Chios
This story has been told with permission, and all names have been changed. Many topics include violence.
Samuel arrived in Moria camp a few days before I did. He arrived by lifeboat, the most familiar route to every asylum seeker in Lesvos after they arrive from their respective countries to the Turkish coast. I liked him instantly, he had a smile that set people at ease. We sat together during my orientation to the volunteer healthcare clinic, and I assumed he had traveled to Lesvos island to contribute to humanitarian aid for refugees. After talking for a bit, he explained that he was an asylum seeker himself, from the Democratic Republic of Congo. He and his sister paid thousands of dollars to smugglers to be sent across the Aegean sea in the middle of the night in a lifeboat well over its capacity. Lesvos is one of the few Greek islands that support the bulk of this traffic. It’s a temporary home to thousands of refugees fleeing violence from Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, the Congo, and more. Moria camp in Lesvos is Greece’s largest refugee camp, and it’s conditions are widely labeled as inhumane. This camp has a capacity of 3,000 people, but actually houses over 9,000 squeezed into tents and overflowing into the fields of olive groves outside of the barbed-wire perimeters. The crowded quarters, open sewage in the streets, long food lines, and outbreaks of violence have developed as a product of the asylum process changing drastically over the last few years. Instead of vulnerable people being sent to mainland Europe where they can access appropriate resources, they become stuck here for months to years. This is a result of Europe’s attempt to externalize its borders through the 2016 EU-Turkey deal. This deal agrees to hold asylum seekers who migrate by boat during their asylum claim process at their initial point of contact, while simultaneously deporting people whose claim is rejected to Turkey. Even though Lesvos is overwhelmed and unable to safely support this number of refugees, they are not able to leave the island legally once there.
For Samuel and all other Moria residents, access to healthcare is limited or unavailable. The patients we saw were traumatized from the violence in their own countries. Many had been tortured by militia groups and corrupt governments. Tension between ethnic groups grew in the cramped and squalid conditions, and violence was rampant for asylum seekers even in their supposed place of refuge. There were injuries from fights in the food lines full of desperate people. We heard patients say “I wish I had just drowned’ or “I wish I had died in my own country.” There is an alarmingly high rate of self-harm and suicide attempts in Moria. An extremely large amount of the women had injuries and complications related to sexual and gender based violence. I talked to women who were so afraid of sexual assault in the overcrowded camp that they skipped showers. In addition, government workers who were supposed to be running the camp were sometimes on strike due to pay delays.
Samuel arrived with his sick and pregnant sister to the island and visited the clinic soon after. When the coordinators noticed his perfect English, French, and Lingala, he was asked to translate for the clinic- unpaid. The clinic was unable to pay the asylum seekers working for us because asylum seekers can lose their refugee status and risk deportation for working and earning money before their claim has been processed. Samuel had fled after his younger brother and firstborn son disappeared during a militia raid, and his pregnant wife was separated from him amidst the chaos. For decades, The Congo has been in civil war propelled by militias that tear apart communities in order to get access to its mines which are packed with precious metals. It is a country with one of the world’s most abundant resources, and some of the world’s most vulnerable people as well. In these informal militias where ammunition, money, and soldiers are limited, child soldiers are kidnapped and trained to accomplish their goals. Samuel feared that this is what may have happened to his son and brother. Another important theme of the Congolese asylum seekers was sexual abuse due to the systematic rape that is rampant in their country. Systematic rape is used as a tool to tear apart communities and gain control over the area. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has called the Congo the “epicenter of sexual violence against women today.” Using rape as a weapon of war is a strategy because it’s free- there is no cost of using ammunition. It is effective because it breaks down the foundation of a community. When all the women in a community are assaulted and their husbands or family members are unable to stop it, the community feels defenseless and broken, and everyone in these places leave. It pulls apart the fabric of families due to the shame of witnesses who were unable to intervene, and the possible resulting ostracization of the women resulting. This can be exacerbated especially if the woman becomes pregnant, because the baby is seen as the enemy’s child. General Patrick Cammaert, former commander of UN peacekeeping forces in the eastern Congo states “It has probably become more dangerous to be a woman than a soldier in armed conflict” in Congo. This is what these militias want in order to gain geographical control. Outrageous treatment of people who resist encourages compliance by instilling fear into the locals.
