Children tour guides take initiative in the East

Don’t worry if you haven’t been able to take a cultural tour with the help of a professional tour guide, because just about every corner of Anatolia is filled with young tour guides who volunteer to explain the region’s historical wealth. The best part is that you don’t have to search for them, they will find you. If you’re walking by yourself, before you know it you’ll have an army of children walking with you. They are the “children tour guides” of the East. Some approach you by asking if you want your picture taken and others try to come close by asking if you want them to provide you the history of the place you’re visiting. Many of them start talking without even asking and say, “Look, this citadel was built before Christ.”

They’ve even guided ministers and deputies

Almost all of them provide the information in a style that resembles a student rapidly regurgitating everything they’ve memorized when taking an oral exam. As soon as they finish their final sentence, they take a deep breath. They are very colorful and you realize that you’re so focused on the children themselves that you aren’t even listening to what they are saying. While the TL 1 you give to them before they leave makes their eyes sparkle, they don’t get upset if you don’t give them any money. “We take money if people want to give it to us. If they don’t, it’s OK,” they say with sincerity.

Aside from the majority who do this for fun and hope to make a few lira at the end of the day, there are some who really take it seriously. Sixteen-year-old Mehmet Yersel is one of them. I met Yersel at the Zinciriye Madrasah, which is the first place tourists visit in Mardin. When the tourist season starts, he comes to the madrasah every day and from morning to nightfall he explains the history of the school to tourists. There are two other child tour guides like Yersel at that venue. One is his brother. Since Mardin is relatively new to tourism, these kids are perhaps the best informed about the places in the province. According to the children, sometimes they even assist professional tour guides who come to the city. Yersel has a vast knowledge of the area, ranging from the architecture of the madrasah to urban legends in the region. Among the people who Yersel has explained the history of the madrasah are state ministers and deputies.

He explains that around 200 people visit the madrasah every day during the tourist season. Yersel has no problem approaching tourists. Don’t think he’s too young, Yersel has been volunteering as a guide to those who visit the tourist attraction for six years. Actually it’s not quite volunteering either, as Yersel says he makes TL 25-30 a day. He feels the need to occasionally say: “We take money only if people want to give it. We still explain the history to those who don’t give money as well.” When asked, “What do you do with the money?” he says, “I spend it on myself,” and adds: “I don’t get any allowance from my family. In fact sometimes I support them.”

Yersel and his friends took a small-scale tour guide course provided by the municipality before they started working as guides; however, this course is no longer available. Yersel sees himself as different from the little kids who swarm around tourists in the shopping areas. His response to the question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” shows just how seriously he takes this job. “I used to want to be a cop. But after I started do this I decided to become a tour guide.” Noting that he would like to study tourism in college, Yersel said he wants to work as a tour guide in Syria in the future.

255 numbers in his phone book

Yersel does not only stay at the Zinciriye Madrasah, he also helps out tourists when they go to other places as well. In fact, he takes some of the tourists to his grandparents’ house, which is one of Mardin’s popular stone homes and is exactly 600 years old. His most profitable tour was when he accompanied a large tour group visiting Mardin, Midyat and Nusaybin. At the end of the two-day tour he made a total of TL 500. Another thing that makes Yersel different from the hundreds of other child tour guides is that he stays in contact with the tourists he meets. He has 255 telephone numbers in his phone book. Most of the numbers belong to tourists he helped out in Mardin. He proudly explains that he occasionally calls the people who he accompanied during the tour in Mardin and asks how they are doing. In fact he visits some of them when he goes to İstanbul to see his relatives. He specifically mentioned a tourist friend who picked him up by car and showed him all around İstanbul.

We head towards Midyat, which is also known for its stone homes. I meet another child tour guide here. He is 12 years old and his name is Aziz. I don’t quite remember how it happened, but we ended up walking around together. He doesn’t really heed us when I say: “Don’t get tired. We will find our own way.” He follows us like a shadow. He is one of the hundreds of children who you come across at every corner and will walk around with you all day long in return for one or two lira. His knowledge of the area is limited to the places where television series were filmed. There is no need to wait for him to start off by saying: “Here is the most important church belonging to the Syrians. It is called Mor Gabriel.” Instead he offers to take us to the home where the television series “Sıla” was filmed, to the place where Sıla’s henna party was held and even to Sıla’s mother’s house. This is not Aziz’s personal preference but the preference of tourists. He has created a list of places to tour in the city according to the requests of tourists. In other words, these days Midyat is popular not for its stone homes, multiculturalism or Syrian churches but more for the television series filmed in the area.

The “Sıla” phenomenon is over but now there is another television series, which is attracting a lot of attention. “The series ‘Aşk Bir Hayal’ was also filmed here. Would you like me to take you to its set?” he asks. “Forget about the television series, let’s rest over here,” I say. Hesitatingly, he accepts my offer. He also hesitates to drink the soda I bought thinking, “If I drink the soda, she may not give me any money.” Aziz’s main concern is bringing some money home to his family, whom I suspect is poor. At the end of the day, there’s a smile on my face and several questions on my mind. The idea that he is growing up in an extremely real environment while his peers are sitting across a computer screen killing time in a virtual environment makes me happy. But when I think that his family expects him to bring home money at the end of the day, it makes me feel sad. Hoping that the former situation will help these kids have a better life, I leave Midyat.