21 February 2021

Volunteering in Covid / Brexit Times

Amber and trustee San went to Greece some 14 months since Amber’s last volunteering trip in Greece due to COVID-19.

Therefore this time they are masked up, clutching negative COVID tests and with Passenger Locator Forms in hand. On landing in Athens they’ll have rapid COVID tests at the airport and be in quarantine for 8+ days.

This is also the first trip post Brexit. Now international travellers, not EU with free movement, passports will be stamped, reason for entry questioned and duration of stay maximised at 90 days for San, who’s coming for the full three months.

Happy to finally be hands-on helping (in a safe way) once again. But we can’t tell you how much we wish living conditions for refugees had experienced more humanity this year of all years. Sadly they haven’t and all our help, donations, solidarity and action is needed now more than ever.

22 February 2021

Day 1 – Kalimera from Chios

San & I are now quarantining (im)patiently on the Greek island of Chios. We’ve come to volunteer because, whilst the coronavirus pandemic overwhelmingly impacts all of us, the people of over-crowded Vial Refugee Camp are facing the pandemic from poverty. Women, children and men, the old, the young and the sick, each surviving months of lockdown from tent homes; without electricity or heating, adequate food, water and nutrition, or the necessary hygiene.

I keep hearing Emily’s words from one of our recent Sunday Live Sessions.

“We’re working in a context where access to food and water is a priority over the pandemic, which is crazy when it’s due to the fact people don’t have basic human rights.”

— Emily, Calais Food Collective

Emily was speaking about Northern France so isn’t it a woeful reflection on all of us that the same is true here in Chios, and across much of Europe?

And so we’ve come here to help long-term volunteer Ruhi Akhtar, of our grassroots partner Refugee Biriyani & Bananas for a few weeks. Working with volunteers who are themselves living in Vial Camp, Ruhi’s most recently been responding to immediate needs for staple foods that people in Vial can cook for themselves. This led to her prioritising dry food packs including sought-after staples like rice, cooking oil, salt, and tomato sauce. Followed by fresh food packs including mandarins, potatoes and onions. And she added protective face masks into each pack too.

As grassroots’ groups we have limitations. There are 2000-3000 people in lockdown within the confines of Vial Refugee Camp this winter, and these core food items sadly won’t last each family very long. So, as soon as one distribution is finishing, it’s time to start the cycle again – check the most urgent needs, confirm the quantity, raise the funds, bulk-buy the items, assemble a volunteer team, make up the packs, distribute fairly to everyone. And repeat.

As San and I hopped the short distance from Athens to Chios I stared out at the blue sky above and the sparkling Mediterranean Sea below. It was such a stark contrast to the dark corner of inhumanity that I KNOW lives and breathes here on Chios, but which is hidden far from sight on this otherwise beautiful island.

Chios hides a dirty little secret and it isn’t the residents of Vial Camp as some would have you believe.

No, the dirty little secret that so few people talk about belongs to all of Europe. It’s the very existence of the Vial Refugee Camp, and the other Refugee Camps like it, so utterly unfit for humans to live in, unfit for people to face a pandemic from and unfit for children to grow up in. Right here in our Europe in 2021.

So my ask of you, is TALK about Vial and the other camps. TELL people about the conditions. Help stop this unnecessary suffering of one human at the hands of another.

22 February 2021

Day 2 – food is on my mind

Food is on my mind. I know I’m not alone because we humans think about food constantly! It’s cultural, it reflects our social lives, our wellbeing, our parenting, our survival. Everything comes back to food for us, doesn’t it?

When we arrived our AirBNB host had so kindly left a few welcome nibbles for us but, because our quarantine means we’re not allowed in any shops, those nibbles became our dinner. Toasted bread pieces with cherry jam. For the first time in a very very long (privileged) time I went to bed with my stomach rumbling.

You know where I’m going with this, right?

San and I have arrived to Chios in circumstances meaning we could go online yesterday and place an order with AB supermarket. And this morning our chosen foods were delivered to our door.

We’ve just finished a lunch of fresh food and a lunch of choice.

Nowhere in our shopping was there a flavoured croissant in a plastic wrap. Nor one single carton of sugared orange juice. And we definitely didn’t order a ready meal in a plastic tray of mash or rice or anything else. Quite simply, who would ever choose to eat that food? And if you did choose it for one day, would you choose it day after day, week after week, month after month?

Yet that’s what the State chooses to provide for people in the Greek island Refugee Camps, like here on Chios at Vial Camp.

It’s an understanding of the importance of food to a person’s well being is exactly why people like Ruhi of Refugee Biriyani & Bananas here in Chios, foodKIND at Malakasa Camp, Project Armonia and We For Kids in Samos, and more volunteers and grassroots groups around Greece, can’t simply stand by and watch the health, happiness and mental well-being of thousands of people disappear from such a poor diet.

