NGO work

As requested by Paulinette, this post will tell you what I am doing exactly in Syria. I don't have much time tonight but I wanted to keep my word and post something on the blog.

I will develop more in another post.

So, I am currently doing a short internship (unpaid) in a Syrian NGO called the Syria Trust for Development.



As most of you already know, I have graduated from a master in International Development from the University of Bath (UK) after my first degree in Business Administration in HEC Montreal. A friend from Montreal (Mazen, not to mention him!) offered me the possibility to come to Damascus and work 2 months for FIRDOS (the Fund for Integrated Rural Development, a division of the Syria Trust).

Firdos Logo

My expertise in the development field is more on entreprise development (MSE and SME), entrepreneurship, and value-chain development. FIRDOS has different economic and social programmes targeting poor rural communities in Syria. At the moment, they have already a micro-finance scheme and they want to promote entrepreneurship among these rural communities. They also want to develop Business Development Services (BDS) for these micro-entrepreneurs.


The ultimate objective of donor intervention in Business Development Services (BDS) is to improve small enterprise performance in developing countries, as a means to achieve higher economic growth and employment, reduce poverty, and meet social objectives. Business Development Services include training, consultancy and advisory services, marketing assistance, information, technology development and transfer, and business linkage promotion. A distinction is sometimes made between "operational" and "strategic" business services.

http://www.ilo.org/public/english/employment/ent/papers/guide.htm

As I have studied this topic for a long time in Bath, I am currently working on a research paper that aims to inform FIRDOS about the best practices to implement such services (with a special focus on Middle East). And I am also assisting in developing the strategy to provide these BDS services (impact, outreach, efficiency, cost-effectiveness, sustainability issues, etc...).

On the other hand, I am also working on a completely different topic : "Communication for Development". More specifically, I am working on how to improve "acces to information" in rural communities.

Communication for development (ComDev), according to FAO, is the systematic and participatory use of communication methods and tools to reach consensus and achieve common goals among the stakeholders of a given development initiative. Communication for development is considered as a social process, emphasizing the role communication plays at all levels facilitating information sharing, training and participation of urban and rural people in policy/programme formulation, planning and implementation.

More info available on the following website: http://www.comminit.com/

For the moment, I really enjoy my experience. My colleagues are all very nice, fun.and very competent. Most of them are in their thirties, perfectly fluent in english, and a couple of them also speak french. The office, situated in the new modern area of Damascus (Mazze, where all the embassies are) is about 20 minutes by micro-bus. So every morning, I am trying to get a seat in one of this very crowed micro-bus! It is quite an adventure but it is very cheap (10 syrian Pounds, about 15euro cents), so I take it most of the time. And when I am too lazy, I take the taxi and spend a lot of money: 70SYP (1euro). I know I am posh guy!


A microbus

Time to go to to party now, it is thursday night and it's the week end (friday and saturday in arabic countries) ! My landowner is a musician and he's playing tonight so I will go to his concert, and maybe clubbing a bit later. Thursday night fever in Damascus !

Back to blogging

Hello everybody,

I have been under tremendous pressure from you to update my blog, so after 20 days of rest, here we go!!! I have a lot of things to tell you about, so I promise 5 posts in the next 5 days! Lucky you :-)

(notice that there was a warning at the beginning of the blog explictly saying that if I was not updating it, that would mean that I was too busy discovering the Syrian Charms; well, it was exactly what happened !)

So, where should I start? In the last entry, I was still living in the Christian district of Bab Touma, in the middle of the Old city. I was telling you it was a labyrinth to go there, here is a short video to give you an insight of my daily walks:

http://dl.free.fr/bVTLyuost
30mg file (2 min). You can download it for free and with no virus (special offer !)

I spent about one week in this house and I really enjoyed it. The family was very nice and it was good to speak a bit French with Syrian people. After each day of work, I was spending some time with them, drinking tea, chatting a bit and watching Syrian TV (I couldn’t get a word, but Syrian music video clips are priceless !).

Some pictures of the family:

Sami, Eva, Laurice, Antino, and ...well you know him

But I was also going out most of the time, and that’s what I call…Back to normal life! (to be followed…tomorrow)


Fun Fact of the day: It has been officially the 47^th time today that I’ve been asked something in Arabic in the street (possibily directions but as I don’t understand, it may also be “you are awesome” or “I am sure France will beat Ireland tonight”). People really believe that I am Syrian! 3 possible reasons:
- tourists or students usually don’t walk alone in the streets
- I look confident (a Syrian guy told me that)
- I really look Syrian (after Greece this summer, I am really starting to think that I have a universal face !)

