Amid a sea of male construction and site workers in Jordan's
sprawling Zaatari desert camp, Oxfam's female engineer, Farah Al-Basha
stands out from the crowd.
The energetic 27-year-old Jordanian joined the Oxfam team earlier
this year, quitting her job at a private engineering company to work for
the aid agency.
Instead of working on military and defense contracts and designing
underground bunkers, she now helps to oversee work building toilet and
shower blocks and installing water tanks at Zataari's refugee camp.
She's been involved in drawing up quality, safety and inspection plans;
liaising with and advising contractors; and carrying out on-site
inspections to ensure standards are met at every stage along the
construction project.
"I wanted to work with an NGO to help people here, to try to do
something more for the community. For me, work shouldn't just be about
the money," she said.
But she admits her first visit to the camp was a bit of a shock. "It
was the first time I have ever been to a refugee camp and, honestly, it
was overwhelming", she said. "I had only seen this on television, not
first-hand. I realized this job was going to be totally different in
terms of what it required of me than my previous work.
"It's been a life-changing experience for me. Helping to change
people's lives is not an easy thing to do. It's also a difficult thing
to realize that, as much as you want, you cant help everyone
everywhere."
In Zaatari camp, Farah is a woman on a mission: determined to show
that women engineers are just as capable as their male counterparts and
making sure she is up to date on all the latest reading and research to
make sure that no one can fault her. Farah's day-to-day work involves
overseeing and inspecting the work of the (all-male) laborers and making
sure everything goes to plan -- or if it doesn't, finding solutions to
daily problems.
"Every day is crazy and every day is really busy," says Farah.
When I visit, she points out wide cracks in the cement floor of a new
block which will house toilets and showers. "Look, the cracks are so
wide," she says, pointing to the floor where she has marked in red ink
the words "rejected."
"This will cause problems... the contractors will have to fix it," she says, shaking her head.
She's firm but polite as she speaks to the contractors, pointing out
the problem. But they accept what she says. "I'm very demanding and
quite strict, but they respect me," she says. "They realize I am not
here for a fashion show, but I'm an expert and know what I'm talking
about.
"Every day, big groups of women and children follow me as I work in
the camp," she says. "The girls say they see me as a kind of role model
and say they'd like to do work like me when they are older."
"The children in the camp love to see us work: they make sure they are
awake and up and about when we arrive in the camp for our day's work."
Farah had hoped to recruit an all-female team to work with her, but
the first female junior engineer she hired quit after a few days into
the job. "It's a shame. This woman was very shy and it was really
difficult for her to deal with the male laborers. You have to be firm,"
she says. "There are many women engineers in Jordan, but most chose not
work on-site but stay working in offices. I've been working as an
engineer for the last six years and I'm always the only female engineer
on site."
Undaunted by some of the setbacks, Farah is full of plans and ideas.
She's hoping to pass on some basic engineering and plumbing skills to
some people in the camp; and to get women in the camp more involved with
the work Oxfam is doing.
Spending most of her days in the camp, she says, is a tiring but rewarding experience.
"We're surrounded by children for most of the day. We walk together,
we eat together, we share stories and dreams. When the time comes to
leave the camp, we get into our car, tired and exhausted with messy hair
and dirty jeans, with our faces a bit more darkened by the sun than the
day before.
"We're thinking about how lovely a bubbly shower will be, but before
closing the doors, the kids come and say 'See you tomorrow' and we close
the doors with a big smile, forget about how dirty we are, or how
lovely this bubbly shower will be and we start thinking about what can
we do next for those kids."
Follow Caroline Gluck on Twitter:
www.twitter.com/carooxfam
