Online Newsletter September-October 2001
Puppets Add a Splash of Color in the Dreary Lives of Kids in a Refugee Camp
An Azeri Take on 'My Three Sons'		In the Bilasuvar refugee camps in near Baku, Azerbaijan, puppetry adds beauty and meaning to the lives of refugee children, a stark contrast to the bleak mud and brick homes in their tree-less environment. Children who otherwise have no outlet for their minds turn familiar proverbs into puppet plays, and in the process learn skills they can take into adulthood. Children learn how to work together and how to see a project through from start to finish. They also develop abstract thinking skills and artistic talent -- all skills that are otherwise missing in the lives of these children.
From A to z: Facts on Azerbaijan Demystifying Language for Kids		In the recently concluded pilot program, three women were trained in puppetry arts. These women then taught puppetry skills to 13 children ages 10 to 12. Teachers created lesson plans and assigned homework to children, who wrote stories based on familiar proverbs, designed and built their own puppets and performed the plays at a puppet festival in September.	Young puppeteers display their works.
President's Letter Archive of Newsletters		Based on the successful outcome of the pilot, Mr. Felder will begin three-month puppet labs in October to train nine puppet teachers and 135 refugee children within the first year. In addition to improving the lives of the children, the program provides meaningful jobs in a country where unemployment is high. The puppet training labs add color and creativity to the lives of children living in a stark and dreary environment. Children in the region typically receive food and clothing but little to challenge their minds and stimulate their spirits.
		Azeri children watch the plays with fascination.	Schools are small, unheated and poorly equipped. Most families have moved from tents to simple one-room houses but share latrines with hundreds of others. The camps were created in 1991 for the nearly one million Azeris who were displaced from their homeland by Armenian invaders. The program was created by Mr. Felder, who lives in Azerbaijan and has more than 15 years of experience in theater and puppetry.
		He co-directed and co-produced the puppet play on fear and grief for Turkish earthquake victims in concert with the Azerbaijan State Puppet Theater and Millennium. Working with him is Xoraman Acbaravar, recently highlighted on Azerbaijan television as a rising Azeri artist for her work in puppetry. Says Mr. Felder, "Sometimes we see a refugee child as another mouth to feed. We are seeing these children as mouthpieces of cultural preservation and achievement." Note: Millennium is seeking funds for the puppetry program. The cost of each three-month lab averages $9,000. --Ed Fowler An Azeri Take on 'My Three Sons' One of the children's plays explores the strength gained when individuals work together for a common purpose. Father: Hey children, listen to me. I am very old and I'm going to die very soon. But I want to know that when I am gone you will carry on and survive after me.
		1st Son: Father, I will be strong. 2nd Son: I think that I am strong too. I will be all right, Father. 3rd Son: I am quite certain I will live on after you die. I can do anything myself. Father: I see you are all very strong indeed. But you need to learn one thing. Each of you take a stick from this pile of sticks and try to break it.	Children tell well-known parables through puppets they have created
		The father has each son break a stick, which they easily do. He then asks each son to break a pile of sticks, which they are unable to do. From A to z: Facts on Azerbaijan
		Azerbaijan became an independent republic after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. While rich in petroleum reserves, the country has yet to realize its potential wealth from this undeveloped resource. Much will depend on world oil prices, the location of new pipelines in the region and Azerbaijan's ability to attract foreign investors. Since 1992, military forces have occupied land caught up in a territorial dispute with Armenia. Nearly one million Azeris, or 12 percent of the population, became refugees or internally displaced persons because of the war. Theater in a European sense appeared in Azerbaijan only with the rise of modern literature in the mid-19th century. Since then, Azerbaijan has gained the distinction of being a pioneer of the theater in the Turkic world.