They give people FRESH food, give people choice and give people ingredients to cook for themselves. And it’s why they get our unequivocal support. Together we can make a difference.

Food is so so important. Don’t let anyone convince you that what the State is giving people is ok. Or worse, that they should be grateful. It’s not ok for me and you. It’s not ok for anyone.

4 March 2021

Day 11 – finally volunteering

We finally did it! Today San and I volunteered .

Happily reunited with my wonderful sister-in-volunteering Ruhi, fortunate with the lovely spring weather and more than a little relieved to have navigated the COVID-19 obstacle course at last!

This week is all about Food Packs. Ruhi is giving each person a bag of staple foods that they want and need so that they can cook food for themselves and their families. In this distribution the Packs have six carefully chosen foods – cooking oil, flour, rice, salt, tea and sugar. At other times, there are different ingredients, e.g. a couple of weeks’ ago people had asked for fresh Food Packs with potatoes, onions and fruit, so that’s what Ruhi made sure she got for them.

There’s a sense of urgency to get around everyone quickly because the situation can change so fast here. Whilst, remarkably and thankfully, there are no known COVID cases in the Vial Camp today, that can change in the blink of an eye; and with it the severity of camp lockdown in turn ending, or at least pausing, distributions.

As for the people… Both San and I were blown away by fellow volunteer, H, today. Wow! What an emotionally intelligent, switched-on and just utterly likeable young man (he’s 21). And, of course, I’m forever-humbled by the appreciation of those we’re giving to. The smiles, the laughs, the thank yous. One young woman came today and couldn’t stop giggling behind her face mask. She’d dropped her ticket (like a raffle ticket) in water and it was disintegrating! She was so apologetic… between giggles!

9 March 2021

Day 16 – Vial Refugee Camp

This will probably be the only picture I share with you of Vial Refugee Camp whilst I’m here. I’m not allowed in and you can’t see most of it from the road.

Just a little further on, around this bend, is the main entrance. As I drove along the road slowly I saw lots of people around… A woman brushing her teeth on the left, a family drinking chai on the right, a tiny child playing by the side of the road, mama or baba not too far away. Someone hanging washing on olive tree branches, a dog barking, a cat grooming. Life is happening all around but it would be intrusive to take photos of this from a car just driving through.

This official Government Camp – Europe’s RIC (Reception Centre) – is in the grounds of a derelict waste management site. Vial is inhospitable in every way; from the site itself to its cold, windy hilltop location, to it being 8kms, or a 2.5 hour walk for someone young and fit, to walk to Chios town and any shops or facilities. On the rest of this pretty Mediterranean island you’d never know there was a camp here. You can, and many locals do, get on with daily life and not give a second thought to 2000+ women, children and men suffering through each day a few kilometres away.

As well as asylum seekers living cramped into ISO boxes or large tents, queuing for at least 3 times a day for two hours each time to collect small portions of badly cooked food and receiving a nominal allowance from the Government. Almost overnight these people have become the ‘rich’!

Because Vial now includes squatters and these people receive nothing. Now, when an asylum seeker finally receives the previously coveted shiny new Greek ID card, that card costs you everything of the little you had – the space in a tent, the awful food and the nominal monthly cash allowance. All gone.

Although technically now able to work, the right papers take a long time to come through, you need an address to get a job, a job to get an address and, hard at the best of times, for a refugee to find paid work in Greece is near impossible during COVID lockdown.

What comes below destitution? I’m going to need your help because I’ve run out of vocabulary.

10 March 2021

Day 17 – Apartment Distributions

Yesterday the police paused our distribution in and around Vial Camp for a week, but they didn’t mention elsewhere… So today another 150 Food Packs were given to grateful recipients.

For apartment distributions, we’d park up discreetly in the neighbourhoods, spread the word of the distribution throughout the building or community, and all of a sudden a quiet street would be full of noise making me worry neighbours would complain! I got a reality check when the middle balcony of one place was occupied by a Greek woman. Calling and shouting happily, she was just as loud as our clients making me laugh quietly to myself!

At one point today one of our clients, a man, stopped and said to me shyly ‘I think I recognise you from Facebook… it was your birthday. Happy Birthday”. How lovely was that?

Then there was the Greek woman mentioned above who shares her building with a mama and newborn. As she called from her balcony I wasn’t sure if she was friendly, or not. But Kostas in our team is Greek and stopped to translate for us. Her first question was did we have diapers for the baby? Then the mama and baby next to me (cutest baby girl) glowed with happiness, smiling and calling about the kindness of this neighbour who’d given mama all sorts of things for her baby. So heart-warming.

