First week 30 Oct to 5 Nov in reverse order

Thursday 5 November 2015
Unfortunately I was on early shift, starting at 7 a.m., after the late shift last night. Only slept for three hours. But luckily I was only doing sandwich making, which requires no emotional energy. Had trouble finding the “sandwich factory”, a little house we are being allowed to use up the hill from Captains Table at the harbour, so I put out a message on the app and someone immediately called me to give directions. I was working with S, a Norwegian woman (not a drop). I said, “Hi! I’m Bev” and she said, “Oh. So many people come and go”, which I thought was an inauspicious beginning. She got a bit friendlier later on. She used to be a vet and got bored with it. Now she works mostly for international agencies, often in developing countries.

Had a chat with our wonderful landlady, N, a woman aged around 35, with three children, who says “Don’t worry!” dozens of times a day. She is going to improve our wifi, which only works if we sit by the door to our apartment. There are oranges on the trees in the garden, and chickens wandering about. Yesterday her mother came to change the sheets and gave us two eggs that she had found in the garden. N is full of compassion for the refugees, and has none of the pharmacist’s pessimism. Still, she agrees that finding a good place to accommodate the refugees in the north of the island, where most of the tourism is, is difficult, and didn’t like her children having to walk past lines of hundreds of refugees hanging their clothes to dry on the fence outside the entrance to their school. She belongs to a group of villagers who get together to pick up rubbish from the beaches every few days, so I lent her my elderly person’s pick-up stick gadget and she liked it!

After the shift ended, we climbed up into Molyvos proper, a beautiful hilly village. Some of the little cafes and shops are still open, others closed for the winter. (Winter? We had brought tons of rain gear, but today we had to buy sunscreen. One of the Norwegians was out in the sun loading buses at Oxy for six hours on Tuesday and has gone beet red).

We went right up to the top of the hill and walked around the imposing castle, with a view of the entire surrounding countryside. We stayed there a bit and watched the glorious sunset.

Wednesday 4 November 2015

I covered the car seats with thick garbage bags in case I would be giving refugees a lift on the 6 km walk to Oxy. They often arrive very wet from the boats, and some of the car hire companies charge steep rates for chemical cleaning. On the way to my shift I passed two men walking alone, and decided not to take them, because maybe I would pass someone whose need was greater. Then I passed a group of eight people, with one child. Decided choosing who to take would cause problems, so ended up taking no one. Felt bad about this, but when I arrived at Oxy and told one of the Norwegians (Drop in the Ocean volunteers, they call themselves “drops”) he said I had been right. First rule is “Do no harm”!

I’m glad I had yesterday before today. Today was much tougher! I was on the same shift at the food tent again, but we were in crisis mode. The ferries between Mitilini and Athens were on strike, which meant the camps in Mitilini were full, and the police ordered the buses from Oxy to Mitilini to be stopped, so Oxy just got fuller and fuller and tempers sometimes frayed. The food line stretched endlessly, at one point there were about 1,000 people waiting in line, all down the road and around the corner. Later one guy said he had been standing in line for four hours, I wasn’t sure if it was true. The pushing got bad at the front of the line and I had to call for crowd control. I was afraid people might get trampled underfoot, the pressure against the caravan might break it, and children waiting in line were getting squashed. So we shut the tent for 20 minutes while some clever volunteers (including Heleen) created a system with a space at front, only allowing a few people through at a time.  

Luckily I was working with A, a Romanian woman who used to work at a bank, and therefore stays calm all the time and NEVER LOSES COUNT of the sandwiches etc. She says “Hello!” in exactly the same cheerful tone of voice after greeting 1500 people as she did at the beginning of her shift.

“Banana or aypell?” she asks. After hearing that hundreds of times, the word “apple” now sounds wrong to me.

