Barbie doll the refugee

It isn’t just now that I’ve been hit by the stark differences in peoples’ lives. When I was growing up I must have been the only girl in the western world to have dressed her Sindy and Barbie dolls in rags. While my friends bought the latest Barbie doll fashion item I had my toys cope with one bag of old clothes and camping equipment. I would play with them and make up stories of their fleeing from conflicts. Whoever heard of Barbie Doll - the refugee?

But that was then. Today we have other issues: As Black Friday offers merge into Cyber Monday savings, credit card spending and general consumption go into overdrive.  One cannot be unmoved by the sheer contrast of differing worlds: this indulgence and Yemeni children dying in their tens of thousands. 

As I’ve had a curious year (health-wise) I have today allowed myself a pre-Christmas treat: a signed hardback book and something for the home. To offset this extravagance I have also raised money for girls’ schooling in Sierra Leone and made a donation for the starving in Yemen. This week I will also use money set aside for non-essential Christmas gifts to pay for water treatment tablets and essential foods for those starving and displaced in Syria. And then I will make another donation to the homeless in Britain.

On the one hand my money is going on ‘things’ to make my home more comfortable while others barely have a tarpaulin for a roof. On the other hand I’d rather spend money on our house than, say, going out for a meal. For the last six months I’ve eaten healthily and exercised in order to keep fit and trim, following a slipped disc. To blow money on rich foods now would seem beyond indulgent.

But for the starving, cold, unwell and exhausted simply to be able to choose between buying something for their home - if they have one - or for their belly must be a great luxury. An impossible dream. Especially if they have been in refugee camps for over a year. The starving, cold, unwell, exhausted and displaced must wonder whether they will again have a home of their own. I doubt whether they are worrying about what design of scatter cushion would go with their  furnishings this side of winter.

In Britain to be homeless in December or January is to suffer cold, wet, icy temperatures, disease, failing health and ridicule. 

Even in Syria - a country we think of as hot - winter temperatures are just above freezing. Picturing a place without proper shelter and chilling winds reminds me of Christina Rosetti’s poem:

In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan

Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;

Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow.

It would be good to have more money. I am one of the Waspi generation. (Women against state pension inequality). If I had more I could give more to those in war-torn countries. I could be more generous to a little boy starving, ribs showing, too weak to whimper. 

What can I give him, poor as I am?

If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;

If I were a wise man, I would do my part.

But for now I’ve given what I can. We shall have to wait for our garden fence to be fixed and for new trellis work to be installed. Money set aside for that will be donated to charity instead. 

I still wonder why my Barbie dolls were refugees. Perhaps it’s because in the 1960s I saw pictures of wandering souls on the television. Or maybe it was because my father taught us to read books about inclusion and acceptance. He didn’t use those terms of course. But he taught us how different peoples’ lives were and that however they lived they were still people.