DATELINE.
CHILDHOOD ON HOLD
Reporter:
Luke Waters and Geoff Parish
It's hard to imagine an age of innocence in a time of war. After 16 months of negotiations with the Assad Government, I've come to film life in the conflict here in Syria. Knowing I'll see devastation, fighting and heartbreak, I wonder if anything can prepare you for the reality of war. This is the funeral procession of Suheil Al Nabki. The 28-year-old was killed by a mortar here in Damascus. The bloodstained flag that draped his coffin is now the prized possession of his son Marwan. Now it's up to his grandmother, Mareen Ab Alnasser, to raise the young boy. She says she'll wear her son's image close to her forever.
MAREEN AB ALNASSER, GRANDMOTHER (Translation): I never take it off, even in bed although I can’t sleep with anything around my neck. No, I never take it off. Suheil is in my heart and I don’t feel he is gone. We would sit together to drink coffee on the balcony. Everything, everything reminds me of Suheil.
And little Marwan has seen things that no child should ever witness.
MARWAN (Translation): I ran there, I saw Dad.
MAREEN AB ALNASSER (Translation): What did you see?
MARWAN (Translation): I saw him dead, down there.
If there's any solace at all for this grieving family, they at least still have their own home. As diplomats try to thrash out a ceasefire in Geneva, the number of displaced Syrians is staggering. It's eight million, and growing by the day. This Government shelter on the city's windswept outskirts is feeding 500 people. At times, it's housed 4,000. Um Mohamad is 37 and has 11 kids. Five are with her but six are still in an ISIS-controlled area. It's hard to imagine the family's trauma.
REPORTER: What future does she see for them?
UM MOHAMAD (Translation): We don’t think of future at all. We don’t know what the future holds for us, not even from one moment to the next.
And in suburbs like Jobar, the future has quite literally been blown apart, just 8km from central Damascus. I'm with Government forces and the enemy here isn't ISIS but another militant group, Jaish al-Islam, or The Army of Islam.
SOLDIER (Translation): Not very long ago, armed men came from that point, just in front of us. We defeated them and they suffered heavy losses.
The militants here are frighteningly close.
SOLDIER (Translation): And the fighting is sometimes only metres away.
It makes filming here virtually impossible. So many factions are fighting the Government and each other now in Syria, and all sides stand accused of brutality. It's been called a 'post apocalyptic nightmare'. At times, the militants have held this area till they were beaten back, but not very far. I'm hoping they don't make another charge any time soon. This is literally the front line of the Syrian civil war and we're told that the rebel groups could be between 20 and 50m away. But most disturbingly, they could also be anywhere underground. There's a nest of tunnels and they don't know precisely their location at any given time.
SOLDIER (Translation): There’s a fighter down there, he went in there. My battle with them is more underground…
My frontline guide is Colonel Ahmed Zarqa. The first thing that strikes me is how battle-weary he looks.
COLONEL AHMED ZARQA (Translation): Here you are standing on a spot where there is a fighter underground.
He has spent just two days at his own home in the past 14 months. He says his men are Sunni, Shia and Christian, fighting together, non-sectarian, which he says reflects the country's past and he hopes, its future. Like any soldiers, it's thoughts of home and family which unite these battle-hardened fighters.
COLONEL AHMED ZARQA (Translation): There’s a promise from the soldiers that we will not go back to our families until the smiles return to all the children in Syria.
And a few kilometres away, there are smiles.
CHILDREN (Translation): Is Ahmed in? Hammouda is in. Ahmed is in.
It makes me realise the resilience children have. Even growing up in a war zone, they'll make a playground. People are actually living in the rubble. This mother of six was driven out in a rebel assault, but with nowhere else to live the family returned to what's left of their old home.
WOMAN (Translation): There is no life here, no life whatsoever. No life. Rubbish, waste, filth, rodents, mice, rats and insects. It’s frightening, frightening.
And from this, to this. For those who can afford it and just 15 minutes from the fighting, beer, wine and spirits flow in busy bars and clubs. It could be Ibiza, even Melbourne, but scenes like this will disappear if the Islamist militias take control of the country. Shops and cafes are busy too. At times you can hear the mortars in the distance. But nothing disturbs a hard-fought game of backgammon. It is clear many people here have learnt to live with the surreal.
PAPPA JOSEPH: This is nice, this is Damascus tablecloth. You can use it double-face, one for Sunday, one for Monday.
For 40 years, Pappa Joseph has sold fine cloth and antiques, but he says five years of war have all but ruined him.
PAPPA JOSEPH: We have no business because we deal by foreign people, tourists, you see and from five years, no business.
REPORTER: Do you feel sad about what's happened?
PAPPA JOSEPH: Yes, of course, of course. Everybody, not me, not me. All the people. No business, no work, no nothing. No ... It's very bad, very bad, very bad situation for all Syrians.