At the end of our shift, the camp manager came up with some of the others and applauded us for feeding 1500 people on our shift! We took some “ussies”. As I left the food tent at 23.15, I looked around, and in the dark I could see hundreds and hundreds of dark grey mounds around me, like a huge crop of giant mushrooms that had sprouted up in the evening. They were all around all the tents and caravans, including the toilets, and for hundreds of yards along both sides of the road. These were the grey blankets we hand out after sunset, and under each one was a person. They were also lying around the place where we park the cars, which made it a nerve-racking operation backing out, making sure there was no one behind us. 2,200 people slept at Oxy last night. Thank God it’s not raining!

Tuesday 3 November 2015

This was my first really hard day’s work. Again at the “food tent”, which is a plastic caravan in the middle of Oxy transit camp. Gruelling shift on my feet from 3 till 11 pm. For the first four or five hours the lines were endless. We had no time to go to the toilet or drink water. The food tent is manned by two people, one handing out food and water and the other keeping the boxes filled and ordering more on the Whatsapp group when needed. Then I took a five-minute break. From 8 till 11 pm it gradually became less frantic. News came in on the app of another boat sinking, another child drowned, maybe more.

Starfish pays for all this food from private donations. No money from EU, Greek government or major NGOs. The food bill is thousands of euros every day.

Handing out food goes like this. Three people crowd around the window, waving tickets. The one who seems to be first in line says:

“Family!” and hands over his bundle of scraps of paper that he got from the ticket caravan. I count. There are fifteen.

We give him his big bag of cheese sandwiches, another bag of apples (yesterday we had too many bananas, today we have too few), a third of water. Then he says “Halib!”, which means milk.

“You have babies?” we ask, babies being our word for children.

When he understands, he holds up three fingers, and we give him three cups of milk.

The next man has a bigger family, and hands over 21 tickets. He has one of his relatives there to help him, which is essential, especially with the halib.

Then comes a girl aged about 15, travelling alone with four younger siblings. I could hardly take that in. I wished her good luck, which seemed pretty inadequate. One big man arrived, like many other Syrians, full of exasperation that he was having to make this journey.

"But what do you do when your government are killers?" he exclaimed as he took his ration. At 7 o'clock blankets were handed out as it was getting cold. The IRC buses to Mytilini stopped early, maybe the camps were full, so people would have to sleep at Oxy, 200 can fit in the big UNHCR tent, maybe 100 in the smaller tents, and the rest on the rocks in the open air. In total we had about 950 people sleeping at Oxy. Thank God it wasn't raining! Someone lay down outside the food tent so we couldn't get out and we had to move him. Most settled down at 10ish, here and there a baby wailed. One woman kept coming and demanding more, more, and we had to say no. One ticket, one ration. Except I occasionally gave more to someone very old and frail, and to children travelling alone.

Monday 2 November 2015

Worked first shift at Oxy today, handing out food. The first time a refugee said to me "you really good people" I teared up a bit. "Where you from?" said another. "Holland" I said. "Ah, Arjen Robben" he said, and we smiled. Another man came and gave back his 3 bananas and 3 sandwiches and 3 bottles of water. Puzzled, I thought he had received too much by mistake and put them away. Then he asked for a plastic bag & I thought it a more than fair exchange. Perhaps I was getting a bit tired. Finally I understood that he needed the bag to put his food etc in and I gave it all back, in a bag. I laughed at the misunderstanding and so did he. We both cracked up laughing!

A Greek couple brought bananas. We already had too many but we are always grateful when locals come and donate food. They wanted to go round handing them out to children but buses had just left and at that moment there weren't many. They tried and then left the bananas at the food tent and went home.

I went to the pharmacy. The pharmacist is very gloomy. Thinks when this is all "finished", refugees gone, volunteers gone, tourists also gone because of negative vibes/publicity, island will be dead. I tried to introduce a note of cautious optimism but could tell he was firmly convinced of this doomsday scenario. Hope he's wrong. Lesvos is still a great place for a holiday, everyone! Great weather too... 

Sunday 1 November 2015

Worked with a German man, G, who was feeling upset because he had turned up at 7 am to make sandwiches but the key to the sandwich factory had vanished and he had to wait until 9.

