doll, and another little boy who just didn’t want to get involved at all. He was rather displaced from the group and when asked what wish he wanted to place in the pocket of his doll, it was to simply ‘go home’ - home being Syria. That was the one and only thing he said throughout the entire duration of the workshop.

Most of the children we met with, willingly got involved and were genuinely happy - excited smiling faces who appeared enormously grateful. What they had been through I will never, ever know. The age of the children ranged from 4 - 14 years, with the majority being 5-8 years old. I found the smaller children easier to work with. At one point a scuffle broke out in the workshop between two of the children. A stronger, more dominant child had decided he wanted the clothes of a doll that belonged to another child (all too common behaviour in class rooms the world over) but with the smaller children I could wrap my arms around their small bodies, pull them up close and place them on my lap. Wipe their tears away and promise to make the situation better. Five minutes later all was right with the world as the cutting and sewing continued. The older children were not so easily convinced. Children old enough to remember what they had been through. Old enough for their experiences to to have caused life long damage. Old enough to have lost their trust in anything good. 

During three days over 260 children attended the workshops. Dumyé gave each and everyone of those children something positive to focus on. You can argue that those children needed new clothes, a decent bed to sleep in and food in their bellies. But an equally important lesson I learnt was Dumyé provided the opportunity for all of those children to just simply be children. I have no doubt that thanks to Dumyé 260 happy and positive memories were created over those three days, even if the dolls created disappear, the memories will stay. 

As I flew out of Beirut a piece of my heart remained and it will remain there forever. It is very rare that you get the opportunity to step outside the comforts of your own privileged life, the life that you take for granted and to physically touch the hand of, stroke the face of, cradle the little body of, watch the beaming smiles of, ruffle the hair of, be the cause of the the laughter of little beings who deserve so much more. 

When I check on my own little girl as she sleeps in her bed at night, her peaceful, innocent face and her arms wrapped around her Dumyé doll, I hope that another less fortunate child maybe doing the same.

I would like to take the opportunity to thank Sahar at Dumyé for not only creating such beautiful dolls through her business, but for giving time, experience and happiness to children who have so very little. Lastly I can't thank Sahar and Dumyé enough for providing me with such a wonderful experience and for letting me 'play a part'.

Keep up the amazing work!

Lots of love

Michelle xx