Obaida Hamad is a journalist and also worked as my guide and translator.
OBAIDA HAAMAD, JOURNALIST (Translation): Hamza, which would you like? Which one, Hamza?
Unlike many, the father-of-two is determined to stay. No matter how bad it gets, this is home.
OBAIDA HAAMAD: Homeland is not a motel. If you don't like it, you can't change it. It's a homeland. It's something in your blood, in your genes.
But little Hamza's drawings show this war scars every child. At seven, he's already learning the curriculum of combat.
HAMZA: This is a soldier. This is a tank. This is a Katyusha. This is a car.
OBAIDA HAAMAD: Where is the gun?
HAMZA: This, this is a gun.
AHMED AND ALI (Translation): We like football… it’s entertaining. We feel happy when we beat other teams.
Brothers Ahmed and Ali are thinking big. They want to win the World Cup. But for now, their field of dreams has been reduced to this. It's easy for children to be robbed of learning when the adults are at war. Hundreds of schools are destroyed and two million children without education. So centres like this are vital, and the focus is on learning. The brothers fled the fighting in Aleppo a few months ago. And just as well - now the city's under even heavier attack and tens of thousands of people are heading for Turkey.
Five years of war means that one child-in-three develops a mental disorder. Trained volunteers assess the level and type of trauma the kids have experienced. And the war has already left its mark on the boys. Like most kids, they've got big dreams and a plan B.
BOY (Translation): If I don’t like being an engineer, I will be an army officer to crush ISIS. Kill them. I want to crush those who chop people’s heads off.
The word are pretty confronting, but in this mess, a sober reminder of innocence stolen. Many of these children have also witnessed unspeakable horror. It's the last place I expect to hear La Bamba. The power of music is a healing force.
TARIQ SALHIAH, TEACHER: The war, it will end one day, and I hope very soon. And in future, you'll make new Syria. It's unique, new country, much better. And they believe in this idea.
In the background, President Assad smiles down. But he and his forces stand accused of ending many young lives. In this country of chaos and war, with atrocities on all sides, there's a very different message here.
GIRL (Translation): We would like it to be peaceful. We would like things to go back to normal.
Reporter
LUKE WATERS
Story producer
GEOFF PARISH
Fixer
OBAIDA HAMAD
Story editor
DAVID POTTS
Translations
DALIA MATAR
Title music
VICKI HANSEN
23rd February 2016
KIDS GONE WILD.
Reporter:
Amos Roberts and Alex De Jong
4-year-old Nicola Towns is joining her kindergarten friends in the forest. But they're not on an excursion. This forest is their kindergarten.
JOHAN LAIGAARD (Translation): Look, troll ears! There are trolls in this forest. Look, the trolls took their ears off!
It's freezing today - only five degrees. But even when it's raining, snowing, or minus 20 degrees, you'll find these children playing and learning outside.
BOY (Translation): It’s a millipede!
JOHAN LAIGAARD (Translation): They live under here in winter. Insects look after themselves by living under bark.
It might sound extreme but it's not unusual in Denmark, where 10% of the preschools - about 500 of them - are forest kindergartens. They're run by pedagogues like Johan Laigaard - someone with a university degree in human development.
JOHAN LAIGAARD (Translation): Oh no! What do we do now? Do you jump down?
CHILD (Translation): No, we run!
JOHAN LAIGAARD (Translation): You just run!
REPORTER: You have a lot of visitors come from overseas to see how you do things here? How do they react?
JOHAN LAIGAARD: They are thinking, "What are we doing?" And when do we learn to go to school, and why there's no fence. And, wow!
JANE WILLIAMS-SIEGFREDSEN, OUTDOOR EDUCATION SPECIALIST: It's important for young children to learn what it is to maybe be cold, what it is to be wet. Um, and survive that. My name's Jane Williams-Siegfredson, I came to Denmark over 20 years ago and was amazed at the outdoor things that young children were doing, and I now live and work here. .
Jane's the author of a book in on forest education in Denmark. She's brought me to a forest kindergarten near her home outside Viborg.
JANE WILLIAMS-SIEGFREDSEN: He's in the tree and it is only a very thin sapling tree. It's very, very wobbly. It takes an awful lot of balance to sit in that and use both hands at the same time. In an ordinary playground they wouldn't have the opportunities to develop those physical skills.
Jane runs outdoor education workshops for teachers and carers from around the world, including Australia. While we've been talking the kids have been moved onto their next activity.
REPORTER: Are you going to tell me this isn't as dangerous as it looks.
JANE WILLIAMS-SIEGFREDSEN: No no, it's not dangerous, the children have learned how to use the knives properly. So it is not seen as some kind of weapon. It is a tool for doing something, such as whittling. I think many cultures like to wrap their children up in cotton wool. I don't think that's a lack of love here for the children by their parents. They see it in a different way. That, in fact, children should have the chance to, to be free.
