Greece

Guest Volunteer Post: "See Ya Later!"

Beth with two adorable Yazidi children in Serres, Greece

Beth with two adorable Yazidi children in Serres, Greece

Beth (age 23 from UK) spent a large chunk of her summer volunteering for our program Serres, Greece. She was kind enough to write up her experiences to share on our blog! 

 

I have been volunteering in Serres with LHI for 5 weeks now. Time seems to have a mind of its own here; I feel as though I have only just arrived and yet somehow I cannot remember life outside of my journey here with the Yazidis. 

Many of our refugee friends have been granted asylum and left for Athens this week, where they will wait a month or two to be processed before their flights to their new countries. Because of this, our team has shared many tender "see you laters" with our Yazidi friends as they continue on their paths to their new lives. 

Seeing our Yazidi friends leaving off as they progress to the next stage of their journeys - Athens

Seeing our Yazidi friends leaving off as they progress to the next stage of their journeys - Athens

I recently wished good luck to one of my students, who is one of the kindest, strongest and most genuine humans I have had the privilege to meet. He is going to Athens to prepare for his new life now that his family have been granted asylum. “Thank you, my teacher. I will miss you, my sister” are his parting words.

Sharing smiles with our Yazidi friends

Sharing smiles with our Yazidi friends

In spite of all they have faced, so many of them come to class every day with a smile, ready to learn and grow. Yet they take the time to thank us for our lessons and classes. They are determined to keep fighting for a better future, despite major challenges they have faced AFTER being forced to flee for their lives. I came to Serres to teach English, but every day I learn from the Yazidis; lessons in humility, resilience, gratitude and kindness. 

Serres is a special community where the residents have found friendship and safety through their tight-knit sense of community. It is incredible that they are given a chance to move on and resettle, but their departure from Serres is not the end of their stories. The future brings another set of challenges and some uncertainty, but they can face any challenge after the trials and struggles they've been through. 

The relationships I have made in Serres will span distance and time; I can't wait to see some of my friends again, perhaps when they start a new chapter beyond Serres, beyond Greece! 

Guest Blog: Tawna

Well, it has been just over a week since I left my yazidi friends and fellow volunteers in Northern Greece, to do a little traveling and then return to home to the states.  I’m struggling to put to words what I want to say about my time there, but know that I mostly want focus on the people that I was blessed to meet.  They are my new heroes, some of my new best friends, and just all around good people, Knowing these faces as individuals has helped me separate them from just the blanket title of “refugee,” with all its connotations that we so easily glean from the media, and to instead see them as friends.  Though these friends certainly are refugees, and have experienced much of the sorrow and horror that you might expect from one in their circumstance (and usually worse than we’d imagine), I know more certainly that such a title does not define them.   It is an experience they’ve been forced into, and one that is greatly shaping their future, but it is not who they are.  This is something I knew before going, but is something I feel and know more deeply and honestly, now. 

            One of my early experiences in Greece helped me to come to understand this a little more.  A few of us were visiting with a young family there—a man and his wife, two of their children, and an 18-year-old nephew.  We were talking and eating, smiling, and trying to share a nice evening together despite our great language differences affecting communication.  I don’t remember the exact context, but as the nephew and I began to talk, he mentioned that he loved photography.  He began to show me pictures that he’d taken on his phone—of him posing in different settings, of friends and family, and then many of the sunrise, which he’d sometimes wake up for very early in the morning. (He did so with the intention of taking such photos and appreciating the calm and beauty.)    It was such a simple thing—showing me some of his photography—but it helped me to know him more personally, to know him more as an individual, as Hashim.  Hashim and I then had that connection of photography, as jetlag had “helped” me wake up long before sunrise earlier that week, and I too had ended up taking many photos as the sun rising over the sea.  It was so lovely to see that slow, steady reminder of beauty in the world, and of consistent hope despite the chaos that was ensuing around the world.   Starting that day, Hashim and I were becoming friends, and I was able to see and know him more as himself and not just his circumstance.  I’ll be forever grateful for that.

            Some of those I was able to get to know and love the best, were the students in my Advanced English class.  I took over the task of teaching this class of 8 girls, and it was one of the best experiences of my life. Those girls are amazing, and are now some of my best friends.   I could regal anyone who is interested with hours of stories about my time with each of them, about how quick they were to pick up new words and how they begged for homework every day, how deeply they ache for learning, about the poems they wrote, or about our fun and silly walks and inside jokes, or about their deep desire to share and feel happiness.  But because no one will read an entire novel on a single blog, I’ll just share a few random memories that stand out to me at this moment.

