“We choose our next world through what we learn in this one. Learn nothing, and the next world is the same as this one, all the same limitations and lead weights to overcome.”
― Richard Bach, Jonathan Livingston Seagull
WE’RE JUST AFTER YOUR LAUGHTER
“Yella yella!” we shout, running wildly, madly, sometimes accompanied by a trumpet, through the camps, gathering up the children. “Come, come!” we are saying. “It doesn’t matter who you are, where you are from, we are here to extend our love and bring you joy”.
“Duella!” we call, signalling for the children to hold hands and join us in a big circle. And then starts the majnoon (Arabic for ‘crazy’), the silliness, the over-exaggerated clowning moves and shouts which the children copy, loving the familiarity and structure that the Seagulls have worked so hard to build. In coco-loco style, we pretend to be robots, ballerinas, chickens… “Mohammed, are you a ballerina?!” “YES!” “Ah, BRAVO!” we laugh, and applaud.
FE!
FE FI!
FE, FI…FO!
They copy noisily and laugh.
And then, “Kumala kumala kumala vista!” The kids repeat it back. “Yeah-e yeah-e yeah la vista!” We circle through a few songs. Sometimes a song is a good way to get a specific child back into the circle, when they’ve walked away crying or bored, but you just know that they won’t be able to resist the temptation of chanting angrily, playfully, LOUDLY, to release some pent up emotion.
Games are also great fun. We play ‘sneaky sneaky’ (Grandmother’s footsteps) and ‘monsters’ (British Bulldog). The little ones don’t fully understand, but love to be carried as you run across the game with them. Sometimes we play with the hoops, in a game not unlike musical chairs. They love the parachute, especially when they are chosen to stand on top, or to run underneath. They particularly like to shake it as wildly as possible with all the plastic balls on top. Their smiles as the balls go flying everywhere are so beautiful.
Sometimes we do free circus play, setting up stations for stilts, hoops, plate spinning, tight wire and slack line. Other times we did sumo wrestling (with special costumes!) or bouncy castle, or a cinema night in the big top.
Twice a week we do the school run, taking the children who are housed in one particular hotel to a local community centre where they are schooled by Greek volunteers. We sing all the way, and the girls like to pick the flowers and talk about the flowers they have at home in Syria, and how they name them in Arabic.
One night we collaborate with an NGO in a bar in Ioannina. We do a clowning magic show which has the children (and adults!) who are watching howling with laughter. Feeling the community spirit alive and well, with integration between refugees from old camps and the Greek community is the most wonderful feeling in the world. It’s what I want to see everywhere. No more borders, no more divisions.
Seagulls do 2-3 sessions a day, travelling between camps in between, reacting and responding quickly to changes and needs. The project currently covers the camps in the Epirus region, which accommodate a varying number of people from various nations, in very varying conditions. Soon the emptier camps will refill from the islands, where conditions are (almost unimaginably) worse.
There’s a commonality in that all the children are vulnerable in a unique way, and all of them require input. The Seagulls are on the front line, working tirelessly to ensure that essential needs (and let’s be frank about this: essential rights, as afforded by the United Nations to all children everywhere under the most widely ratified treaty in the world) are met through play, performing arts, circus and music.
BEARING WITNESS TO TRAUMA
I thought nothing would prepare me for the first day of walking up the slope into the first camp we visited, but it was nothing like I’d imagined. There were simply lots of smiling people, lots of tiny children running, arms stretched out, ready to fling themselves on us for hugs. They didn’t know me, but they knew my costume of stripes. A constant identity marker in a troubled and turbulent time.
You don’t look at those children and see images of war-torn Syria or Afghanistan. You don’t see them running and imagining them fleeing the atrocities they sure have fled. You see them, and you see little humans. Little humans who want to hang from your braces, waistcoat and pantaloons; who just want to get into a circle to sing and play.
Of course though, you have to process. The Seagulls are there for a reason, and this isn’t ‘just’ play. This is life-changing, life-saving, life-affirming play, which the children must have for their psychological welfare. Without it these children are missing out on a childhood; a childhood which has already mostly been torn from beneath them.
I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t think about what these people have endured. I’d be lying if I didn’t say I closed my eyes at night and thought of happy things, unrelated to war and violence. Imagined images of what these people have witnessed, especially the children, did intrusively come into my mind.
One night I got extremely upset. I felt the burden of everything weighing on my shoulders. How could I fix it? How could I be in Greece for such a short time and hope everything would be better? I really felt upset, my empathy in overdrive, fearing that everything I have been through to recover from PTSD would be waiting for them too. There is no denying that that recovery is hard. There is no shying away from the fact that to recover from trauma, you have to confront what scares and haunts directly, head on. The thought of these wonderful children having to also go through this was causing me so much pain. My heart felt so heavy and I couldn’t stop crying.
I chatted with other Seagulls, and they had such wonderful perspective. These children have support, including the Seagulls but also psychological input in the camps, and I was reminded that my passion and my commitment will continue as long as this work is needed. I will never give up on those children, even if I am afar. I will always thinking of their smiles, and think greatly of their potential. These children know injustice. They face injustice every day, even on the camps where they are in (relative) safety. They know how it feels when things aren’t fair. They may not know the best ways to deal with their emotions surrounding it yet, but they will. They will become powerful people; future leaders. We just have to invest in their lives, and commit to never, ever giving up. These children don’t just deserve better. They deserve the best.
I would personally like to thank The Flying Seagull Project for guiding me on my own empowering journey – from victim to empowered survivor. I would like to thank the wonderful team I worked with for their unwavering support throughout the time I was in Greece, and to the whole team I trained with in London. I want to thank, too, everybody who contributed financially to allow me to fly to the nest.
“Don’t believe what your eyes are telling you. All they show is limitation. Look with your understanding. Find out what you already know and you will see the way to fly.”
― Richard Bach, Jonathan Livingston Seagull
If you would like to support The Flying Seagull Project you can donate here.
Be the change you wish to see in the world… Be a part of the laughter revolution which is slowly but surely going to save the world.
Love love love love love.
ruth emily 