Day Two: Orientation (i.e. The Post To Read If You Don’t Read Any Of The Others)
Pulling myself out of bed that first morning in Greece was slightly miraculous. I was thankful for not agreeing to get up even earlier for breakfast, and quickly swallowed a granola bar on the way out the door.
Day two was here. We were going to spend the morning being briefed on Moria, and the afternoon touring it.
For orientation, we walked the few blocks from our inn to the small harbor around which the town of Paniouida clustered. There we "entered" a coffee shop, which was really just cafe seating by the water across a two lane road from the real restaurant (a common and charming practice of Greek restaurants).
Slowly people began to trickle in and started forming a clumsy circle of rearranged chairs and tables. They were from many places and many walks of life. Some were students traveling on their summer break. Some were professionals, like me, taking time off to spend a week in Greece. Some were retirees, using their free time to selflessly serve. Others were in full time ministry, having served in many similar ways their whole life.
Our orientation leader was a young woman I'll call Mia*. Mia was in her mid to late twenties, I'm guessing, and from the Netherlands. She had come to Moria during a break from her job as a teacher, and the Lord so touched her heart for the refugees** and the work being done in Greece, that she went home, decided to quit her job, and came to Moria full time for a season. When I was there, she was just entering her second year.
She shared with us about the political situation for refugees in Turkey and Europe, as well as the particular situation in Moria, Greece.
The fact is that refugees are flooding, by the thousands, out of countries like Syria, Afghanistan, Iran, and other conflict or impoverished nations and trying to make it to Europe and other western nations. For a time they were crossing from Turkey into Greece with very little opposition. However, several years ago the European Union made a deal with Turkey to staunch the flow. "The Turkey deal" (as Mia kept referring to it) was designed to incentivize Turkey keeping refugees in Turkey, instead of letting them cross into Europe.
The deal was that if Turkey agreed to tighten control of their borders, only allowing refugees to migrate through established legal channels, they would receive 6 billion Euros and some EU privileges (primarily unhindered travel for Turkish passport-holders throughout the EU). As a result of this deal, Turkey has been much more aggressive about not letting refugees slip across the border into Greece.
The distance between Greece and Turkey is about seven miles of ocean. Standing on the Greek shore, it feels like looking across a large lake, except the other side isn't more Greece, it is an entirely different continent!
In those seven miles, a great war is happening. A war over who gets to cross and who doesn't. Refugee smugglers crowd dozens of refugees and all their worldly possessions into small inflatable boats in meagre lifejackets, often in the dark of night. They point them to the distant shores and send them on their perilous first (or second or third) leg into an unknown future.
In their crossing, if they are caught by the Turkish coast guard, they will be sent back and perhaps imprisoned for trying to cross boarders illegally. European Union patrol ships will send them towards whatever border they happen to be nearer. Their best chance is to be found by the Greek coast guard--or any of a number of volunteer rescue organizations--and ushered onto Greek soil.
From there they are funneled into Moria.
Moria, an old Greek military camp barricaded on a hill and designed to house 2,000 soldiers. Now an overcrowded tent city with more than 7,000 refugees. Moria, a pressure point of the worldwide refugee crisis, just waiting to boil over. Moria, an overgrown humanitarian hospital operating on triage protocol, and yet for some, the only place they can call home. Moria, an incubator for the best and worst of humanity all at once. Moria, a brutal and lovely stopover on everyone's journey who goes there.
There is no easy side to this story. It seems all sides are victims of a desperate, heedless quest for power in the middle east. The refugees themselves, obviously, are fleeing for their lives and the lives of their children. The Greek people, who are already in an economic crisis with 30% unemployment, are being flooded with a population who has no immediate way of caring for themselves, with no foreseeable end in sight.
For the Greek police, Moria is a remote and unpleasant assignment with little compensation and even less thanks. For the people of Lesvos, an exploding population of migrants has begun to destroy an entire industry of tourism. For Europe, the proximity has made them the chief bearers of this ever-growing burden. It seems that only America, with the luxury of an ocean's distance, has been able to decide how to address (or, more often, not address) this global crisis.