            After one of my first classes upon arriving, my student Widian and another volunteer and I decided to go walking down the beach to enjoy the unusually warm day.  Widian immediately grabbed my arm as we walked, and down the beach we went, with Widian laughing at me because of how excited the sunshine and outdoors were making me.  The sunshine was making me a little giddy, and I told them that I was so happy to be outside that I felt like doing a cartwheel on the sand.  Widian did not know what a cartwheel was, so my teammate Leah and I began to teach her.  It was hilarious to see us all trying desperately to do cartwheels in the sand with our heavy boots—and Leah and I’s poor teaching skills.  It led to a lot of sitting in the sand, laughing, and to the building of a strong friendship. Widian may still struggle with doing cartwheels (she tried again just last week), but the memory is something we laugh about when we think of how we first became good friends.  She has become one of my best and dearest, since then.

            Another memory that sticks out to me—perhaps because it is so recent—comes from one of my last nights there with my friends in Greece. As one of my girls and I walked home from a dinner we had attended, hosted by friends from another local nonprofit, we got to talking a little about her experience that led her being a refugee there in Greece.  She said she had only told her story 3 times, because it was very difficult, but she was willing to tell me anything if I wanted to know.  I assured her she did not ever need to speak of it to me unless she felt the desire to, and so we walked down the dark street, watching the ocean waves and trying to hold onto the fun memory of the evening we’d just had.  But as the waves continued to crash alongside us, she began to speak to me about her experience crossing from Turkey, about being shot at by the Turkish military, about her fears of the large waves, and also fear of what would happen if the boat would have to turn back.  I told her how brave she was—to be where she is now, to keep up such a bright hope and willingness to smile and give love and to laugh after all she has seen and suffered.  But she denied being strong.  “I am not strong,” she said, “not strong at all.  I cry everyday. What good does that do?  I am not strong.  Others in the class, they are strong because they can talk about this, and because they smile.  But me, what good does it do that I still cry everyday? Nothing.”  This was coming from a 13-year-old girl who has shared her story with a few media outlets to help try and improve the situation of her people.  And even if she hadn’t?  This is a girl who has seen death and suffering, who has moved from country to country trying to seek a better life while fleeing some of the greatest and most malicious evil in the world today, and yet who I still saw with a smile on her face each day.  This is a girl who wakes up each day and eagerly attends classes to learn English and guitar, who is obsessed with football, who asks for books from Einstein and Stephen Hawking because she wants “to learn everything!!”, who babysits other family’s children to give them a break, who offered me her shower when our hotel’s water was shut off, who laughs daily, who likes to run and wanted to participate as a virtual racer in a race halfway across the world, who dreams of moving to Canada and attending university, and who is fighting everyday within her circumstances to maintain hope and to build a future for herself, wherever she is.  She is strong.  She is brave.  She is one of my heroes.  

            Each of the girls in that Advanced English class could have the same said of them.  Each of the residents I met and associated with each day could have the same said about their amazing resiliency and maintained human decency and hope and kindness and strength.  I am so humbled to know them, and to call them my friends.   Another of these young girls wrote me a paper about herself.  She ended it with these words:  “I don’t hate anyone, and I can’t hate anyone because my heart is full of love of my family and my friends and I don’t have any place in my heart to hate anyone.  Why don’t we love each other instead of hating each other? “

            I’ll just finish with a poem another of my students wrote:

           

They still ask me: ‘how much do you love your friends?’

            And I tell them,

            How many drops of water are there in the sea?

            They say, ‘That is not an answer,” and I tell them

            My love for my friends is like this:

            All the words in the world are not enough to express

            My love for my friends.

                                    --Shirin K.

 

I love these, my yazidi friends.  I hope to never forget what they have taught me.  I hope the world will start to see them as people, just like you and me, and that we reach out to help them, like our brothers and sisters that they are.

An update from Greece

Hi all. This is Hayley. I've been back in Europe for a few weeks, first visiting Syrian family newly resettled in France, and then on to visiting the Yazidi group that LHI helps provide aid for, and popping over to Lesvos to check out the conditions on the island and see where we can fill some gaps. Refugee work is kinda like an energy drink -- it gives you the highest highs and the lowest lows. It's pouring rain outside here in the port town of Mytilini, which is both lulling me to a restless sleep and also making me crazy worried about the 8,000 refugees living in flimsy tents and abandoned squats around the island. More on Lesvos soon (I haven't quite processed the desperation I witnessed today to write it down yet). So, in the meantime, here's an update on our main project in Greece.

