Library to lighthouse

On 21 November I drove down the road to refuel the car, and got into a discussion with the attendant, a good-looking man in his thirties, about the influx of volunteers. He was irritated by what he took to be the implication that volunteers were good for business.

"Yes we may be making €4,000 more than usual this autumn. But next summer we'll we making losses of ten times that amount -- €40,000 for sure!"

He expressed a fear that I heard again and again. Some tour operators have suspended their trips to Lesvos, which is set to cause further hardship on an island already dealing with multiple challenges. Hoteliers, restaurant owners and everyone else who depends on tourism for their livelihood are holding their breath, terrified of what next summer may bring, or not bring. (I later conducted a mini internet survey of Dutch tour operators, from major companies such as D-Reizen and Neckermann to Greece specialists such as Ross Holidays, and was happy to find that not one has scrapped Lesvos from their catalogues. The UK company Thomas Cook does appear to have suspended it from their list of destinations, however.)

I walked up into the village, and a man about my age accosted me, asking my name and inviting me to sit and chat. We sat down on the steps. He was G, who owns a local produce store. Like many villagers, he was full of compassion for the refugees. His only concern was the debris. It is true that on some beaches there may be piles of discarded life jackets and dinghies for a while until they are cleared away. But I remember how astonished I was when I arrived on Lesvos at the end of October 2015, when 7,000 refugees a day were arriving on the island, to see that most places were very clean. The local council operates regular rubbish collections and groups of locals and volunteers frequently organise cleaning days.

G remained sombre about the future of the island's tourism, and after we had talked for a while, he voiced an opinion that I encountered several times:

"It is partly because you are here that the refugees come to Lesvos!"

I said that this makes no sense, that the refugees are fleeing from war and devastation, that they frequently have only the vaguest idea of where they are going. One of their first questions, on disembarking on the beach, is often "Where am I?" It is the Turkish boat mafia that push the boat out and point the hapless man who has been set at the helm – "That way!" Does G really think that the boat mafia choose destinations on the basis of how likely it is that volunteers will rush to the refugees' aid? This misconception remains a puzzle to me.

I bade G farewell and carried on up the hill to the village's proud library, which serves the community as a lending library and has an impressive store of historical books. It also has a modernizing influence, helping to introduce users to new technologies, and maintains international ties with summer schools in Canada and Norway. The librarian emphasized his solidarity with the refugees:

"Of course – my grandparents were refugees!" he exclaimed.

Forced migration is at the core of the island's history. Thousands of Greeks fled from the Ottoman Empire in boats in 1922-1923 after what the Greeks call "the Asia Minor Catastrophe", part of what is known as the "Greek genocide".  Many settled on nearby Lesvos; over half of the island's population of just 89,000 descend from those refugees. This undoubtedly explains why, despite the locals' concern for their future, so many identify with the refugees in a sense that is horribly lacking in certain other parts of Europe.

I spoke to the librarian about my ideas for Lesvos to become the centre of recycling for the Aegean – surely all the plastic water bottles, life jackets and rubber dinghies can be turned into something useful. V smiled ruefully, and mused on the engines salvaged from the dinghies, which have been stacked up in sheds all over the village without anyone taking the trouble to distinguish ones that could be re-used from those that need to be thrown away.

Recycling is a funny business in Greece. In Molyvos, all the rubbish is jumbled together. In Mytilene, the librarian told me, it is separated. In one area, at least, the Greeks have an advanced recycling system. People throughout Greece collect bottle caps, and once they have collected a ton (!) of caps, they present them to a charity, which uses the resulting funds to make wheelchairs for the disabled. Surely one could build on such a plan, which is very popular in Greece, to popularize a more comprehensive approach to recycling?

I also spoke of my idea for a museum of migration on Lesvos. I would later discover that other people are already working on recycling – developing plans to turn life jackets into baby carriers or rucksacks, for instance – and that material is also already being collected for a future museum of migration. But at this point I was still nursing a hope that I might be able to influence people, to help the island develop ideas that would help its economic recovery. The librarian, although he liked the sound of both projects, said:

"It is always the beginning that is most difficult". He also took a more judicious view of his influence, and mine. "We are just small people," he said. I certainly felt very small.

