In 2015, 856,000 people passed through the Greek islands, and in 2017 and 2018 only just under 30 thousand (according to UNHCR). But 2019 brought already a growth – over 60,000 newcomers. Today, boats coming to Greek beaches are back again, and practice shows that you can get stuck in Lesbos for a good few years. Nikos and Katerina run a small restaurant on the island, where every refugee can feel at home and eat a meal for free.
20.06.2023
There have been many times before when we thought it was all over, that we would not be able to help those who ask for our assistance.
A policy that calls them a threat and a problem. The blatant violation of the law by officials. The manipulation that tells us to see everyone as a thug, even though the fact that they face thuggish treatment from European authorities every day is already the norm. Pushbacks and tens of thousands of drownings in the Mediterranean. The throwing of hurdles at the feet of rescue teams. Being forced to return from whence they came by starvation. At the end of the day, tears and people shaking with fear, whose asylum applications have ended up in the bin and they have to return to certain death, to a country where someone is hunting them. We have hit the wall many times, but we have never lost sight of those most in need.
World Refugee Day is not their holiday or a day of remembrance; it is a day when each of us should step into their shoes for a moment and try to understand them better. By looking into their eyes crying out for rescue, you know that they are not a problem, an ideology, an attack on Europe planned cunningly by the rest of the world. They are human beings. Just like us.
Even if they are part of some plan, they are not part of it by choice. Someone has taken advantage of their weakness and vulnerability.
Lock your passport in the safe that opens the door to any country for you. Hit the road without cash or credit cards. On the road you will be an intruder everywhere and you will not understand the culture and language. Remember, you can’t go back, and the risks involved in running away are less than staying at home anyway. Difficult? Unfeasible? Illegal? Yes. This is what fleeing persecution looks like.
We work with refugees in Greece, Bangladesh, Burkina Faso and Senegal. By giving education and jobs to the poorest, we help them so that they never have to make the difficult decision to emigrate. We know how they think, what they ask for, what they need.
In the camp in Lesbos we feed the sick and the weak, but to the strong we have started to give the tools to work. They are grateful. They didn’t come here at all looking for welfare, trying to spite someone. They came to start life from scratch when, in their homeland, persecution, war and famine wanted to end it.
Home Village is our pride! It is 5 hectares of land where we already grow olives and vegetables. We run a nursery and we grow healthy food, nurturing it from seed. And we are not the ones doing it. They are doing it – the refugees. If you help, more of them will work. What the land yields thanks to them feeds their weaker fellow camp dwellers. Before long, it will feed us too. Top quality olive oil from the Home Village will soon reach the Vistula.
27.08.2023
The unpaved road stretches for kilometres and winds down the mountainous slopes. It cuts through bone-dry pine forests. From here to Mitylena, the island’s capital, it is more than 40 kilometres. To any sign of civilisation – more than 10. Out of sight, out of mind of all outsiders, a gigantic new refugee camp is […]
14.08.2023
Onur was a baker in Kurdistan. He is not afraid of any job. Stately, broad-shouldered, hands like vices. They have strength and feel. He arrived in Lesbos eight years ago. Abdul got off the boat on a Greek beach a year later. In Syria, he was a mechanic. He has fixed up his decrepit old […]
09.08.2023
“No disease will touch them. They are wild trees. They have already survived more than one pest.” When Nikos talks about olives, he grabs the listener’s full attention. You fall into a tunnel where there are you, Nikos and the olives. We talk like this for several hours. I don’t know how many. Nobody is […]
