I've been out to the refugee camps in Dunkirk in
2015 (link) and 2016 (link) but hadn't been to Greece as I
wasn't sure about leaving D and Iz for that long. But in March I
decided to do it and started planning a trip with some friends. However various things
fell through and so I shelved the idea... but never actually got round to
cancelling the annual leave I'd booked. So when the CESRT (Chios Eastern Shore
Response Team) put out an urgent call for volunteers 2 days before my week off
started, I decided it must be fate. Within 24 hours I'd booked a flight and
within another 24 hours I'd started on my journey to Greece!
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| Souda camp and a luxury cruise ship... what a juxtaposition. |
Background
Over 65
million people across the world are displaced. And 64 million of those are
expected to never receive asylum. It’s shocking to see it written down in black
and white like that. And consequently, Europe’s biggest refugee crisis since
World War 2 is unfolding around us.
Chios is
a greek island situated 5 miles from the Turkish coast. Due to this proximity
it is often a first landing place for refugees. Over 850,000 refugees arrived
in 2015 (the population of the whole island was 51,000 in 2011!) and although the
number of refugees reaching Greece has fallen since the EU-Turkey deal, there
will always be those desperate enough to try the risky crossing.
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| Standng on a Chios beach -Turkey not very far away! |
The tourist industry was massive to Chios. Since
the refugee crisis started it has collapsed, now only running at approximately 25%
of previous. But still the locals help. None more so than Pothiti Kitromilidi,
a local Greek woman who witnessed a boat landing on a beach right by her
guesthouse and subsequently set up the Chios Eastern Shore Response Team (CESRT). This
completely volunteer-run donation-dependent group provides vital aid and
support to refugees on the island – from meeting new boats that arrive on the
beaches to distributing aid in the camps, running centres for vulnerable
families, supporting local homeless charity groups and removing debris and life
jackets from the beaches.
Current status of crisis
Since the various EU deals there has been a massive slowing in the numbers of refugees managing to leave the Greek islands and getting to mainland Europe. Instead they stay in one of the 2 refugee camps on the island - one in an old prison and run by the army and one in Chios town, beneath the old castle and by the beach. Both are overcrowded with estimates saying over 3 times their capacity, but with new arrivals most days the influx is always greater than the number of refugees leaving the island and so the problem just continues to worsen.
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| Souda camp "overspill" - tents just pitched on the beach... |
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| In the shadow of Chios castle ruins |
The asylum
process is so (deliberately) slow that people are left in limbo for months and months on end,
living in primitive conditions in tents with little protection from the elements, minimal belongings and 2 shared bathroom blocks for the entire camp. The tents offered little warmth in the winter
and I can’t imagine how hot they are going to be in the summer. In early May it
was already hot enough for me, and I was not living in an overcrowded tent on
the beach…
In the 6 days I was out there I saw two boat
landings. In the 10 days since I have been back there have been at least 6 more boats – with 45-65 refugees per boat anyone can do the maths…
What do CESRT do?
An
average day starts with everyone meeting at the warehouse.... Except there
isn't really such a thing as an average day when a boat of refugees could
arrive any moment. One morning I was up from 3:30am right through til 10pm.
Then that night I was up again at 4:30am. Luckily I think the last 12 years of
medical nights/on calls prepared me well!
Each morning
jobs get divvied up and people prep for the day ahead. Sorting and unpacking in
the warehouse is really important as without a well-stocked warehouse there can be no distributions of clothes, hygiene packs or food. When I was there a massive shipping container arrived full of donations which needed to be sorted and organised.
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| The daily board |
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| The warehouse |
Clothing packs are made up for new refugees who arrived in the last 48 hours
and the Children’s Centre gets restocked with clothes and shoes (when there are enough in the warehouse). The Port Hut (where the refugees are brought
after a landing) is restocked and specific volunteers go off to man the
Children’s Centre and Language school. Clothes and essential items are taken to
Souda camp for distribution and large vats of tea are made for the afternoon
chai session (originally set up in the winter when the weather was really cold
to give the refugees the opportunity to have a warming drink, it proved so
popular that it continues to be a daily ritual).