MATTY: Going up higher and higher.
REPORTER: So what's your approach to safety here?
JOHAN LAIGAARD: You have to use your brain and if you trust that the kids, they can take care of themselves.
REPORTER: Matty, are you afraid of anything?
MATTY: Nothing at all.
REPORTER: I was watching this boy climb to the very top of the tree, other boys hitting the log with a stick, very close to each other. I couldn't see you or anyone else...
JOHAN LAIGAARD: I was standing up there and I saw it too.
REPORTER: You saw it.
JOHAN LAIGAARD: Yes.
REPORTER: You weren't worried?
JOHAN LAIGAARD: No. That's a part of the play almost every day and they, and they learn. And they learn to be careful. Sometimes they hit, yes, they got a little accident. But that's the way to learn. Only once I have to drive to the hospital with a boy with a big injury. In 17 years. So I'm not worried.
REPORTER: And what was the injury?
JOHAN LAIGAARD: It was a parent who drove over a foot of a kid.
The world's first forest kindergartens were founded in Scandinavia in the early '50s. Today they're also popular in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Some locations are more challenging than others. Johann's kindergarten sits less than a 100 metres from fjord, but there aren't any fences, because they're not needed.
REPORTER: Why do you stop here, Carl?
CARL (Translation): We’re not allowed to go here. You need to have a pedagogue from up there before you go across.
JANE WILLIAMS-SIEGFREDSEN: I think one of the big things that I see here is the amount of trust that there is in Denmark, that there is no formal inspection of kindergartens. There's no-one that comes round and checks up that you're doing what you should be doing.
But how easy is it for parents like Nicola's mother, Nadia, to trust the pedagogues and their own kids?
NADIA TOWNS, MOTHER: I know my sister, she's so, "They can run down to the water?" I was like, "Yeah, but they don't do that." They know where they're allowed to go to, they don't...
REPORTER: You trust them? Do you think a lot of it is based on trust?
NADIA TOWNS: A lot.
MOTHER: I must say I'm happy that I'm not down here during the day because I'm a bit worried when Miele crawls into the top of the tree.
REPORTER: So you're happy that you can't see it?
MOTHER: Yeah. Yeah, I am.
At Nadia's house, I meet her husband, Paul. He's English. Danish forest kindergartens came as a big culture shock.
PAUL TOWNS: In England, kids can be harmed in any way, you know, falling out of a tree or something like that. They won't allow it.
There are only a handful of forest kindergartens in the UK. The US only opened its first one in 2007, Australia, five years ago.
REPORTER: What do you think it is about den nark that they can get away with it?
PAUL TOWNS: It is hard to explain. I really don't know what it is about the Danes, it’s just a relaxed frame of mind that they have got about everything.
One of the main reasons Nadia and Paul have sent both Nicola and her six-year-old sister Jessica to a forest kindergarten is that the virtual world is distracting the girls from the natural one.
PAUL TOWNS: As soon as they come home they want to play the iPad. That's what they want to do. That worries us. So we try to encourage them to go outside and play more.
Surely, not everyone's convinced about the value of an outdoor education. This is Jessica's primary school. I've come here because I thought the teachers might be concerned at how kids from a forest kindergarten struggle to adapt in a classroom.
REPORTER: Do you know any difference between her and kids who come from normal kindergartens?
PIA NIELSEN, TEACHER: Not at all. They are all prepared to go to school. My own son went to forest kindergarten.
REPORTER: Oh, really?
PIA NIELSEN: Yeah.
REPORTER: So you never had any worries about how he would go at school...
PIA NIELSEN: No, not at all.
REPORTER: What do you think about the idea that the children should be using their time in kindergarten to start to learn some reading, some writing, some maths, to get ready for school?
JOHAN LAIGAARD: I think this is work spoiled because they are not ready. You have to learn them to be interested in learning.
Over the last 20 years, the number of outdoor kindergartens in Denmark has roughly doubled. And now, the forest gospel is spreading. Even schools are looking to take the class outdoors.
JANE WILLIAMS-SIEGFREDSEN: Now there's a lot of research being done that shows that children are less stressed, that children concentrate more, that children are ill less often. That their motor development is far, far better for being outdoors than indoors.
JOHAN LAIGAARD: And a lot of teachers is, "A-ha!" Getting, "Yes. Oh, it works!" So I'm, I'm happy.
Video journalist
AMOS ROBERTS
Story producer
ALEX DE JONG
Additional camera
MARIANNE BOROWIEC
Story editor
DAVID POTTS
Translations
VIBEKE SYBRANDT
SEBASTIAN RASMUSSEN
KARINA KOLD
Title music
VICKI HANSEN
23rd February 2016