Room Hunting

As soon as I arrived in Damascus, I started to look for a room. It’s not that I didn’t like my hotel but my social needs were not fulfilled (!). The first day I arrived I met a French girl (Marine) who is a friend of a friend of a friend… She was moving out of her room at the beginning of the month, and she offered me to take her room if the landowner agrees. But I wanted to visit more rooms to compare and make my decision. Some people advised me to enter any cafés and ask for an available room but, as I don’t speak Arabic at all, I preferred to start by calling a few numbers I found on the Internet. Unfortunately, the results were quite unsuccessful (room already taken, too expensive, or they didn’t speak English…).

So, I opted to the “Let’s go to a place where I can find people who speak English and ask for help” option. I called the Damascus Hostel, a bagpacker place where the tenant (Raymond) offered me to come for a tea. I gladly accepted and 2 hours later (time to find the place…) I arrived. There, I met 2 Arabic guys who worked there and apparently knew many landlords in the old Damascus (Maher and Saad). The good thing is that Maher speaks English. They offered to help me and 10 minutes later I found myself walking in the little Damascus’ streets with them. In 3 hours, I visited about 6 places in several Arabic families (read: I drank tea 6 times). They also showed me a couple of rooms in very nice old houses full of foreign student who were learning Arabic. In fact, finding a room in Damascus is pretty easy, but finding the right one is a bit more complicated! Basically the price range is about 10 000 Syrian Pounds (SYP) to 17000 SYP for a room in a shared house (220$ to 350$ per month). I wanted to go for the cheapest room so I denied most of the foreign student places in the Christian district of Bab Touma. Finally, one day later I received the confirmation of Marine’s landlord and I decided to take the place (which is quite cheap and has internet, true luxury !!). As the room was free only on the 1st of November, I decided to live in an Arabic family I had visited, for 8 days.

The house is situated in the middle of the Old Damascus, in the Christian district. I will take a video to show you how to go to this house. It is a real labyrinth (main street then small street, then smaller street, then left, right, left, left, left, right, right right, left, ??... right). I share this place with Laurice (the mother), her son Sami (30ish), her daughter Eva (20ish), and an Italian student (Antonino).

Here are some pictures of the houses:


The nice little courtyard



My room is upstairs (the door open that you can see...)

Courtyard From Upstairs 1

Courtyard From Upstairs 2



My Room. I tidied up for the picture !

If you notice, there are 2 Jesus pictures (christian family) and I have a baby sheet so I can only sleep well ! The dirty paper next to Jesus is a a 1991's calendar (jajajaja I live in a "museum"). Finally the light switch is not working so I have to "play" with the bulb to have some light. Don't misread me, I like my room !

The bathroom/shower

The magic red button I have to press 30min before taking my shower if I want to have hot water.


View of the roof surrounding the house

My hotel for the first few days

After a very good night of sleep in the Sultan Hotel (horning noises don’t wake me up when I am exhausted !), I discovered that the price of my room was more expensive that I thought. The room was very clean, with a shower and western toilet. But 39$/night was too much for my budget. I tried to make a deal but the hotel was full so they didn’t really care about my bargaining skills. Direction an internet café to find a cheaper one.

After looking at my mails and seeing that Paulius and Jason were thinking that I was already in a pub (Almost No pub in Syria guys !!), I called a couple of cheap hostels.

Alex : Hello, is it the ……hotel ?

Receptionist : unknown arabic answer

Alex : Do you speak English, French, Spanish... Quebecois ?

Receptionist : unknown different answer but I couldnt understant anything anyway…

5th try.

- Hotel Al Kindi ?

-Speak English ? Yes , a bit ?

Room available ? Yes ? Can I visit ? Naam

OK let’s go.This hotel was actually not very far from my first one and I walked through the crazy Syrian traffic to my destination. (I have to say that the Egyptian traffic keeps the gold medal for crazy traffic !). The place is on the 3rd floor of a very small street and it was pretty hard to find it. Oh, wait, didn’t I tell you ? I don’t speak arabic but most of the streets have no name. Luckilu, the Syrian people are very kind and they are always willing to help you even if they don ‘t talk your language. I will talk about it in another post.

Well, about the hotel, they only had a double room (I came alone guys !!!), but it was very cheap. 600 hundred Syrian Pounds ( about 9 euros). The room is not very clean nor is the bathroom, but as I already said, I am on a short budget and I don’t really need anything more. I even have a small TV in my room with 200 channels . 197 arabic channels, Euronews , CNN, and Al Ahly TV (special hello to Youssef, Mahmoud and Mohamed !). Unfortunately, they didn ‘t broadcast the Marseille game of Champion’s league. So i dediced to leave Syria at the end of the week. Just kidding.

