Category: Crafting

Hand-Crafted Crazy Creatures for Cuddly Kids

4/11/2015

Mustafa never lost a Spelling Bee.

Before I tell you about Cihan and the skills he uses for kindness, I have to tell you about his name. It's the same as mine, John. What?! It looks different, but sounds the same because C has a J sound in Turkish.

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk somehow forgot to include a J when he changed the Turkish alphabet from Arabic script to Latin script in 1928. J, no soup for you! (Correction: J does exist in the Turkish alphabet)

Cihan is the humblest Renaissance man you'll ever meet. Yes, slacklining is his thing. Any given weekend, he doesn't hesitate bringing all types of people together to enjoy life and his favorite sport.

He's also very skilled with the crystal ball and juggling whatever he can find. What you may not know is that he has serious wood-carving skills. Before he and his friends went to Suruç refugee camp, he spent a couple of months collecting scrap wood at his job and made toys for refugee children who live in Turkey.

Turkey is home to nearly 2 million registered refugees from wars in the region. As you can see, most of the refugee camps are near the border with Syria. Thousands more live in cities around Turkey. Scroll down to see wooden bling bling and a prototypical wooden unicorn.