		Demystifying Language for Kids --Reducing the Shock as Salvos Roar On her way to Yemen, where she has lived for more than 20 years, Brenda Cox stopped off in Amman, Jordan, to learn Arabic. An instructor there uttered some words that would echo in her mind for years to come: "Most of culture shock is language shock." Perhaps she was not easily shocked because words, even strange ones, don't intimidate her. "I'm fascinated by languages," she said. "I love them." As her children grew, however, she observed how her own kids and others reacted to language, and particularly to unfamiliar tongues. On vacations at home in the United States, she noted that children from more and more foreign cultures were entering classrooms and that American youngsters had little to guide them in dealing with their new classmates and the unfamiliar sounds they made. So she wrote Who Talks Funny? A Book About Languages for Kids. She spent about six years writing the book. It does not discuss various terms for "anti-aircraft fire," but such crescendos provided the score as she finished revisions. Civil war had broken out in Yemen and tanks fired in the streets around her house as she wrapped up the book in 1994. She and her own children slept---when they slept---under the table in the dining room, the only room in the house without windows. Without benefit of electricity or telephone, she completed the work and sent the manuscript to the U.S. with another expatriate. A few languages even have special endings for three of something. In Tyattyalla, a native language of Australia, speakers can talk about: gattimgattimek …………….a boomerang gattimgattimul……………..two boomerangs gattimgattimurrakullik……three boomerangs gattimgattimurrak…………more than three boomerangs It was published by Linnet Books in 1995 to glowing reviews in Booklist, Kirkus Reviews and other periodicals. Mrs. Cox, wife of Dennis Cox, MRDS Yemen station chief, packs a staggering volume of information into 196 pages in what the School Library Journal called a "user-friendly guide." She distinguishes pidgins from creoles, details the derivation of language groups and languages, explains how languages are learned and lists the languages most commonly spoken in the world and in the U.S. She also relates proverbs in different languages. When an English-speaker would say, for example, "He wants to have his cake and eat it, too," an Arabic-speaker would say, "He wants meat from his sheep and he wants his sheep walking." And she relates a joke that hits close to home: Juan: "If a person who speaks two languages is bilingual, and a person who speaks three languages is trilingual, what do you call a person who speaks only one language?" Layla: "An American." The author and her family, by the way, have come through their years abroad relatively unscathed. The most serious physical affliction they have suffered is a scorpion bite her son endured when back home in Georgia on vacation. --Ed Fowler  President's Letter What's Better Than Knowledge? Managed Knowledge, of Course Kurganteppa, Tajikistan, and Shakrisabz, Uzbekistan, may not be the most remote places on earth, but until events of September 11, few Americans had even heard of these countries in Central Asia, difficult to reach by land or air and not far from the border of Afghanistan. In cyber terms, though, Kurganteppa and Shakrisabz are as close as London or Paris or Chicago. A worker in Kurganteppa can access our website, based in Houston, as though tapping in from Dallas. The goal MRDS has stated since our inception is to deliver "intelligent compassion" to peoples in complex situations. With the possibility of Afghan refugees fleeing to Uzbekistan and Tajikistan borders, field workers who have never worked with refugees could consider strategies, access programs and plans, and ask questions of experts through the touch of a button. An MRDS knowledge bank based on a World Bank model will allow workers in remote places to benefit from the experience and expertise their colleagues have earned (often drop by drop) in other backwaters. Jim Trott, who lives near Seattle and is an expert in knowledge management, has devised a plan for hard-wiring our far-flung affiliates into a well-connected network that will make our compassion more intelligent. The knowledge bank will serve as the centerpiece of a community of practice through which workers from around the world can weigh in with revisions and adaptations. It will be capable of virtually instantaneous self-correction. My knowledge of food and medical distribution in Northern Iraq refugee camps, our Istanbul director's understanding of trauma treatment and our Macedonian colleagues' experience with Kosovar refugees can be instantly available to field workers in Central Asia thousands of miles away. A more common use of the network will be for non-relief programs, such as our Miracle of Life pregnancy calendar. Developed in Turkey to help semi-literate women with limited access to medical care look after their child and themselves better during pregnancy, it made its way first to Macedonia (in both the Macedonian and Albanian languages) and then to Uzbekistan through field relationships. The knowledge bank will systemize what has been an informal process, in this case making the merits of the calendar known more broadly to others. Knowledge management applied to relief and development in the developing world eventually will allow for retrieval of archived information on any topic a worker can conceive, whether the need is for maternal health care projects in Macedonia or relief assistance in Kurganteppa.