These are the water tanks we told you about in an earlier post. We need to get about 15 more, so please help us get clean drinking water to the Syrian refugees.

Here is a list of items that you can donate to SCM that we will send to Jordan, either with a mission or with people we know that are traveling there over the next couple months. We are trying to make up little packages of toys, personal care items, etc. in plastic zip lock baggies. For example, a packet for a little girl might have some barrettes or hair clips, children’s nail polish, a hair scrunchie, stickers, and lip gloss. A lot of the items we are in need of, especially kids toys can be found at garage sales or the dollar stores. Please keep in mind that the items must be washed and clean, no used clothing or blankets can be accepted.

• Travel size toothpaste
• Adult and children size toothbrushes
• q-tips
• Disposable razors (not for the kids, but they are needed!)
• Travel size shampoos
• Neosporin (or similar antibacterial ointment) in small tubes
• Vaseline in small tubes
• Hair clips, scrunchies, barrettes for little girls, lip gloss, sunglasses
• Stickers
• Small stuffed animals
• Small or mini containers of Play Dough (these were reported to be on sale at a dollar store for $1 for a 4 pack of small cans)
• Coloring books, small packages of crayons (we don’t need the 64 color pack, but the smaller ones like the 8 or 10 pack is perfect), color pencils, fun pencil sharpeners
• Face paints and finger paints
• Small toy cars, robots, animals, etc
• Vitamins (please check to make sure they don’t have gelatin in them)

These items can be sent to our office in Seattle and we will get them to Jordan. Call us with any questions about what to donate, and remember, we can always take cash donations over the website and we will buy the items we need.

Thank you!

 

Today we are at the Jordan Women’s Union (JWU) Clinic in Irbid for the day. We arrived in the morning and everyone and the locals started helping with unloading the vans and setting up a room for the pharmacy, then rooms for OBGYN, eye exams, dentistry, general medicine, dermatology, and a corner for the humanitarians to read to the kids, do face painting, play games, etc, and a special area for teaching hygiene and teeth brushing for the kids.

For the first time on the mission we have a handyman, Matt, who came in with tools and started to evaluate the building and their needs for maintenance and repairs, and starts to work. Our missions are able to offer more and more services! It’s great to see them evolve like this.

I am sitting in the room we have designated for the dentist and watching the doctors and the people using whatever they can to give the best service in unusual conditions. Just yesterday they were working in a tent with little water, using lawn chairs for the patients and little paper cups to spit in. The dentist is using a big doll to show people how to brush their teeth and is laughing and playing with the kids.

Our drivers that we have on the mission are usually the same people each time and know the routine. The local teenagers are wanting to help and hand out things and do whatever we need – they remember us from previous missions, too. Irbid has the largest population of Syrian refugees (not in camps) since it is so close to the border. Most of them are living in apartment buildings with 10 or 20 family members in one room and no furnishings besides their mattresses on the floors but they do have walls and a bathroom. So much better off then the people we saw yesterday.

It seems after coming for the last two years the situation is not getting better and we have more and more people needing help.

Left today for another new camp called Jaser Camp . I thought the camp we were at in the beginning was bad, but honestly this one is worse – NO WATER TANKS. They carry water in large gas containers for drinking and cooking. They really have nothing for bathing, washing, etc.

I have no idea how they can live like this . Our group was there for 7 hours and when we used wet wipes on our hands and faces it was brown from all the dust. The weather has been very hot and with the wind blowing it’s like a sand storm. After the mission we all got back to the hotel to wash ourselves and clothes  – that was a luxury.

There are about 259 people in Jaser Camp .

We saw 220 in our clinics
48 eye glasses we given out
64 in the dental patients

We distributed clothes, baby formula, diapers, toys, candy, and school supplies to all.

I went out in the afternoon with one of the drivers, Ahmed, to the factory that makes water tanks and ordered 10 medium size about 2 1/4 cubic meters in volume. They will be delivered on Thursday, and we also need to get faucets and some concrete blocks that they will sit on.

We will call the water company and get water delivered weekly . I also saw that they had no chairs so we stopped by a shop and bought 30 child-sized chairs and 20 adult-sized chairs and got them delivered. They were so happy – especially the women.

The people were so nice and welcoming and so appreciated what we were doing.

We left our hotel this morning and went to the Malki/SCM Children’s Center, the trauma center that we opened last year. The kids were there to greet everyone when we arrived, and so was our resident local doctor, Dr. Shafik. The volunteers on the mission wanted to play with the children, so they got started on face painting, which was a big hit. The kids wanted a Syrian flag or their names or names of parents or friends and family that were killed. One of our nurses noticed a child, about 7 years old, that stayed away from the group. He had no expression, no smile, just aloof from the rest of the children. She tried to get him to interact but with no luck. It turned out that he was one of the newer students that has been coming and he had lost his brothers and sisters in a missile strike.

We left the center and headed to our new clinic in the Salt region of Jordan. The mayor of this small village has allowed us to use the school building to work out of. After arriving we all started to unpack and set up different rooms for the pharmacy, general medicine, pediatrics, ophthalmology, dental, and a space to handle humanitarian goods. Our team saw a total of about 300 patients. The dental team examined 53 patients and half without electricity. One of the dentist said she had to do 7 extractions on an 8 year old. Glasses were handed out to 47 patients. We also distributed 500 diapers, 250 cans of baby formula, lots of toys, crayons, pencils, pens, play dough, clothes for children and adults, paints, coloring books, and balloons.

While the medical team was working a couple of the humanitarians started working on making a sand box for the Malki/SCM Center. This will be used for sandplay therapy, a method of treatment for traumatized children.

The people were mostly from Deraa in Syria and we had a mixture of Syrians and Jordanians that had inter-married. The mayor of the village had gotten the locals to make us huge trays of mansaf (traditional Jordanian dish) made from rice, yogurt, lamb, and nuts on top. This was a nice surprise after a long day – 9 hours of work, non-stop!

Off early tomorrow for another clinic.

We left the hotel at 9am and headed to the same camp we were at yesterday – Camp Sahab. The physicians still had to see patients and we needed to distribute humanitarian goods.

It was an incredible and rewarding day, we got so much done. We saw a total of 600 patients in the two days, we built 4 outhouses, planted a vegetable garden and an herb garden. We distributed over 400 cans of baby formula today and 200 cans yesterday. The amount of diapers was over 1000 in all sizes for infants, toddlers, as well as teenagers and adults.

While we were there, a group of Korean tourists saw the camp and stopped to see it. The villagers brought them to me to see what they wanted. It seems that they were just wandering around and wanted to check out the camp. I had to ask them to leave unless they wanted to work and help us, or they could donate money to the camp to help the residents get food and other supplies they needed. They left.

The people of the camp were so friendly and so happy we were there and wanted to know when we would be back. It was hard to leave, and many in our group got attached to the children.

SCM will have our local volunteers in Jordan go back during Ramadan and deliver food for all the families on a weekly basis.

The people in the camp are well organized. They have elected a mayor, and he is in charge. He helped us coordinate the distribution of the baby formula – he knows all the families in the camp and the ages of all the family members, so he would call out the names of the family and they would get what they needed from us.

Whatever we bring in or we buy we distribute directly to the people who need it, just like in this case. That way we know the food, supplies, etc, go into the right hands.