Refugees are the definition of unwanted. The only place they could lay claim to is behind them, immersed in violence or poverty or both. Whatever it was that chased them from their home was potent enough to make them leave behind everything familiar.
Equally tragic are those that hope chases from their home. Sometimes the alluring thought of making it to Europe--and all the economic fortune that promises--is all it takes to drive them from their known world into the unknown life of an asylum seeker. For these, sometimes the realization of what life they have entered into as a migrant is understood all too late.
For an asylum seeker, just becoming a refugee is an excruciating process. They must go through a series of vetting interviews that are designed to establish that they were truly in danger in their home country. If they can prove that, they still have to prove they were in danger in Turkey, because Turkey is considered an asylum nation in spite of its own troubles. If an asylum seeker fails to prove either of these, they can be sent back to their home or back to Turkey, to the rather unpleasant consequences of trying to leave illegally.
On top of all the upheaval and uncertainty of leaving everything familiar behind, becoming a refugee is not often a clear or logical process. Gaining legal status as a refugee and being transferred out of Moria can take two to three months, or it can take years. From the outside there seems to be no predictability, which is endlessly discouraging and frustrating to the people whose lives are in a holding pattern until they gain more stability than Moria can provide. (Even once they have a Greek passport, it is still a long process that takes many years for them to legally immigrate to any other country.)
There are no schools in Moria, no playgrounds, no jobs, very few hobbies, fewer supplies and very little for people to do to improve their situation except wait in line.
I guess it could sound hopeless. It did to me before I went there. But being in Moria was so much more than the crush and chaos of human need, so much more than the no-end-in-sight caravan of desperate travelers. It was people; one-of-a-kind individuals with so much hope, hurt, kindness and relief in their eyes.
I hope the stories that follow can put a little skin on these realities. But for now, this post has gotten long, so I will finish the story of day two in another post.
*Names are changed throughout to respect the privacy of the individuals mentioned.
**Refugees is a broad term that often encompasses many different types of migrants. Officially a refugee is first an asylum seeker who has entered another country for protection, and then if their alleged danger is corroborated by the United Nations, they will receive official status as a refugee. (For a more extensive explanation of the difference between a refugee and an asylum seeker, as well an immigrant and migrant, follow the link to read this article.)
Day two was here. We were going to spend the morning being briefed on Moria, and the afternoon touring it.
For orientation, we walked the few blocks from our inn to the small harbor around which the town of Paniouida clustered. There we "entered" a coffee shop, which was really just cafe seating by the water across a two lane road from the real restaurant (a common and charming practice of Greek restaurants).
Slowly people began to trickle in and started forming a clumsy circle of rearranged chairs and tables. They were from many places and many walks of life. Some were students traveling on their summer break. Some were professionals, like me, taking time off to spend a week in Greece. Some were retirees, using their free time to selflessly serve. Others were in full time ministry, having served in many similar ways their whole life.
Our orientation leader was a young woman I'll call Mia*. Mia was in her mid to late twenties, I'm guessing, and from the Netherlands. She had come to Moria during a break from her job as a teacher, and the Lord so touched her heart for the refugees** and the work being done in Greece, that she went home, decided to quit her job, and came to Moria full time for a season. When I was there, she was just entering her second year.
She shared with us about the political situation for refugees in Turkey and Europe, as well as the particular situation in Moria, Greece.
The fact is that refugees are flooding, by the thousands, out of countries like Syria, Afghanistan, Iran, and other conflict or impoverished nations and trying to make it to Europe and other western nations. For a time they were crossing from Turkey into Greece with very little opposition. However, several years ago the European Union made a deal with Turkey to staunch the flow. "The Turkey deal" (as Mia kept referring to it) was designed to incentivize Turkey keeping refugees in Turkey, instead of letting them cross into Europe.
The deal was that if Turkey agreed to tighten control of their borders, only allowing refugees to migrate through established legal channels, they would receive 6 billion Euros and some EU privileges (primarily unhindered travel for Turkish passport-holders throughout the EU). As a result of this deal, Turkey has been much more aggressive about not letting refugees slip across the border into Greece.
The distance between Greece and Turkey is about seven miles of ocean. Standing on the Greek shore, it feels like looking across a large lake, except the other side isn't more Greece, it is an entirely different continent!