Today, three dinghies sailed right across from Turkey into Molyvos harbour instead of landing on beaches. This had never happened before. Evidently someone knew how and where to steer. They just landed neatly at the quayside, 100 people or so, waved and said "hello"!

So many people smoke here. Refugees ("not in the tent! Go outside to smoke!" hundreds of times a day.) Many of the volunteers smoke too. And at the restaurant we ate at, the owner sat smoking at the next table. Normally I can't stand this. But here, I've discovered strangely that it doesn't bother me. As if my body has automatically decided it's ridiculous to fuss about smoking when people's lives are at stake. Normally it makes me feel ill, and now it doesn't. Strange.

Saturday 31 October 2015

We had an incredibly informative induction talk from T, one of the amazing core group of Starfish volunteers. She has given up her job in the UK to work here. She pointed out the importance of remaining calm... Even a lot of cheerful welcomes actually raises the anxiety level, and someone may leap out of his boat happily, only to break his ankle! She also cautioned that so many things are not what they seem. E.g. a volunteer was filmed briefly shouting at a line of refugees getting ready to board a bus. Once the cameras had gone and everyone was on the bus, the refugees all applauded her for getting it done in such an orderly way. That was not filmed! As T was talking to us, a young man who spoke only Arabic interrupted us to show us all a photo of someone he was trying to find. He looked terribly worried, so I looked around to give him a glass of water. "He's one of us!" someone said, staring at me. He was a member of the volunteer team. Also, a young boy begging outside was a local Greek boy...

Then we went to see Oxy, the "transit camp" run by Starfish. It is a rocky patch of land outside a former nightclub. This miserable space, smaller than a football field, beside a fast main road and 6 km from the beach, is the only place that could be agreed for the wet and exhausted refugees who come ashore to rest, get water and a sandwich before boarding buses to the capital, Mytilini. If there is a backlog or the buses don't come, they sleep here. There are a few small tents and one large one. At one point there were 6,000 people sleeping here. And then if it rains.... 

Sometimes they still have to walk to Oxy from the beach. We stood for a while watching the volunteers in the ticket booth give people coloured cards with pictures for the buses to Mytilini (one bus is e.g. pink card with a picture of a smiley, next bus is green with a banana). Syrians board one bus, Afghans and others another. Some Afghans are angry about this, but it is because the buses go to different camps: Syrians to Kara Tepe, others to Moria.

Starfish has thirty different jobs involving making sandwiches, numerous jobs at Oxy: handing out tickets, distributing food, clothes, helping people to board buses, cleaning, children’s tent; we have two wonderful Greek volunteers cleaning the toilets, and a Greek security guard in army fatigues. Others help on the beach, unpack donations, transport people and goods around the area, etc. Most of this is 24/7. For three shifts a day they need 90 volunteers. Today there were 25. We were going to take our first weekend off, to get our bearings, but that is clearly impossible. We're starting at 9 tomorrow morning, making sandwiches.

Friday 30 October 2015

We spent our long time in transit at Athens airport getting Greek SIM cards and sorting them out. As we waited to board the plane to Mitilini, I met a lovely young woman, a medical social worker, who had flown in from Virginia. Her IT husband would be taking time off to care for their sons, 6 and 10, while she was away. She asked him to consider the contribution to her trip her Christmas present. United Airlines, warned ahead of three extra cases of donated goods, charged her $500 extra for them, instead of the $300 agreed on the phone. She was too shocked to consider repacking and just paid up. The UA supervisor weighed in, saying, "we can't be expected to support every humanitarian aid worker!"

I'm thinking of starting a blacklist hashtag on Twitter for companies that behave like this. Anyone have any ideas about this?

We had an extra suitcase too, by the way. Lufthansa waived the charge.

I also met a French journalist ?? politician ?? at the airport, who, hearing that I was going to help, demanded to know "How?". I said I didn't know. Perhaps unpack and sort clothes, I said. She exclaimed quite angrily "but that's not the solution!" as if I ought to be meeting up with Putin instead?? Not sure why she was coming to Lesvos: to strike a peace deal in Syria, perhaps?