“We had to adapt,” he said.
It’s not just about coming up with business innovations or delivery options. Thinking outside the box becomes a necessity when you’re essentially living in boxes like Abu Mohamad and more than 83,000 others like him, who fled their homes in war-ravaged Syria and settled across the border in northern Jordan’s Zaatari refugee camp.
The camp began in July 2012 as a small patch of tents for scared and worn Syrians. As the refugees’ numbers grew, their perspectives changed. The civil war in their homeland wasn’t going away anytime soon, and neither were they.
So these resilient Syrians went to work. For men like Abu Mohamad, who, like other refugees, prefers not to be identified by his full name, there wasn’t much choice but to adjust to their new lives, new livelihoods and new ways of doing things.
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This doesn’t necessarily make up for the larger strain that refugees have had on Jordan’s economy, with an April 2014 International Monetary Fund report calling the overall impact “negative.” Still, that same report also said, “Increased consumption brought about by a sizable influx of Syrian refugees has contributed positively to economic activity.”
And any economic activity is a plus for the Syrian refugees, two-thirds of whom live below the national poverty line and one in six who live in abject poverty, according to the United Nations.
That’s why Syrians like Abu Mohamad and humanitarian officials like Touaibia are pleased with what’s happening in Zataari. While its residents’ lives have been far from happy or normal of late, the refugee camp — more and more — is becoming just that.
As Touaibia said, “It is like any downtown, in any city, in the world.”
