Letters from Cyprus: Sarah's Two Trips in Two Weeks

As always for us in Cyprus, May is a busy month. In addition to many music and school events, and also Ross' travel, I had the opportunity to take a voluntary work trip plus a small holiday with an old friend. In keeping with making the most of our final year here, I jumped at both offers.

In mid-May I travelled to Turkey to assist with some staff care work. The town of Gaziantep is located in the south and is less than an hour from the Syrian border. Gaziantep serves as a hub to support World Vision's emergency response program in Northern Syria. It's a challenging program because many components are currently managed remotely. In other words, international staff cannot currently enter Syria country due to security and other related restrictions. The program relies on local Syrian staff to actually implement program activities in Syria, with leadership and support provided remotely by the team in Turkey. Remote program management presents a number of challenges, particularly with management of cash and project monitoring, but the team are doing a great job in working around these issues. The overall program includes a range of large scale health, education, water and sanitation projects.

Since I couldn't photograph the staff....I've put in a pic
of the market I visited after hours. It was great to
be in a non-touristy town of Turkey.

As with any challenging humanitarian aid project in the midst of war, the effects on the staff can vary from none at all to complex and diverse. World Vision operates a staff care program around the world, taking its promise of "We Value People" seriously. My role was to provide psychological and general staff care support to those who needed to debrief or just talk things out; providing them with the time to reflect on how they may or may not be coping in their given role and in the challenges of operating remotely. Many staff and two and a half days later...I was..lets say...all listened out. What a privilege though, to understand the work better and to witness people's approach to the day to day uncertainty of working with people in a war zone. It was humbling to hear their contentment simply for 'today', especially the Syrian staff who had left family in Syria to get work in Turkey so they could live. "We don't know what will happen tomorrow, but for now, for today my family is alive".

Gaziantep

Not long after that, a date in the diary had been set: for two Mums of 4 to get away and have a mini-holiday in the sun. My very dear friend of over 20yrs (who's counting?) Fiona Prior, flew out from the UK to spend some time with me in Cyprus. Something spoken of for ages, and for a number of years with babes-in-arms, it seemed only a pipe dream. But, as we said together many times on our first day of meeting up, "we did it!". Heck, it wasn't like we climbed Everest, but for each of us in this season of life - it was something to be celebrated.

It was a great weekend away in Paphos, staying at a hotel, lying by the water, taking morning bike rides, and reading books completely uninterrupted. Of course the latter was only possible when we managed to stop talking....recollecting memories and making new ones all at once. Filling in the years that passed in which we were just too busy to stop and share. I came away so thankful for old friends. No, correction, thankful for Fiona. Still working on one more sighting before departing the northern hemisphere.:) Love to get the families together somehow!