Patras: the “Calais of Greece”
Patras. Mountains. Sea. Warm spring sunshine. Having spent a year in Calais’ harsh, flat-as-a-pancake landscape, I am ridiculously glad to see hills, and the sunshine is a welcome break from the freezing temperatures currently gripping Northern Europe. The walls around the port are lower than their counterparts in Calais too, and you can see the turquoise waters of the Mediterranean beyond, glistening in the sun. The mountains are snowcapped and the skies are blue.
Ok, enough romanticising.
We walk along the road by Patras’ port — “we” being myself and A., an Afghan in his late teens/early twenties currently living in Athens. A. “tried” from Patras for several months, so he takes me to a couple of run-down warehouses by the port where several hundred Afghans are sleeping rough. He estimates that around 1000 people sleep rough in Patras each night. Speaking to people sat around the desolate warehouses, and also over coffee in a nearby café, we hear that people here really do have nothing. A local organisation provides breakfast and lunch, and occasionally clothes which are “old and not useful for us”, but that is it. No dinner, no sanitation, no healthcare, no clothes, no sleeping bags, no shoes, no internet, no electricity, no information.
In Calais, a common argument by politicians is that volunteer organisations attract people to the city by providing aid. Patras, where 1000 people sleep rough trying to make it onto a 32-hour ferry journey to Italy with practically no help from organisations, charities or the state, is testament to the fact that people will gather in port-towns regardless of available aid. It is purely geography.
Politics aside, living conditions are bleak. People have barely any money and are forced to choose between phone credit and food, regularly choosing the former. Asking around, some people feel that dinner would be most important, or at least equipment to make their own. Others feel that wifi and phone charging would be most important, as this would save them money that could then be spend on food. Many people say that they have worn the same clothes now for several months. Their shoes are falling apart. We are shown the “shower facilities” at one of the warehouses: a rusty, broken pipe amongst piles of rubbish. “We have no toilets, we just go wherever we can, like animals”. Nobody intends to be in Patras for long, but people have been here for months, living in complete squalor. In France, healthcare is available for people who are sick — volunteers still have to drive them to hospital, but treatment is available. In Patras, an injury could lead to having to choose between healthcare, food, or internet.
People have running water, though, we are assured, as if that makes the situation ok.
We meet a man who used to live in Castlemilk, in the outskirts of Glasgow, who is trying to get back to his daughter.
Another man “worked for the Americans” in Afghanistan, and it has become unsafe for him to stay there. He is trying to get to Germany to reunite with his family.
A. and I sit on a bench afterwards, just smoking and chatting about what we’ve heard and throwing out potential steps that could be taken to improve services here. I’m not personally feeling much desire to exchange one bleak port town for another, but it would be worth seeing who is working in the area, and what obstacles they face. An organisation called DocMobile do breakfast and lunch, and appear to do it well, so maybe its just lack of funds. However, we are cut off from our trains of thought by a change of atmosphere, and suddenly, we are surrounded by police on motorbikes who are acting like cats who just got the cream.
ID please. ID please.
My passport was stolen two days previously on the metro, along with my wallet and therefore any identifying document or piece of plastic I own. Thankfully, though I didn’t bring much to Patras, I had the foresight to bring a photocopy of my passport, and A. has his yellow card, so there shouldn’t be any problems. I’m wrong, and next thing we know we’re in the back of a police car with 6 other Afghans who were nearby, speeding towards the station. One is handcuffed. The police check out A.’s papers and let him go, and I sit while they do some sort of check on my passport before eventually letting me leave too. Two of the six were not so lucky. With no papers, they now face 6 months in prison.
It was such a lovely, sunny day before.
Same nonsense, different port city.
Originally posted on chrisseesworld.
