Refugees need the supplies I brought. But respect is just as critical
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Version 0 of 1. Two weeks ago some friends and I decided to take supplies out to the refugees in Europe. We didn’t expect much of a response, suspecting that many in our nation seemed to believe the thousands of people risking their lives to get to Europe were doing so solely to ruin their package holidays. A week later we had 30 volunteers loading 11 storage rooms’ worth of supplies on to an articulated lorry bound for the Greek-Macedonian border. As a fellow volunteer and I flew to the island of Kos with some of the £56k we’d raised I had a sudden, overwhelming feeling of love for my fellow humans (something few people experience on a Ryanair flight). Our seven bags of supplies incurred no extra charge from a sympathetic check-in guy despite being 20kg over. When we got there we were met by two incredible German volunteers who took us to the main refugee camp – appropriately in a derelict hotel – that was being boarded up by the police as we arrived. People were desperate. Most were Pakistani or African men – the Greek authorities had prioritised getting Syrian and Iraqi families off the island. With no money and no shoes, most still hoped to make it to Germany, Sweden or the UK. We distributed what we’d brought with us, and gave out hundreds of shoes, sleeping bags and backpacks that we’d bought on the island. Fights broke out when we handed out our supplies. Afterwards I was approached by a group of almost tearful Pakistani men who were leaving the next day and didn’t have bags. I’d been giving them out to people who hadn’t even had their papers stamped yet. It was awful having people’s futures in your hands and messing up because of bad planning. I promised them all we’d bring them bags the next day. There was absolutely no aid infrastructure on the island from local authorities, NGOs or the UNHCR (the UN refugee agency). Two German girls had marshalled local Greek volunteers into creating an efficient system that fed around 2,500 people a day with food donated from a hotel kitchen. Men that we quickly realised were human traffickers tried to get us to hand out travel agency style flyers to the refugees advertising “Mad Holidays”. Apparently they could deliver refugees directly from Athens to Victoria station in London. It would have been funny if it wasn’t so utterly depressing. The next day I flew to Thessaloniki to meet the people who would be receiving our truck at the border and distributing our supplies. I was met by a group of amazing Greek volunteers who took me up to the border where they were distributing aid for up to 12 hours a day. We arrived as it got dark and began to pour with rain. We distributed the raincoats we’d bought. Related: Kos: the Greek island where refugees and tourists share the same beaches Thousands of refugees were filing down the railway tracks on their way into Macedonia. The only official force present were the police who referred to the refugees as “sheep”. The people were mostly Syrian and Iraqi, nearly all in families. One little girl shared her umbrella with me. When we’d given out all the raincoats I tried to give the one I was wearing to a guy with his son who had nothing but a tiny plastic bag over his shoulders. He wouldn’t take it thinking I was offering him my own jacket. I couldn’t explain to him that it was a donation and was meant for him. He eventually took it when I forced him to and hugged me, saying “Thank you, thank you”. He was from Iraq. Another 23-year-old Iraqi who spoke good English told me that he’d been threatened with death by armed groups four times at his college. He told me there were explosions and kidnappings every day, and that in Baghdad “everything miserable that you can think of” happens. He crossed the Aegean from Turkey to Lesbos on a windy night, terrified for his life. He waited on the islands for five days, hungry and alert to the possibility of violence from fascist groups and riots in the camps. He told me his name in Arabic meant “Cheetah”, and that he was going to run all the way to Germany. But he had no idea how he would do this, and asked me if he would be able to bring his family over when he got there. The next morning we went back up to the border, and this time the Red Cross were there. We distributed clothes. One teenage girl wouldn’t take the socks we offered because they were pink and had cartoons on them. My first thought was “bit picky”, but then I remembered what I was like as a teenager. It doesn’t make much difference if you’re homeless on some foreign border or on the school run in Islington – if you’re 16, you don’t want to be seen wearing a child’s socks. It’s embarrassing. These are proud people going through terribly dehumanising experiences and, as much as they need raincoats and backpacks, they should be given respect for just how far they’ve come and what they’ve had to go through to get to here. |