Learnings from Katsikas — Solidarity

“Some days, knowing you’re not alone is enough to keep moving forward.”

On the last day before we were traveling back to Ireland, during our lunch-break, we started receiving a cascade of WhatsApp messages. One of the five — Palestine, Afghan, Kurdish, Yazidi, Syrian — communities was very unexpectedly moving out of the camp. We quickly finished our lunch and then hurried to the camp.

From the start, there had been tensions in the camp between the different communities and the Yazidi community suddenly having to move was the culmination of this tension. When we arrived at the camp, we found 250 people — families with children, all their belongings packed in garbage bags and rucksacks, stacked on baby strollers — sitting just outside the camp in the sand, under a 40 degree sun.

The Yazidi were thankful for the water we handed out to them and they seemed to face this change with ease and dignity. I’m assuming now that everything that these people had already been through has made them remarkably resilient to this kind of unexpected change. I also discovered that I am not.

Lucía had been mostly working as an in-promptu social worker, taking relatives to visit people who had been hospitalised and providing the very basic (tooth-brushes, blankets, food) to these people who had nothing. She was also helping with translation, organisation, taxi service (it’s almost stupid to realise how useful a car is) and by just being present. Through her, I had learned about a few specific cases; a family whose sixth child had been born during the time we were in the camp, a sixteen year old accompanying his father after a second stroke, and a father whose son had been hospitalised and who was so diligently prepared & waiting to be taken to the hospital every day that he had me wondering why all the people in the world couldn’t be just like him.

So when we arrived that Friday afternoon and we saw all these people sitting there outside the camp under a scorching sun, a mother with her three day old child, a father whose only desire in life was to do right by his family, and another 240 people, I realised again that I cannot fathom what they have been through. I was overwhelmed by a feeling of powerless-ness, frustration, anger at everything, and a ravaging sadness that the world would actually let people find themselves in such circumstances. I will never, never in my life forget that moment.

It made me realise there are bigger machinations at work, powers I don’t understand, history, religion, money, so many different factors that, in my opinion, nobody really grasps what is happening or why. I don’t pretend to have an informed opinion on the refugee crisis. What I did discover though is why it was so important that I — and with me another 50-odd volunteers — were there, present, in that camp in Katsikas.

There are people, individuals, independent universes with their hopes, dreams, desires, frustrations & faults who are trying to survive in a world they don’t understand. And in their case, the world they are trying to survive in seems set out to make life on them as hard as inhumanly possible.

A lot of people, before going and after coming back, told me they admired me for what I did and honestly, it was making me feel uncomfortable. It’s not hard to go, nor admirable. It is literally as simple as going on to skyscanner and booking a flight. The work I was doing in the warehouse? It was definitely useful, but if I hadn’t done it, someone else would have. Not admirable.

But being there, present, standing side by side with 250 individuals who have nothing, not even the knowledge of where they would sleep that night, that is were I made a difference and I’m proud of that.
My impact was minuscule, but for a brief moment I was present to show that not the whole world is against them, that there are people who will stand beside them. Solidarity.