By Damiano Beltrami and Wafa Samara

AMMAN - It is noon in Sheikh Hussein Bridge, a village in the Jordan Valley, 90 kilometres northwest of Amman, named after the border crossing into Israel. A group of teenagers are giggling inside a rundown bus. A friend of theirs hides in the back row, drunk, a can of beer hanging from his pocket.

"The smell of alcohol was strong," said Faeda Ameri, a 38-year-old social worker who was on that bus four weeks ago. "These children drink beer, whisky and even cologne when they can't find anything else."

In the traditionally low-income area of the Jordan Valley, the issue of children who drink alcohol has long been hidden, according to Ameri. But now Makana, a citizen-led movement that deals with problems in Jordan's rural areas, is trying to tackle it.

"Children aged nine to 18 in the village get booze from adults who buy it from licensed stores," said Ameri, who has 13 years of experience in the area and now works for Makana, an initiative led by Queen Zein Al Sharaf Institute for Development, which is affiliated with the Jordanian Hashemite Development Fund, in coordination with International Care Organisation.

"These adults are well-known in town, but people are afraid to report them because by doing this they would admit that their children have drinking problems.”

Makana is pushing for effective enforcement of regulations that punish adults who sell alcohol to people under the age of 18. Occasionally some are arrested for selling alcohol to minors, but they are released shortly after that, Ameri said.

Ameri said the children, who come from poor families, do not have pocket money, so they steal from their parents to collect enough cash to afford their drinks.

"A child I know stole a bottle of olive oil from his family's kitchen to buy a glass of beer mixed with Pepsi," she said. He can buy this at half a dinar.

These children come from families who struggle to make ends meet. Most people in the Jordan Valley work in the agricultural sector, and although the area is the most fertile in Jordan, incomes are unsteady, according to Professor Ghalib Rifai, dean of the economics faculty at Zaytoonah University in Amman.

"These children imitate their parents, who probably drink alcohol," said Sari Nasir, professor of sociology at the University of Jordan. "And because their parents are already struggling to make enough money to survive, they don't take enough care of their children."

Northern Jordan Valley District Governor Mufid Ananbeh downplayed the issue, casting it as a minor problem among the many challenges this underprivileged area faces.

"We don't have official statistics about this problem yet," he said. "The authorities have dealt with only eight individual cases of drunken people who caused trouble in town in the last two years."

Ananbeh's constituents, however, say otherwise. Last year, Makana conducted a survey among 9,000 residents of Sheikh Hussein Bridge, and the issue of underage drinking came up as one of the top three concerns in the community.

Statistics show that Jordan in general does not have an alcohol problem.

Per capita consumption of alcohol among adults over the age of 15 in Jordan is only 0.3 litres per year, according to the World Health Organisation. This figure is insignificant when compared to non-Muslim countries like the United Kingdom, where per capita alcohol consumption stands at 11.8 litres per year, and the United States, where the figure is 8.6 litres.

There are no figures of alcohol consumption among minors in Jordan.

Besides, the number of people who visit rehabilitation centres in Jordan, often seen by Jordanians as socially embarrassing, is limited. Over the last eight years, only 2,850 people visited the National Centre for Rehabilitation of Addicts in Amman, the biggest in the country. In 2008, just 153 males and only one female were treated there, according to the director of the centre, Jamal Anani.

But this doesn’t mean that people do not drink alcohol.

“There are plenty of underreported alcohol problems, especially among women,” said Ernest Robello, project coordinator of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in Amman. “This is an underreported issue in a country where alcohol can still be seen as a taboo.”

A 27-year-old Jordanian member of Alcoholics Anonymous, a support group for alcoholics in Amman, has recovered from the addiction, but he still has many friends who drink, especially at home.

“A lot of young people from Amman whom I know like booze,” said the young man, who requested to remain unnamed. From the age of 14 to 24, he used to get up every morning craving a glass of Jack Daniel’s. “They don’t tell anybody because they don’t want to be looked down on. Even girls drink, but they don’t talk about it.”

If mentioning going out for a beer can sometimes be a taboo in Amman, drinking is practically unmentionable in the Jordan Valley. People's reluctance to discuss the issue has made raising awareness more difficult, according to Ameri, who believes that addressing these social problems would unleash the potential of her community.

Local religious leaders are aware of the problem and deliver messages through their Friday sermons in an effort to alert parents to the issue. They also set up programmes for children to teach them about the risks connected with the use of alcohol and drugs.

"We organise summer camps with recreational activities like trips, and we teach them the Holy Koran," said Mohammad Ameri, director of Northern Jordan Valley Awqaf and Islamic Affairs Department. "If they understand the Holy Koran, they will focus on doing good. They won't waste their time drinking."

Still, Ameri admitted, barriers of taboo and shame about drinking remain strong, and bringing the issue into the public consciousness is a complex and difficult task. Yet, she said, she patiently keeps working to realise her dream.

"As a Muslim I feel I must improve the situation of my people," she said. "I hope my eight-month-old daughter Rayan will enjoy more opportunities in a more prosperous Jordan Valley.”