My favorite Christmas email
This morning, I woke up to an amazing Christmas present.
It was simple, but it touched my heart.
It was this:
The backstory goes back to December 5th on Lesvos, Greece. A tiny Greek island that Maria and I spent 3 weeks on, helping refugees. We were sitting around the fire with the other volunteers well after midnight. Maria and I were getting ready to call it a night and go back to our motel room for a short night’s sleep, when I heard some screaming.
We ran 100 yards up the dirt road to find a very full dinghy landing on the rocks. I, along with 3 or 4 others, helped stabilize the boat, and tried to keep everyone calm, so the 50 people would come off in an orderly way. I handed several babies and children from parents to other volunteers, who rushed them back to camp to get them dry and warm them up.
As is pretty common, they were extremely cold. They were terribly frightened. They were not even certain they were in Greece. We calmed them down and re-assured them. We got them dry clothes. We set them up in a sleeping tent for the night. Then we headed for a couple hours of sleep for ourselves.
We woke up early the next morning to go check on one particular family that I had bonded with.
Mohammed was one of the fathers on that boat, and after everyone was off the boat safely, I spent some time helping he and his wife with their 2 little ones. They were traveling with his brother-in-law, and some friends. Mohammed spoke only a few words of English. But we were able to learn that their son had an eye infection, and his wife was suffering from a cold.
Part of what makes volunteering meaningful is meeting and getting to know these refugees. Each one has a story, each family has a reason they fled their home country. Maria spent time that next morning holding their baby while the big brother got his eyes looked at by the doctor.
Like all the refugees that arrive on Lesvos, they had to go up to Moria, the registration camp. There they get papers to continue on in the EU. We made sure they had some snacks and water bottles for the bus ride, and sent them off. Before sending them off, Mohammed tried to find himself on facebook, but he couldn’t find his profile. So we sent this picture of his family to him over email.
After helping a few other boats in, Maria and I decided to go help at Moria.
Several hours later we were delighted to run into Mohammed at Moria. The family was pretty exhausted, and had not eaten since we’d fed them early that morning. We helped his family get setup with a place to sleep, and get a little food.
The conditions in Moria are pretty harsh. It’s a former prison, and the grounds around it have plastic floorless shelters setup for people to stay in. Where there are not enough shelters, people sleep in summer tents, or out in the open in an old olive grove. The olive trees there have been stripped of their branches to keep warm. Temperatures dip down to the 30’s at night. It is hard to describe the feeling at Moria, other than lots of despair mixed with fear and confusion.
Volunteering is a huge emotional rollercoaster. It is more intense emotionally than any regular work that I’ve ever done. The need for technology skills is pretty low. Mostly what is needed is heart, willingness to help people, and the tenacity to keep going through exhaustion and the overwhelming drama of so many people being forced to flee.
I sent Mohammed an email on Dec 5th. I tried to check in with him again Dec 15th. He said he would get back to me once they made it somewhere safe. Their goal was to get to Germany.
I don’t know where they are. I don’t know how safe they are. But having not heard from them for 20 days I was worried that I might not ever hear from him. This morning the silence broke, and I’ve got contact with Mohammed.
My heart is with him and his family this Christmas.
