Hearts and Soles - Feb 12

After Abu Ali leaves with his food, we accompany Maha and another woman who Maha is buying orthopedic shoes for. She is also diabetic and her feet suffer from the disease. She works, as a paid volunteer, with a relief organization and must be out all day, visiting families and often climbing the long stairways to their homes. Her wages are very small and must support her and her elderly and ill mother. She needs the shoes in order to do her work but cannot afford them. Maha is purchasing them with money from wealthy Iraqi donors. After trying on many pairs, she finds a pair that fit well and we go with her to the old downtown of Amman in the same taxi as she and her mother have a flat there.

Maha and Lana on our shopping trip

The rest of the afternoon is spent shopping for inexpensive items for the Valentine's Day Party we will have on the 14th. We are inviting 30 children and their mothers and we want to have gifts for every child.

We poke around the souk in the back streets behind the King Hussein Mosque until we find the inexpensive toy market. The wares spill out over the sidewalk from the shops and we purchase many jumpropes, yoyos, bubbles, balls, super hero action figures, barrettes for the girls shaped like flowers and butterflies, pens with big red or purple glittery hearts bobbing on top, marbles, bead rings, and lots of red heart balloons, red streamers and, of course, candy. We will add these to the Valentine's goodies I brought with me from the US.

We stop at Osama's scarf shop last. Osama has been a supporter of CRP since last year when he gave us very good prices for shawls for our Craft Co-operative women to embroider. He also gave us bags of fabric remnants then so I like to purchase from him whenever I can.

We need white fabric because I hope to have Iraqi children color pictures on them and then I will bring them back to the US when I return. We hope that some peace & justice minded quilting groups will want to make the picture squares into quilts for us to display and then auction as a means of raising money for our projects.

two children with their crayon art quilt squares

Osama gives us strong white linen for only 1JD per meter ($1.40). I hope that those of you who visit Jordan in the future will stop by his shop and buy your souvenir Pashmina scarves from him in appreciation for his kindness toward CRP.