I drove down to the beach overlooked by the nearby lighthouse to meet up with Suleman, a warm and witty Londoner with a sharply perceptive view of events around him, with whom I had struck up a friendship the week before. He has worked a lot on the beaches, helping with new arrivals, initially with Starfish, and later with Drop in the Ocean and other volunteer groups. He showed me around his section of the beach, where people only remain for an hour or two before moving on. There were separate tents for women and men to change their clothes. The men's tent had a small plant with pink flowers that struck an incongruous note in the corner. It had stood outside the women's tent and had been rescued from the wind. Suleman also introduced me to the team of Greek lifeguards, and I arranged to meet up with their leader and speak to him the next day.

I have not worked on the beaches myself. Given my age and my bad hip, I thought I would be better employed elsewhere. Suleman too has been blogging on his experience here. Since working on the beaches is an essential part of the work done by volunteers on Lesvos, and involves a much higher level of emotional intensity than handing out sandwiches, I asked him if I might quote from his blog, and he kindly agreed. Here are some extracts from his entries for 5 to 7 November:

        5 November 2015

Today I was on beach duty in Eftalou. This is a small hamlet in the middle of a stretch of beach. The people who meet and greet the boats give people some water and then send people over to our station, an area with a few tents. There we give them more water and get them to queue up for a bus ticket to Oxy. Again, it is a managed process to ensure fair queuing and no scrums.

Single men without families have to walk the route, about 7 km. Some men try it on to get onto the bus – quite understandably, I'd do it myself. I've perfected my own way to deal with that. I say that I can put them on the bus but it will mean that a woman or child will not be able to get on. I then ask them if they are happy with that, in their hearts, while gently patting their hearts. They have all then agreed to walk. It is terrible that we cannot allow them all on the bus after their boat journey but there is little choice, given the limited number of buses.

We were expecting a slow day on the beach. The Greek president was coming to Lesbos to have his picture taken handing out bottles to refugees. The allegation is that the Greeks did not want these photos spoiled with more pesky refugees coming across the sea and got their Turkish counterparts to slow things down. Certainly that seemed to have been what happened.

The day was beautiful and when we finished litter picking on the beach, including moving many of the discarded life jackets, we sat on a wall drinking water and looking at the beautiful sea. I was joking to my partner that I had packed everything except a sun hat and that my crown would probably burn – as well as dazzle the cars passing immediately behind us. (Strangely, 45 minutes later an English guy I didn't know walked over to "our" refugees – see below – and started offering them sun hats. He saw me and offered me a hat. Probably he thought "poor Afghani," or maybe he was just being nice).

You can see Turkey from where we were and we saw a couple of orange dots coming towards us. As they got closer we could see they were boats: orange is the colour of the life jackets of the people who were crammed onto an inflatable dinghy. Orange life jackets usually means Syrians, as these life jackets are the least awful and therefore the most expensive. Black life jackets and car inner tubes are the cheapest and usually worn by the Afghans. Some of the so-called "safety vests" given to the desperate migrants by the scummy people-smugglers are even worse: thin plastic swimming rings and arm bands.

One of the boats landed west of us and one arrived exactly where we had been sitting. Before coming here I had tried to mentally prepare myself for all sorts of horrible stuff, including what it would be like to see dead bodies. But what I had not expected was seeing the sheer joy on about eighty faces in a boat for having safely reached Greece. Little did they know what awaited them in later parts of their journey. As soon as they were in earshot, the Norwegians started clapping and we all slowly joined in (slowly so as not to scare the refugees into thinking they should not have landed there). The refugees joined in. The Norwegians from the volunteer organisation Drop in the Ocean arrived from nowhere like blond dervishes, went into the sea up to their knees, helped the people ashore and then disappeared. Once the refugees were all on the beach, families started hugging and kissing each other. I was absolutely not prepared for this show of pure joy. It was beautiful.

