Ποιειν Και Πραττειν - create and do

"As I sit on this chair and close my eyes for a moment, I reminisce the beautiful details of Kids Guernica-Chios 2007. I was an excited 12 year who wanted to meet new people and learn new things. My first memory starts with the boat ride from Athens to Chios with my mother. I had never been on a huge boat before, so that was my first amusement. The first people I met there were Maya Fischer and her mother, Anna. It was interesting to get out of my comfort zone and learn how to socialize with new people. After 6 hours, we finally made it to the breathtaking island, Chios. The picture of the first arrival gets quite blurry now, but I remember meeting everyone else on a bus to our hotel. Another wonderful memory is an important day we had at the “Platia” where all the Guernica paintings( including the one from Lebanon) were exhibited next to each other in a large square. People would enter and look at all of them one by one. My amazement at the time was how each painting came from a different area. My first thought was ‘I want the world to see how we feel through our painting’. The Lebanese Guernica painting ‘ Enough we want to live!’ was drawn by young children like myself at the time. Half of it was the negative things in our country (war, rockets, darkness) and the other half was how we liked to see it ( happy, colorful, joyful). I found that very expressive and meaningful. On that same day, I felt honored to sit beside the American writer George Crane and Takuya Kaneda (Coordinator of Kids' Guernica International). During that discussion, I read a poem that was written by me and another one written by my friend Ryan Moukaddem and me. Reading these poems made me feel sort of emotional but at the same time proud; I looked up to see a quiet crowd listening to me, and for the first time I felt like I was being heard. Kids Guernica helped me on both the educational and social level. It taught me how to be curious about the world and how to interact with different people. Moreover, I felt like I  learned so many things I wouldn’t have learned if I had not been there. I learned that peace and social justice should be fought for because the outcome is beautiful. I am now 18 years old and am attending United World College of the Atlantic in Wales. My college’s mission is ‘education is a force to unite people, nations and cultures for peace and a sustainable future’. That mission and what we do there always takes me back to those few days spent in Chios.  I always reflect back to Kids' Guernica because I learned things that help me now at college. I hope this peace movement continues and affects more and more people. I imagine my new fantasy world as a colorful enormous painting where rockets are colorful crayons, smoke is puffy clouds, guns and rifles are Cupid’s love bow/arrow. I hope our world would be war free one day and everyone could have a happily life ever after.

Peace and Love,

Miriam Mourad

Tripoli, Lebanon January 2014

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