Something for Ammi

With a cool $32 million to give away last year, the Ford Foundation has sprinkled its largesse into many a remote cranny.* Last week it was training its sights on a tract of blooming farmland near Jericho, where the crops are wheat, oranges, and above all, hope. It is a Boystown --the first in the Middle East--for Arab children left homeless and orphaned by the Arab-Israeli war.

The man who set up the shelter is a grey-thatched, Cambridge-educated Arab lawyer named Musa al-Alami. To his boys he is known only as "Ammi" (Uncle). His friends and enemies have frequently called him the "Don Quixote of the Arab world."

On the Village Level. Lawyer Alami has spent a lifetime tilting at windmills for his people. After World War II he doggedly preached his doctrine of reclamation and education while most Arabs could think only of their quarrels with the Zionists. He irrigated thousands of acres of desert land that others had thought hopeless, gave jobs to hundreds of refugees. Then, 15 months ago, he turned to the problem of the bedraggled bands of boys left homeless by the Palestine war. In Jerusalem he saw hundreds of them, skulking about the bazaars, living in back alleys, begging or stealing a few piasters wherever they could. The orphanages and refugee camps around were already overflowing. Finally, Musa al-Alami hit on the idea of setting up a Boystown on his land.

At first, Alami took in only 18 boys, but his enrollment soon rose to 76. He clothed his charges in fresh khaki uniforms, built new adobe huts for them, hired a dozen teachers and master craftsmen to instruct them. Younger boys spent their mornings studying Arabic, English, history, geography and mathematics. Older boys took additional training in carpentry, tailoring, shoemaking and farming. Said Alami: "The Arab world needs enlightened leadership on all levels. We're concentrating on the village level."

Alami allows his boys to run their own life. Each house of ten students elects its own leader, who takes a seat on the Boystown ruling council. The boys tend their own gardens, conduct their own religious services. Each noon, a young voice rings out the muezzin's summons to devotions. Then the orphans bow in prayer, including always the words: "And Thy blessings on our loved ones who are dead."

Expansion Plans. Alami has encountered only a handful of boys who do not fit in. Most thrive on their new life. Last week, with the offer of a $149,000 grant from the Ford Foundation, Alami was bubbling with expansion plans. Among them: bigger & better carpentry and tailoring shops, a flour mill, dairy farm or macaroni factory to sell products to surrounding villages. Says "Uncle" Musa: "I've never had a family. Now I have the most wonderful family a man could ask for." His hope: a Boystown big enough for a family of 500.

*Among last year's projects: libraries for schools in Jordan, aid to displaced Volksdeutsche farm families in France, a study of the Turkish-speaking Moslems in the Soviet Union, a program for livestock improvement in Egypt, a survey of the problem of refugee Chinese intellectuals.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.