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| Making tea |
And then
of course there is the boat landings. Completely unpredictable, there is always
an “on call” team of 6 people who are ready any time of the day or night to
drive to wherever the refugees have landed. If they are picked up by the
coastguard offshore then they are brought to Chios port, and the Port Hut where
supplies are kept. If they land directly on a beach then the volunteers have to
be ready to help right there on the beach, using emergency supplies from the “stock
car” until they can get everyone to the Port Hut.
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| Over 50 people fitted in this boat... |
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Drag marks from a boat on a popular sandy tourist beach
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The remnants of a boat that (unbelievably) made it to shore
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| 5am and waiting for a boatload of refugees to arrive |
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| 4am - once everyone has dry socks and clothes they shelter under a blanket and try to get some sleep before a bus arrives at 8am to take them to the camp for registration. |
And finally Pothiti. She is just amazing. Her
spirit, her enthusiasm, her ability to get everyone motivated and to keep going
even when exhausted. CESRT would not exist without her, both as a founder but
also as the continued driving force.
Special projects
There are
a few special, or focused, projects that run alongside. The Children's house is
an amazing safe, clean space where families can come and play, reconnect together,
get a clean change of clothes for the children, have a shower and generally be a
family in a stress-free environment. Sadly due to space restrictions each
family can only come once a week for 2 hours but Janne, who set it up, has a
brilliant vision for how she wants the centre to develop and she has already
started very simple (but effective) actions such as giving every child (or
breastfeeding mother) a bag containing fresh fruit, milk, cheese and bread each
time they come and running a “movie night” one evening a week, trying to inject
a small sense of normality into the life of these displaced children. There is
also a Language centre where refugees can attend English and Greek lessons
twice a day. Being able to communicate can make such a difference, empowering
these individuals is so important. And twice a week some of the CESRT
volunteers team up with a local priest to cook hundreds of meals for local
Greek homeless people. If you would like to donate specifically to one of these
projects let me know and I can connect you with the right person.
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| Drawn by 4 year old Haba. Can you guess which person is me?! |
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| Monika, my lovely Spanish room mate for the week :) |
What was it like?
I think my
first trip to Dunkirk was so exceptionally shocking that I re-calibrated what
to expect (how sad is that?!) so seeing children living in flimsy tents on a
rocky beach is no longer that surprising. What is our world coming to when it
is “normal” to see hundreds of people queuing for a bowl of rice or to listen to
grown men begging for a pair of shoes that fit them?
But it is
shocking to see the raw end – the people just off the boats, soaking wet,
scared and exhausted, emotional and overwhelmed, having no idea what is going
to happen next. So grateful for the bottle of water and small bag of food you
give them. In the week I was there I didn't see any boats approaching the shore
as all the boats were brought in by the Coastguard to the Port. I think that
must be so scary to watch that, not knowing if the boat is going to make it to
shore safely or not, hearing the frightened screams or scared crying.
But I did
see plenty of desperate people. No one puts their 5 month old in a boat in the
middle of night, across a cold sea, with no life jacket unless they are beyond
desperate. On the first boat there were around 45 people – 18 of which were
children. The below picture shows D and Iz at the same age as the youngest 8 on that boat (we don't take photos of the children there for obvious reasons). Unthinkable.
And of all those people only 5 (five!!!) had a lifejacket. For crossing a rough sea in the dark of night. Our kids wear a lifejacket in the Center Parcs pool! Most refugees have just stopped buying lifejackets before the crossing as they know they are fake (often they contain cardboard rather than anything remotely buoyant) and so are more dangerous than having nothing.