We gave them a few minutes to recover and then directed them to their first Greek queue – for bus tickets and basic information from me and an Arabic translator, who joined me. One of the Syrian guys wanted to know how much the bus would cost and insisted on paying. It became a battle of the stubborn and I won. The winning line was that it was from our hearts and he would offend us. We had been briefed that we were probably the first people to offer them any kindness since they had left home. One of the Syrian men grabbed the side of my head when the bus arrived, pulled it down and kissed my shiny forehead. Very sweet. Kind of a shame it wasn't one of the beautiful Syrian women.

There was quite a long wait for the second bus and I chatted to one of the Syrian lads. He was asking for shoes for his family whose feet were wet. Their jeans were also wet. He said the Turkish people-smugglers had thrown their bags into the sea so that they could cram more people into the boat. We managed to rustle up a few pairs of shoes, though some were the wrong size.

Each passenger pays around $1,000 for the crossing [NB This sum kept rising: by the time I left on 27 November I heard of people paying $2,500. Some suggested that the sum included certain bribes–BJ]. Cheaper deals are kindly offered in stormy weather, when the risk of drowning rises exponentially. It is Afghan refugees who are most likely to accept this discount and brave the storm, since they have the least money.

About five minutes after we had got the refugees out of the boat a group of Greek men arrived (we often see the same faces) to cut and remove large plastic sheets from the plastic boat, remove the plywood floors and the outboard engine. The plywood is used to make the sides of animal shelters and the plastic is used to make waterproof roofs. It all seems a bit distasteful but the benefit is that it does get the ugly boats off the beach and out of the way for the next rescue.

We hung about after lunch. We observed a Greek man arrive from somewhere on his motor bike, pick up rubbish on the road and leave. The Greek people are an inspiration with both how clean they keep the island (everyone seems involved in its cleanliness) and their welcoming view to the migrants. If we in Northern Europe had hundreds of thousands of people head for our shores, I am sure we would get out the machine guns, barbed wire and patrol boats. The Greek view seems to range from slight negativity (the minority) to warm sympathy, help and hospitality.

Later on I got a lift into Molyvos for a nice seafood pasta meal. I joined some of the volunteers and three Syrian men. I did not know why these men had been brought over to join us, or by whom: possibly there was some family connection. It was good to hear their stories and chat to them. They bore no visible animosity to the West for bombing the hell out of their country. They were very anti-Assad and considered it vital to bring democracy to Syria. I asked if democracy was more important than food, water, housing and electricity. They said it was. They added that if the Americans really wanted Assad to go he would be gone.

6 November 2015

I was on the afternoon shift. We all chatted for a while as there was not much to do without "customers". While we were chatting, we saw that one of two refugee boats we had seen earlier was making its way to us. We started waving to them and getting ready for their arrival. It turned out to be a boat of about 50 Afghan refugees. Again the Norwegian dervishes had the boat ashore and people out in minutes. The women and children were rushed to one tent to undress and put on the replacement clothes the Norwegians had brought. The men had to wring out their clothes and dry them on rocks, since we had no dry clothes for them. There was a collection of shoes (dried from previous refugees, I think) that the men could swap into. Again, the boat dismantlers were there before we had got the kids into the tent.

. . . Later I went to Oxy. The only interesting thing that happened there was that I had to escalate a 70-year-old double amputee diabetic onto the line for the bus for Kara Tepe. We had no wheelchair or safe place for him to sleep. The guy weighed a ton, and two of us manhandled him to a chair some distance away.

7 November 2015

. . . At the end of the shift I went back to Molyvos, extremely hungry: had two starters and a main course. I ate at Captain's Table. Towards the end of dinner, we had a report of some Syrians who had just landed and one of them had a broken leg and was banging his head against a wall. They called a doctor and a psychiatrist. I paid up and went to see what was happening. The other Syrians were in great humour and the last twenty shook my hand. Unusually, even the one woman in their number. Very touching. I got to the injured guy who was sitting on the pavement in wet clothes, wrapped in a blanket. He was in a state of shock and nobody was doing anything. I embraced him and he burst into tears. I suppose it was the shock of a tubby bald bloke doing that, especially given the number of hot Scandinavians around. I then told the paramedic to help me lift him into the car, which we managed without causing him any further pain. Another hug, more tears and we parted. Intense. Our paths will probably never cross again.