Serres camp, the camp we normally are based in and provide aid/services to. Currently home to 500+ Yazidis from Sinjar, Iraq. 500+ survivors of a horrific genocide. 500+ people who are full of grace and gentleness. The actual camp has been temporarily closed for much-needed improvements to infrastructure. Where are they now that the camp is closed, you may ask? They have been moved to various hotels in a small, sleepy seaside town in Northern Greece where locals don't actually obey the one traffic light in town. They've finally got heated rooms, hot water, and actual beds, which is so necessary, as it has been an extremely cold winter. The transition back to the camp will naturally be tough, but let's not think about that right now. 

We've rented a space from a sweet Greek couple in the town, where we continue to provide hygiene and food distribution, as well as hosting English practice, music sessions, and trauma-informed yoga for children, men, and women. Yes yoga. And yes, men's yoga. In fact, men's yoga is one of our most in-demand classes. As survivors of genocide, I can only imagine how soothing mindfulness can be to them. And it's not just that -- waiting and waiting to find out where you will be assigned resettlement without knowing when is enough to rattle anyone's cage.

We are so grateful for all of the residents. They are beautiful, gentle, patient people. They've become like family to us. Every time we try to help them, it's actually they who are helping us. I am in constant awe of their kindness. 

We host an advanced English group to a handful of interested teenage girls. We can't believe how much they've improved since LHI started working with this group of Yazidis in early August of last year. They are legitimately becoming fluent in English. Every time I visit, I'm shocked at their progress and passion.

Tawna F. is one of our current volunteers who runs the advanced English sessions. Here are some of her pictures and thoughts:


"Teaching these girls is a ride. (A good one.) They are so full of energy and excitement and they just want to eat up anything I can teach them. They are the best part of my day.  We did a picture scavenger hunt for fun (and to test vocab compr…

"Teaching these girls is a ride. (A good one.) They are so full of energy and excitement and they just want to eat up anything I can teach them. They are the best part of my day.  We did a picture scavenger hunt for fun (and to test vocab comprehension) and these girls probably ran a full mile just to get an authentic photo of cheese and a boat. :) They were incredibly into it."

"After class one day, my Advanced English students and I decided to take a walk. Seeing these girls run so freely, laughing as they kicked up the sand behind them, was an image I never want to forget."

"After class one day, my Advanced English students and I decided to take a walk. Seeing these girls run so freely, laughing as they kicked up the sand behind them, was an image I never want to forget."

"One thing I love about this work is the people it brings together from all over the world. In this photo we had 3 Iraqis, an American, Mexican, Frenchman, Egyptian, and an Irish lass, jamming out to an Iraqi Saz and a Bolivian guitar. All in one sm…

"One thing I love about this work is the people it brings together from all over the world. In this photo we had 3 Iraqis, an American, Mexican, Frenchman, Egyptian, and an Irish lass, jamming out to an Iraqi Saz and a Bolivian guitar. All in one small room in Greece. :)"

 

 

Mayor Morad

Nabil Morad was born in Syria, studied medicine in Bulgaria, where he met and married his Greek wife. He practiced medicine in Greece for several years before he became mayor for several terms in a row. He speaks 5 languages and is clearly brilliant. The town and the refugees who live nearby adore him, and after meeting him, it is obvious why.

One of the reasons why he is so adored strangely has to do with a beachside resort in his town going bankrupt, mostly as a result both of the Greek economic crisis and also its isolated location. Mayor Morad saw an opportunity to house some of the 55,000+ refugees in Greece -- who are indefinitely stranded in Greece due to the recent EU/Turkey agreement -- at the abandoned property. The resort is consists of several semi-detached villas has recently become home to 300 people, the vast majority of them families, thanks to this man. Although living here is still less than ideal, that is 300 less people living in squalor in overcrowded camps.  

The visit was surreal. Upon arrival, the place looked like it could be a set for the Walking Dead. There was no soul in sight. The sun was overwhelmingly bright and hot, steam was rising from the pavement, and the cicadas were out in full force. The basketball and tennis courts are webs of tangled nets. Empty swimming pools collect muddy rainwater that turns into smelly sludge. And its location, 4 hours away from Athens by car, places it in the middle of nowhere. I was expecting to see endless movement that you see at other camps, but here, there was just silence and stillness. A small child walked across the pockmarked basketball court dragging a toy. Pulling in past the main office, we finally saw signs of life -- some refugees sitting together under a tree sipping coffee while a young man filled a small fountain with water from a hose. One teenage girl was braiding a British volunteer's hair. An older man counted his prayer beads.

The mayor visited that day, so we got to meet him. We also got to meet a number of families who live there. One family of 12 (including relatives) share in a villa that accommodates 3 people, maybe 4. "Yes, it is beautiful, but we cannot truly enjoy it," said Faris, the father, a cheerful man who cracks dad jokes whenever he has the opportunity. I can see why they can't enjoy: It is hot and humid, and there is no A/C. They can't cook, because the town is 90 minute walk away and they don't have money. The food is provided by the Greek military's catering company and is admittedly quite terrible and repetitive. They get 10 days worth of prepared meals that get put in a big fridge. By the second day, the food is stale and tasteless. Kids don't have anywhere to go to burn their energy. There is a school, *IF* they have volunteers there to run it, which is not always the case. There is very little to do but sit outside in the sun and attend the daily established beach/swim time, which provides some major relief from the heat and boredom. 

