Hanya Aljamal, former English teacher

Hanya Aljamal used to teach English in the Gaza strip, but her school was destroyed by an Israeli airstrike. Before the war, she was applying to American universities to study for a Master’s degree in international development. Her Gaza is a different world now, so much so that the Gaza she remembers feels like a fake memory. 

Aljamal works for a British for a British aid organization that runs a project for children in Gaza. She kept an audio diary for the BBC to give listeners a sense of what her life is like today. It starts on Tuesday, June 1.

In one entry, she says children came to the organization’s kitchen with empty pots, begging for food, but she and another staff member turned them away because their food was for people in the aid organization’s camps and they couldn’t feed everyone. 

In another, girls take part in a therapy session at which they talk about emotions – what makes them happy (“When you get really high marks on a test and you feel proud of yourself!”) and what makes them sad. One girl suddenly started crying. She had lost both parents.

One day that week, she watched five colorful kites flying in the air. "I like kites - they're like an active act of hope," she says. "Every kite is a couple of kids down there trying to have a normal childhood in the midst of all this."

More information: BBC