At another place a cheeky little boy climbed into one of our cars with us and wanted to toot the horn. With that winning smile, he tooted away. Having a go in both cars!

After distro we had one last stop. It was one of our volunteer’s birthdays today. San had baked his ‘famous’ banana cake and cooked up some curried chicken and rice, and we all went to the apartment H shares with his brother to sing happy birthday and celebrate with him. He got such a surprise! It was beautiful (and also seeing H’s big brother getting such a kick out of watching his younger brother have his birthday celebrated by friends!).

The whole day was filled with these small, special moments. It makes me so sad that these really awesome people aren’t getting the welcome they deserve to Europe. If we could just build them up instead of pushing them down what a transformation it would be from Refugee Crisis to Refugee Opportunity.

11 March 2021

Day 17 – Blue Gate Distribution

Today’s apartment distros of the much-needed Food Packs were at “blue gate” (so-called because, well, there’s a gate and it’s painted blue!)

Here we met this wonderful, happy, social mama and baby. We played a bit of football and mama shot ‘hoops’ with her neighbour (a makeshift hoop achieved by propping a chair on a flat roof with the legs overhanging!).

Another family came to collect their Packs with three little girls and the youngest, maybe six or seven, came over to play with baby boy. She had the word ‘lovely’ written on her sweatshirt, and so she was! She even tried to give the teddy bear she was clutching to the little boy but I was happy to see she still had it with her when she left!

Mama and toddler watched his new friend walking away. It was such a sweet sight.

Everyone comes for their food packs which is a sure sign how much they’re needed. Giving food frees up any other money they might have for their other essentials. Many have so little and I can’t help but notice clothes and shoes being worn that are the wrong sizes, sometimes with stains or holes.

It’s nearly always the men who come to collect the Packs as sometimes they have to walk a little distance and the Packs are quite heavy. Younger kids come too and always try to carry a bag before accepting it’s too heavy for them!

Although the sun is out in this picture, I was woken this morning at six to thunder and lightening. Soon after, the rain started. After a really warm spring day yesterday, today has been much colder and tonight is bitter. Yes, I’m happy to be inside now and only listening to the wind blowing outside, and not out in it myself. But how can I not think about all the people on the hillside that is Vial Refugee Camp who are not so lucky? Shivering as they watch the canvas of their only shelter being battered by wind.

12 March 2021

Day 19 – Action for education’s mastic campus

This morning I was able to visit the ‘Mastic Campus’ which is where Action for Education moved to about this time last year, closing Yugi, their much-loved centre in Chios town.

I found Mastic Campus in a warehouse at the side of a pretty road! It’s 20-25 mins walk from the Vial Refugee Camp and is a lovely friendly and welcoming space inside and out. The team have kitted it out with seating areas, a little stage, showers, toilets, an office and more, along with the classrooms of course. I made a little video so you can take a look around too!

Action for Education are providing classes for 18-23 year olds here and they always have a waiting list (although there are usually spaces for female students at any time).

Of course, it’s COVID times and Chios is in a code red lockdown, so there’s sadly no in-person students at the moment. About 30 are continuing lessons online using Telegram, but success is dependent on mobile data access as Vial doesn’t have wifi; and that’s very challenging.

It’s so nice to be here and experience Mastic Campus in person. I find it really helps to know and understand needs and how and when we can help. And then, as always, there’s the people – Miled, Fahad, Patricia and Joanna have all been wonderful.

15 March 2021

Day 22 – Six Pallets ready for distribution

Watch the first 5 seconds of the video and multiply by 6 hours and that’s what today looked like with Refugee Biriyani & Bananas. Six pallets of tea, rice, oil, salt, flour and sugar packed up into 800 bags ready for distribution.

If anyone thinks this is easy, then don’t speak to me! I’m exhausted!

A few photos are in the video too (as I can’t post videos and photos together). The container before and after pictures (the before is actually after 300 packs had been done because I forgot to take the pic at the start ). There’s a naming competition for the ‘boy band’ photo… so far The Container Boys and Distro Boyz are contenders… And then Ruhi made delicious curry for everyone! Which was so amazing of her!

Yesterday we did distributions at two sites and around 100 people in total… which is how San also came to have his hair cut by a superb barber! He won’t believe me, but I think it looks great now! He’s happy (he’s just not used to it so short ).

Tomorrow is the official last day of Chios’s Red lockdown and we’re waiting to hear what decision is made next. Let’s hope – for everyone on the island – that COVID cases have dropped and things are able to reopen again. Please hope and pray for this. For us it means being able to get this food to the people in Vial again.