After spending about 6 hours at the resort, I was completely exhausted, sunburned and hungry. I even had to take a nap on the office couch just to make it through the day. If I lived there, I think I would actually go insane. Yes, the residents try to get creative about problem-solving (gardening, building clay ovens, petitioning the government for changes), but no one knows how long they'll be there. It's just a waiting game. They can't leave Greece. They can't live in the camps. They can't rent apartments in the city. So they just wait.

The danger in posting these particular pictures and video is that they don't portray the difficulties in living here. Yes, the resort is obviously better than the refugee camps. (and trust me, almost anything is better than the refugee camps. Some refugees live on the streets of the larger cities because that is better than the camps), and no, they're not being bombed. But the residents still yearn for their former lives, or at least the opportunity to build a new one, where they had control over even the most trivial things like choosing what to eat, going into town, visiting family, owning a couch, and getting medical help when needed. Mayor Morad does what he can to make a difference, but most of the decisions ultimately are not up to him. In the meantime, they try to make the most of it. 

Meet Mahmoud from Iraq

Piraeus Port in Athens, Greece is one of the biggest cargo and transportation hubs in Europe and has been since ancient times. Every day, hundreds of cargo ships and ferries come and go, either dropping off or picking up shipping containers and transporting tourists to and from Santorini.

No one would ever know that tucked away behind a few older abandoned buildings at the port, lies large refugee camp with more than 1,000 people, mostly from Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan. They live in camping tents right on the tarmac underneath a highway bridge, the only protection from the overwhelming combination of summer heat and humidity. Rats are a constant nuisance. The dozen outhouses are dirty, and unless you have your own toilet paper, good luck. 

It isn't totally unlivable -- There are portable showers, though access is extremely limited. There is running water from portable outdoor faucets. Nonprofits bring food every day. There are enough volunteers wandering around to keep the mood light and friendly, despite the growing sense of hopelessness of refugees who have been living here for months and have no idea where to go.

Mahmoud ask that I don't show his face, since his family is still in Iraq.

It was at this place that I met Mahmoud, a handsome, intelligent 22 year old from Anbar province in Iraq. We at LHI had pulled up with a carful of items requested by the volunteers who run the camp, such as shampoo, soap, and toilet paper. Mahmoud was nearby and saw that we needed some help. He immediately came and helped us unload, even though it was hot and he was fasting for Ramadan. He even stayed to help us distribute the items, catching sneaky children trying to get two rolls of toilet paper instead of one, and making sure the lines were calm and organized. Afterwards, he refused any sort of payment for his vital assistance, adamantly repeating that it was simply his duty to help. I was able to catch up with him afterwards and get a bit of his story:

Mahmoud fled Iraq after his 26 year-old cousin was executed for refusing to join ISIS. His family only had enough money to send him. Mahmoud did not want to leave, but his family insisted. Like so many others, he fled to Turkey, where life was so difficult that he decided to take the dangerous journey to Lesvos, Greece, on an overcrowded inflatable boat. He hasn't seen his family for 2 years. He rarely hears from them, as both parties have limited access to the Internet.

Mahmoud at the port. He says he was trying to do something silly so he could forget his despair.

Why is he living in a camp and not working, some might ask. The very simply answer is that refugees aren't allowed to work in Greece unless they are granted asylum there, which is a lengthy and undesirable choice for most. And because the border is indefinitely closed, he has no choice but to sit and wait in the camp. He doesn't have any money, and tries to find ways to entertain himself, like jumping into the sea at the port to cool off, despite the visible water pollution.

Like the 56,000 other refugees currently stranded in Greece, he is awaiting resettlement. His dream is to go to Norway and become a lawyer and eventually return to Iraq. He speaks decent English. He told me he is aware that there is a fear of his demographic -- young, single men -- becoming radicalized. For him, though, he says he only thinks of a happy, peaceful future for him and his family, and that he thinks it's crazy that anyone would ever want to join ISIS. (In fact, I've never met one refugee who doesn't absolutely hate ISIS. People almost avoid saying the name because they detest them so much).

When Mahmoud does have Internet access, he sends me friendly updates on Facebook,  updates on what is going on in Iraq, his status in Greece, his family, and his dreams. He constantly talks about his family back home. I hope that he will be reunited with them soon. 

est of luck to you, my friend!