In those seven miles, a great war is happening. A war over who gets to cross and who doesn't. Refugee smugglers crowd dozens of refugees and all their worldly possessions into small inflatable boats in meagre lifejackets, often in the dark of night. They point them to the distant shores and send them on their perilous first (or second or third) leg into an unknown future.
In their crossing, if they are caught by the Turkish coast guard, they will be sent back and perhaps imprisoned for trying to cross boarders illegally. European Union patrol ships will send them towards whatever border they happen to be nearer. Their best chance is to be found by the Greek coast guard--or any of a number of volunteer rescue organizations--and ushered onto Greek soil.
From there they are funneled into Moria.
Moria, an old Greek military camp barricaded on a hill and designed to house 2,000 soldiers. Now an overcrowded tent city with more than 7,000 refugees. Moria, a pressure point of the worldwide refugee crisis, just waiting to boil over. Moria, an overgrown humanitarian hospital operating on triage protocol, and yet for some, the only place they can call home. Moria, an incubator for the best and worst of humanity all at once. Moria, a brutal and lovely stopover on everyone's journey who goes there.
There is no easy side to this story. It seems all sides are victims of a desperate, heedless quest for power in the middle east. The refugees themselves, obviously, are fleeing for their lives and the lives of their children. The Greek people, who are already in an economic crisis with 30% unemployment, are being flooded with a population who has no immediate way of caring for themselves, with no foreseeable end in sight.
For the Greek police, Moria is a remote and unpleasant assignment with little compensation and even less thanks. For the people of Lesvos, an exploding population of migrants has begun to destroy an entire industry of tourism. For Europe, the proximity has made them the chief bearers of this ever-growing burden. It seems that only America, with the luxury of an ocean's distance, has been able to decide how to address (or, more often, not address) this global crisis.
Refugees are the definition of unwanted. The only place they could lay claim to is behind them, immersed in violence or poverty or both. Whatever it was that chased them from their home was potent enough to make them leave behind everything familiar.
Equally tragic are those that hope chases from their home. Sometimes the alluring thought of making it to Europe--and all the economic fortune that promises--is all it takes to drive them from their known world into the unknown life of an asylum seeker. For these, sometimes the realization of what life they have entered into as a migrant is understood all too late.
For an asylum seeker, just becoming a refugee is an excruciating process. They must go through a series of vetting interviews that are designed to establish that they were truly in danger in their home country. If they can prove that, they still have to prove they were in danger in Turkey, because Turkey is considered an asylum nation in spite of its own troubles. If an asylum seeker fails to prove either of these, they can be sent back to their home or back to Turkey, to the rather unpleasant consequences of trying to leave illegally.
On top of all the upheaval and uncertainty of leaving everything familiar behind, becoming a refugee is not often a clear or logical process. Gaining legal status as a refugee and being transferred out of Moria can take two to three months, or it can take years. From the outside there seems to be no predictability, which is endlessly discouraging and frustrating to the people whose lives are in a holding pattern until they gain more stability than Moria can provide. (Even once they have a Greek passport, it is still a long process that takes many years for them to legally immigrate to any other country.)
There are no schools in Moria, no playgrounds, no jobs, very few hobbies, fewer supplies and very little for people to do to improve their situation except wait in line.
I guess it could sound hopeless. It did to me before I went there. But being in Moria was so much more than the crush and chaos of human need, so much more than the no-end-in-sight caravan of desperate travelers. It was people; one-of-a-kind individuals with so much hope, hurt, kindness and relief in their eyes.
I hope the stories that follow can put a little skin on these realities. But for now, this post has gotten long, so I will finish the story of day two in another post.
*Names are changed throughout to respect the privacy of the individuals mentioned.
**Refugees is a broad term that often encompasses many different types of migrants. Officially a refugee is first an asylum seeker who has entered another country for protection, and then if their alleged danger is corroborated by the United Nations, they will receive official status as a refugee. (For a more extensive explanation of the difference between a refugee and an asylum seeker, as well an immigrant and migrant, follow the link to read this article.)
Comments
Post a Comment