Here are some pictures of my first (actually second) beloved room.

Luxury...

Fancy Shower/Toilet...

Damascus Streets

Straight Street and what my belly will look like in 2 months



For the moment I live in a street like that !



Funny Syrian Boy

Night 1: Late Arrival

Night 1 :

Late arrival After getting my visa on Tuesday morning, I have left Paris…on Tuesday evening ! We can call it « perfect timing »(actually I had no real Plan B if my visa was not ready and I started to freak out when the Syrian lady at the embassy told me that my passport was not here yet !!!). In fact, the Consul didn’t arrive on time at his office because of … I let you guess … Try harder… yeah you almost got it….yesss ! French strikes, of course !

So, I took an Alitalia flight at 7pm at Charles de Gaulles Airport in Paris,with a connection in Roma. There was a plane problem in Roma and the flight took off with 2 hours late. After a safe flight (chatting with a Serbian Guy sat next to me), I finnaly arrived at 3 am in Damascuss ! As it was very late, the visa check was pretty quick. One Syrian policeman even joked with me.

- English ?
-No French.
- Ah, I love France !!! (who doesn’t !) Bienvenue en Syrie ! Comment ca va ?
- Shokrane, ca va mais je suis un peu fatigué ! (Thank you, but I am a bit tired)
- Non non, c’est moi le plus fatigue ! (No, I am the most exhausted !)
- Not sure…

After a 5-minutes debate on how long we have slept during the past week (the people who know me are well aware that some weeks, you litteraly can’t compete with me :-)) , I finnaly met the taxi I had booked earlier during the day. (No I am not a fancy French Man, but there are no public buses after midnight…). He was waiting for me outside , holding a sign with my name and the name of the hotel. It was the first time it happened to me ! (I deliberately forget one time at the Montreal Airport where one of my best canadian friend was waiting for me with a giant sign , full of hearts and rainbows, screaming my name like a 15years-old at a boysband concert).

Well , to come back to my taxi story, I felf very important at this moment, like a VIP. For modesty purpose, I won’t mention that I also went through the VIP line for the passport check (there were actually only 2 open lines for foreigners , « Diplomats » and « VIP ») .

2nd Syrian chat :
Alexis : Salam Aleykoum , I am Alex
Taxi Driver : Aleykoum Salam, me… Tarek!
Alexis : Do you speak English, French ?
Taxi Driver : a bit…un peu…
Alexis: What do you prefer ?
TaxiDriver : well, my best language is...Arabic !

Hahaha ! big surpise ! After a 20min pretty silent drive (« a bit » was closer to « not at all » and for the moment my Arabic level is at the same level !) in direction of Damascus I was finnaly discovering the lights of the city, which appeared like a mirage in the middle of the desert. At this time, I started to feel the first shivers of excitement. I am pretty sure that all of you can remember this kind of feeling, when you first arrive in a new country. I was exhausted but at the same too excited about discovering a new environment , a new city, and new people. Everytime I arrive alone in a new country (especially at night), this set of mixed feeling (happiness, excitement, envy, stress, fear,… joy, etc…) re-appears. And I have to say that it is a f***** good feeling !

Damascus or « Cham » is the capital of Syria and the biggest city of the country with about 4 million of inhabitants. My first night in Damascus was spent in a 2 Stars hotel, the Sultan Hotel. It was the only one (in my price range) able to welcome me at 4 : 30 in the morning. Well, « welcome» was not exactly the best appropriate word as I arrived in front of an empty desk. Where the hell is the hotel receptionist ? After wandering around, I finally met 2 guys sleeping on some sofas and after an in-depht passport check, they finally gave me my key for a well-deserved sleep. « Welcome to Damascus sir, Good night ». Good night for me and good night for them. I was quite thirsty and 5 minutes in my room, I came back downstairs to ask for a bottle of water, but I found them sleeping deeply again…

5 am, time to go to bed, I’ll drink tomorrow !

Some pictures tomorrow…

Blog presentation

Hello everybody,I will write this blog to share with you (at least with those who care about it !) my Syrian adventures. I will try to feed this blog as much as possible with pictures, short stories, and articles. I will try to post about twice a week, but if I don’t , that would mean that I am too busy discovering the Syrian charms !For those who end up on this blog by chance, don’t be offended about bad jokes. It is my (not verry funny) french sense of humour.Hope you will enjoy it !