Workshop gives hope to amputees in the north

In the Goizha Carpentry Cooperative Workshop on the edge of the city of Sulaymaniyah in northern Iraq, the sound of machinery masks the approach of visitors. It’s noisy, cold and dusty - but for the three men working there it’s a dream come true. Barzan Mahmood, Wrya Mohammed and Mohammed Amin were brought together by similar misfortune but together they are carving a future they could only have dreamt of. Barzan and Mohammed both lost legs after stepping on mines near the northeastern Iraqi city. Wrya lost most of the fingers on his left hand when, as a 12-year-old, he picked up an object and it exploded. All three were treated by doctors from the Italian-based NGO, Emergency, with Barzan and Mohammed being fitted with prostheses and learning to walk again. But as Emergency’s Sulaymaniyah Rehabilitation Centre Manager, Faris Hama, told IRIN, getting people back on their feet is only part of the story. Realising that war victims who were often amputees had great difficulty in gaining employment, Emergency began to offer training courses as part of its community-based rehabilitation. Six-month courses in carpentry, leatherwork, tailoring, metalwork and shoe making gave graduates skills that could get them jobs. But again, Faris realised that most had no funds to set themselves up in business and often more than one person was needed to operate something like a carpentry or engineering workshop. So in 1999 Emergency opened the first collective workshop in the eastern governorate of Sulaymaniyah, with graduates grouping together to set up businesses. Faris said the NGO provided all the machinery and equipment needed and paid the first three months’ rent. All the profits made from the workshops went to the qualified trainees to split among themselves and the only requirement was that none of the equipment was sold. “They can’t sell one screwdriver but they can make one million dinars and nobody will ask for any money back,” Faris said. Now there are 81 collective workshops in Sulaymaniyah governorate benefiting not only the graduates who have jobs and a business, but also their families. Nearly all those in the collective workshops are war victims who have lost limbs due to mines, unexploded ordnances or bullet wounds. The reality is that without training and jobs, war victims often became financial burdens on their families. “If a farmer loses a leg how can he get his job back again? He has many, many difficulties so we were thinking about how to get him back working with training courses and a business that would allow him to live in the area he comes from,” Faris explained. Emergency’s reputation in Sulaymaniyah is so good that people have been coming from Baghdad, Najaf, Karbala and even Iran for the course. Fifty people graduate from their training courses each year and already there is a waiting list of 120. Faris insists that Emergency stays with the graduates well after they have been set up in business, by sending field staff to visit them regularly. He said that after spending six months with the trainees it was always sad when the course ended and people headed off to their businesses. “But when I come and see them in their workshops I feel happy again.” Barzan, Wrya and Mohammed all graduated from Emergency’s carpentry course and were set up in business five months ago. Now they are swamped with orders for the furniture they make, often receiving requests for 100 items from shops. Wrya said they frequently work until midnight filling orders. “Of course things are better for me now. If I didn’t have this I would have been jobless and hopeless but now there’s a light in my future. It’s not just the income - it’s like an art, like a hobby.” For Mohammed, having a job allowed him to get married. In a culture where the husband is expected to meet heavy wedding costs and provide for his family, an amputee can suffer stigma and remain unmarried. All three see their joint business as like a marriage also. “We want to be together until we die,” Mohammed said. While most trainees are now going into the Emergency sponsored collective workshops, some trainees have ended up as teachers. Dara Ibrahim Khwarahim was 13 when a mine blew up as he was clearing a farm field and he lost his leg. His family was too poor to let him carry on with his schooling and for most of the next six years he remained jobless, occasionally selling biscuits or cigarettes in the market. In 1999 he asked to do Emergency’s tailoring course but it was full with women. So he switched to carpentry and was so successful at it, he was reemployed as an assistant teacher. Dara said the courses gave him personal hope but also great pleasure at being able to help others. “It makes me so happy when I see the trainees being successful and I feel like I’m doing something worthwhile and that all our efforts in training them were not wasted.”