Wind, sea, wet, cold. Eyes of fear, wonder, uncertainty. Man, woman, child. Bodies trembling. My hand to theirs. Offers of a sandwich, a banana, a protein biscuit, a bottle of water. Our eyes meet. A friendly smile. “Welcome. You are safe now”. Wrapping a blanket around their shivering body.

They have travelled for days, weeks, some for months. Their perilous 11km crossing of rough sea in a dangerously overcrowded flimsy rubber boat now behind them. I am surprised that in this cold stormy weather that anyone would attempt to cross. I am told that the turkish smugglers had offered a substantial discount, about half off the regular crossing cost of €1400. A bad weather discount! This is the lure. Desperate people will take the chance. I am sickened. The smugglers preying on desperate people knowing full well that the chances of them reaching Greece safely are minimal. Stories of rocking on high waves for hours, their ill-working  engine stalling. No one experienced with the sea. No one knows how to use the rudder. The smugglers point the boat towards Lesvos telling the migrants don’t stop. Children screaming the whole way across. The dinghy filling with water. Throwing over all belongings. Engine quitting. The sea about to win. In the nick of time rescued by the coast guard. They had survived. They had not drowned like others before them. Last week due to inexperience of the poor person at the rudder there was a tragic accident of two boats colliding. Boats capsized. People spilled out. Panic. 12 people are still missing, some are children. Two died from hypothermia. Survivors traumatized.

 

 

60 pairs of soggy socks. Water spilling out of their shoes. Some with no shoes. Reaching into our supplies-a pair of new donated socks to each person. Steadying the trembling foot to get them on. Cutting up disposable foil blankets into squares. Wrapping the foil square around the cold shaking foot. Their trembling feet placed back into their wet shoes. Hope the foil helps. No dry shoes available. Looking up at them. Attempt to comfort with a smile, a warm heart. They respond with a thank you, a nod of the head, gratitude for human empathy after such a lack of humanity from the smugglers.

Some people appear very embarrassed that they are needing my help. Most of these people are well-educated successful people who never would have thought that their lives could be reduced to this. I listened to people who wanted to tell their story. They didn’t want to leave their homes in Syria. They liked living there, it was their home, their career, their family life. Now their children were unable to be educated, have medical treatment, no vaccines available. Their homes had been bombed. Their city under siege. ISIS in control. Poverty. No food. No electricity. No hospitals. No jobs. No money. No choice but to attempt to cross the Syrian border into Turkey. I was told that this part of the journey was the hardest. A mother telling her unimaginable 3 day ordeal. Afraid, danger all around, exhaustion. Many people had been arrested along the way. Some died from exhaustion after being forced to hike long distances. Sometimes 8 or 9 hours straight. Having to cross a mountain by foot. How she wanted to give up at this point. Couldn’t go any further. Sitting down, crying, state of exhaustion. People helping her. Carrying a child for her. She spoke to me of hiding in abandoned buildings. So many miles of walking. Sometimes getting transportation in covered trucks.

One woman said if her family had stayed in Syria they surely would have been killed. Taking the risk on the sea was safer than staying on their war-stricken land. Where they were heading next, a prison-like refugee camp was certainly safer than where they had come from. Such trauma, displacement, written across their faces. A loss of home, everything that was. I felt this. Not the same situation of course. I could only try to imagine the terror of war but the sense of fleeing for your survival, doing what you feel is the only option for your children, yourself- I got that.  A mother clutching her baby, two young children on her hand. Plastic bag hanging off her arm. Such fatigue across her face, her eyes, her body fighting the need to collapse. Her strength is so apparent to me. An acknowledgement from my eyes to hers.

 

Some women were not sure where they were. One asked, “Am I in Spain?” Terribly confused by the response that they are in Greece. These three women were from the Dominican Republic and had paid to be taken to Spain. How they ended up here on the Greek island of Lesvos was disconcerting. Looking into their scared defeated faces I was sure they knew as well as I did that they now will be taken to Athens and more than likely be deported.

Seagulls. Sweet smell of cherry blossoms on the wind. A welcome distraction from the smell of wet socks. A softening to the smell of fear. Pieces of a boat hull thrown up onto the beach. Torn dinghies caught up on rocks, life jackets, children’s inflatable water rings, water wings. This shocked me. Barely suitable for a swimming pool. Wet clothing strewn along the shore. Each shirt having crossed on someone’s back from Turkey to Greece. Picking up the items of clothing thinking about the people attached to them- a dripping navy blue jacket, possibly from a teenager, a small man. Imagining the history the story behind this jacket was stirring. Holding a small shoe in my hand. A young child’s size. Where is the child, what has happened to the child? Did the child survive? 12 drowned yesterday. 8 missing.

Picking up discarded life jackets I was shocked to see how many of them were actually faulty. “ A despicable poor excuse of flotation”, a fellow volunteer said. ” These aren’t life jackets these are death jackets.”             They are filled with non-buoyant material. Many of them were ripped so I reached in and sure enough they were filled with sponge. This of course will absorb the water and drag people down, ending in drowning. I was astounded that people would actually sell these, praying on fellow human being’s vulnerability and desperation- all in the name of €€. This is criminal.

 

Life Jacket Graveyard in Molyvos, Lesvos. This 25 ft high pile continued to grow daily. We would pick up the life jackets strewn along the shorelines and harbours. Truckload after truckload would take them here. Each life jacket belonging to someone who had either survived or died trying.