Away from
the landings I also spent time in the Children’s Centre, the warehouse and
distributions. One evening we even went to one of Chios’ most famous beaches –
it felt a bit strange to be doing a “touristy” thing but as one of the very
experienced long-term volunteers said, it’s not like the refugees want you to
sit around doing nothing just for the sake of it and feeling sad when you are not with them.
What will I not be able to forget?
That the
people from the first boat I saw had tried 8 times to cross before they were
successful. That’s 8 nights of hiding in a forest on the coast of Turkey,
trying to stop your children from making a noise so they didn’t get discovered
by the Turkish Police, 8 nights of minimal food/sleep/water, 8 nights of not knowing
where you are going to be the next morning, 8 nights of not knowing if you will
even be alive the next morning. Or if the rest of your family will be.
Seeing 10
riot police descending onto Souda, people apprehensively leaving the camp,
unsure what was happening, And then seeing them reappear with a 12 year old boy
in handcuffs. 12 years old… and looking so scared. Surrounded by a sea of police
in full protective gear including helmets and shields. Because his mother was
beaten up by some refugees from the other camp (there is a lot of tension
between some of the Syrians and Afghans) and he had dared say that they should
stand up for themselves and fight back. So he was inciting violence. At 12.
The fact
that a teenager felt life was so desperate that the best option was to set himself
on fire. His whole family had been killed in Syria and he was on his own. He
was denied papers to travel on to mainland Greece and had been told he would be sent back to Turkey. How desperate must you be to
douse yourself in gasoline? Luckily (maybe) someone in the camp realised what
he was about to do (as someone else had successfully managed it a few weeks
earlier) and wrestled him into the sea before he could actually set himself
alight. But what is his future?
But also
the good memories. The joy in a toddler’s face when presented with a stuffed
toy outside the Port Hut after he arrived on the island with nothing. The grateful
expression on a father’s face when we could give him a carton of milk for his
screaming baby as they were trying to get out of their wet clothes. Learning how
to make loom band bracelets in the Children’s Centre (I had two very good 10
year old teachers!). Seeing volunteers from all over the world (literally –
when I was there the team had people from Norway, Finland, Belgium, Spain, USA,
Italy, Australia, Israel, UK and of course Greece) coming together. Trying to give,
even if only for a short time, some comfort to those people who have had to flee,
leaving their whole lives behind them.
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| The CESRT volunteer team whilst I was out there |
Why volunteer and how can you help?
I’d
thought about volunteering for a few months before my first trip but wasn’t
sure where to start/what to do/what use I could be. Then I saw the photos of
the toddler Aylan washed up on the Turkish beach and that was it – it was no
longer a feeling that I should do
something, it was a knowing that I simply had
to. And once you start, you can’t stop. Once you have seen the conditions, the
desperation, the suffering up close and first-hand… I couldn’t turn away
anymore and so here I am, not doing nearly as much as I want to and feel I
should be, but just trying to do what I can, juggling my normal life into a “new
normal”.
But now I
am back home and focusing more on fundraising, collecting money to send back to
the CESRT team. What are donations are used to buy? Clothes for when theirs are
soaked by the sea crossing. Water and food for when they first come ashore. Tea
for the daily "chai round". Toys for the Children's Centre. Fresh fruit
and milk for the children. Basic toiletries such as toothpaste and razors
(considered a luxury). Things that we buy without a second thought. Every penny
goes directly to helping the refugees. There are no administrative overheads, no
salaries for volunteers, no government bureaucracy.
I'm
closing the donations page and sending all the money on 31st May. If you would
like to donate to help CESRT keep up their amazing work then please click on
the link below. If everyone who reads this gave just £1 then we'd blow past our
target easily – please help if you can!
And just
to end with a quote – from a refugee to one of the other volunteers:
“The people who care can't help us and the people who can help us don't
care”
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And just in case you're looking for a summer holiday destination... beautiful Chios, go and support their tourist ecomony!
