More Stories Than I Can Tell
PLEASE EXCUSE English errors and typos as due to time and priorities, I have little editing time :)
The days are starting to blur as I have so many impressions and emotions every single day, every single hour and every single minute. Most are hard to capture in words. Words don’t do justice to the intense emotions I feel. They range from beauty when I open my curtains in the morning and look at the blue blue sky and water to the sunsets in the evening to inspiration when I talk to refugees who have learned English or German (those are the ones I can communicate best with) to sadness at the entire inhuman system and plight of the refugees in general.
Instead of recounting my daily activities, today I will share with you a few stories. While serving tea, I met a former Syrian high ranking official who spoke about seeing his entire division get shot before his eyes after he called for help and no one answered. He doesn’t know why he was spared or was he as he said. To witness such violence. My mind raced- How must he feel? How did this happen? Why did it happen? I didn’t want to probe nor bring up a painful experience yet I was grateful for the information he did offer as many do not. In general, I tend to ask a lot of questions in my “normal” daily life back home but here I am so much more cautious.
There is a long siesta time in Samos where the businesses and shops are closed from about 1 or 2pm to 5 or 6pm. People take their large meal at lunchtime and the sun is so hot during the day that the activities resume back in the evening when it is much cooler. It’s a schedule that certainly takes into account the heat. Since I like to adapt as much as possible to the culture- I took a long leisurely lunch which included an extremely large pita for only $1.50. Meals (at the right places) are very inexpensive. $3.00 for a large piece of moussaka for dinner.
I ended up only eating about a third of my large pita sandwich as I was totally full and knew that I would not get a siesta! Quickly I ran up to the camp to play with the children under the olive tree. The teachers hung their backpacks on the olive tree for protection and I did the same. We made a make-shift zip line using a rope we found and cardboard so the kids would not cut their hands. They were having a great time. I looked over and in the corner I saw a girl about 8 years old devouring my remaining pita. How in the world did she get it? Who knows. I was torn ethically. We were not to offer the kids food unless we had enough for all. Yet could I really take my food away from her? Just the thought of that brought tears to my eyes. At that moment, she looked at me sheepishly as if to say, I’m sorry I took your food or may I continue? I gave her a closed lip smile, biting my lip, trying to keep the tears from falling out of my eyes and nodded. I peeked around to see if any other children were watching her and they all seemed to be enthralled on the zipline. Of course, this brought many other questions to my mind about the have’s and have-not’s and Maslow’s basic hierarchy of needs and when those are not met what happens. I also thought about food distribution in general in the world and how we have enough food for every person in the world but it is the distribution and remuneration system that fail us. Sigh…
On a more upbeat notes, we made animal masks with the kids in which they had a lot of fun. Interestingly enough many wanted to make sea animals such as dolphins which I found fascinating given how they had to cross dangerous waterways to get her. Speaking of getting here, today we had 49 new arrivals- 23 kids and 13 men and 13 women. More about that later!
PS-did I tell you a renter a scooter?
Just kidding-I don’t really want to buy life insurance!
