Letters from Samos — Day 3

I got a call first thing politely demanding the use of my van to take and distribute aid to the detention centre or ‘the camp’. I am much loved here more for what I drive than who I am!

We loaded the van with blankets and arrived at the wet and cold camp where I was greeted by some of the Afghani guys I met yesterday, thrilled to have been given their papers. They were set to sail out the following day, their joy and relief was a very beautiful thing to witness. We set up the van inside the compound and opened the back door to distribute the blankets. Despite our team’s best efforts to control the queue it got out of control with people pushing in and trying to grab stuff. As soon as the people at the back of the queue see that people are not respecting the queue they don’t either and it can get quite scary and manic with pushing and shoving and shouting.

Emotions run high during these distributions and the balance between empathy and control is difficult to strike. We are giving away some amazing blankets but all blankets are not the same and some are hairy or simply rubbish. When a guy who is wet and cold has queued up for ages to be handed a pathetic airline blanket I can understand his frustration but I also want to get him away from the van so I can give the next guy his offering. The waves of joy and guilt flow though me in equal measure and I feel thrilled, bruised and wired afterwards.

The port was quiet in the evening with the ferry having left in the afternoon and the mood was jolly among the refugees. I spoke with a Greek girl who had been volunteering at the Macedonian border for the last six months. She said something that was reflected in an email I got from the Guardian today with the headline:

This is the crisis of our times. How we respond to it is a test of our values, our spirit, our ingenuity, our generosity.

She said she wanted her children to know she didn’t stand about doing nothing when this was happening. For her this was a generation defining moment and how she responded determined to her who she was and how she wanted to be perceived. This urgency of personal responsibility hasn’t reached most of us in the UK yet because we don’t have people washing up on our beaches.

Over well deserved beers we decided to rebrand the refugees ‘Fugees’ to make them more sexy and palatable to the UK and US people and perhaps that’s the answer or perhaps it was just one too many beers.

Previous day: https:[email protected]/letters-from-samos-day-2-2ed6c1f3cebf#.pxvy67wjq

Next day: https:[email protected]/letters-from-samos-day-4-6970ff9eee47#.4safpoa2q

This piece is part of a series of letters one impossible user sent daily to his wife while he was volunteering on Samos, Greece. He has shared them with us as an insight into what is happening there and how much help is needed.
We’ll be posting one letter each day for the next 8 days. Follow us.