Clothes for the refugees

While we were there, we visited some of the people were trying to help.  One group of 45 families lived in an abandoned hotel, a Russian project halted mid-construction when Azerbaijan gained its independence from Russia.  It was a concrete structure with holes where the windows, stair wells and lift shafts would have been.  Barriers had been erected by Childrens Aid Direct to stop people falling into the holes (that children often did anyway).  [I did have some photos, but they've gone astray - anyone reading this who has got some, or even got mine, please let me know]

The temperature there ranges from -15 degrees Celsius in the winter to over 40 degrees in the summer.  Some of the windows and doors had been blocked by cardboard, plywood and corrugated iron to provide some shelter.  

There was one standpipe outside, put there by Unicef, where the families washed themselves, their clothes, their cooking utensils and their food.  Each family had two or three children.  Chickens ran about; there was an ancient truck in the yard, collapsed with age and rust and filled with straw; and there was a cow in a make-shift pen, made from a bamboo-type sticks. 

We handed out clothing.  This was perhaps the most powerful moment for us all.  Men and women cried together and many couldn't stay long in the room where we worked.  

But you know what?  I have never seen such happy children.  Given the conditions they were in, it was extraordinary.  I particularly remember playing football with them, taking their photos (that they ALL wanted to be in), and watching them play with bits of wire with wheels attached to the bottom and the top fashioned into a kind of steering wheel.  Sobering.

And when I came home, I saw a teenager on the TV complaining about the conditions in her hostel - it didn't have 'this' and they needed 'that'.  Hmmm, I thought, a little trip to Az would soon stop her whining.  But then, I thought, it's not her fault - she doesn't know how lucky she is.

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