Through the weeks of working in the clinic, I quickly realized these stories were not few and far between, almost every woman from the Congo that I talked to and even many men had experienced sexual violence.
After my first week of working at the medical clinic, Samuel showed up to translate. I noticed he was beaming and I asked what was going on. “I have a new daughter.” He showed me a picture of a tiny baby girl. I congratulated him and we admired her on the screen, swiping to see all the pictures sent by his wife. His wife had also fled in time, and made it to a neighboring island Chios. They discovered that they both had survived when a picture of him was shared in her camp. They spoke often but he was unable to visit her at this point due to his travel restrictions.
As we worked together, our friendship grew and I saw more pictures of baby Rachel. He was always smiling and encouraging, which was incredible to me. One day in particular, I remember him comforting me after I started to cry during a particularly tough day in the clinic. Because of the complexities of working in a Non Governmental Organization (charity independent of government aid) in Moria, where the government and even other NGO’s aren’t cooperating as a team, it’s hard to make decisions aligned with the organization's goals while being aware of all the different cogs moving at once. There were a lot of disagreements and challenges within the clinic team and everyone was operating under stress. It was hard to sustain this job, hearing the stories of war and torture daily while unable to offer the standard of aid we wanted. People came in hoping to get anti-retroviral therapy who had HIV, and we had to turn them away knowing that they could decompensate to the point of an AIDS diagnosis because we didn’t have the resources to support them. People came in acutely hallucinating with flashbacks of militia raids and bombs, and sometimes we had to turn them away because we couldn’t give out mood altering or sedating drugs for the risk of them being sold on the black market. All of this in combination with the raw emotion of the situation took me to my breaking point and I sat in triage failing to hold back tears. Samuel was kind and non-judgemental. I felt so ashamed of crying about being stressed when he had lost a child, a brother, was separated from his wife, unable to hold his newborn daughter, and unable to return to his home. The inner strength it took for the translators to do their job at the clinic was astounding. These were refugees that had escaped war and oppression, endured crimes against humanity at the hands of smugglers and in their own country, some who have lived in Moria for over a year, and they worked every day listening to other refugees tell their stories, translating them for volunteers.
A month or so passed and he got a blue stamp on his New Arrival ID papers. This stamp means he can travel anywhere within Greece. He hadn’t seen his wife now for 9 months, and he also hadn’t been paid for his work with the clinic, or received cash assistance from the Greek government because the workers distributing it were on strike. I don’t know how Samuel was surviving at that point, but you’d never know by talking to him. I had decided to leave Lesvos and was looking for the next spot to take a break. Chios island was a few hours by ferry for cheap, which was where his family was. I told him I’d like a travel buddy and he was welcome to join, and he said only if I’d meet his family.
We departed for Chios by way of an enormous ferry and rode south in the Aegean Sea. As we passed Izmir, Samuel told me that he used to work as a smuggler sending people to Chios in dinghies himself. I had only heard negative stories about the smugglers, and this new information made me uneasy. Smugglers undoubtedly profit off of the desperation of victims. I can recall countless stories of smugglers demonstrating violence in front of refugees to exert control over them, smugglers forcing women into prostitution, and sending people into unsafe situations on purpose after money exchange had already happened. However, I am convinced that there must be smugglers whose motivation is genuinely to save lives. I remembered standing in the junkyard on the North side of Lesvos a few weeks ago, looking at a mountain of life jackets piled up. This spot is dubbed “Lifejacket Graveyard” by volunteers and locals, and emphasizes the scale of the refugee arrivals in Greece. Being involved in this crisis opened my eyes to how limited the government and NGOs are in helping, and how this breeds illegal aid. The international system’s inadequacy, bureaucratic and economic barriers, and political pushback are enough to ignore even the most desperate of vulnerable persons. Even if people were being compensated for smuggling people, many still gave them good quality life jackets, created possibilities, and helped to remedy global inequalities.
I anticipated my time in Chios to be solitary. I hoped to meet Samuel’s wife and newborn baby, but planned on giving them plenty of time alone. I knew this would probably be an emotionally charged time for them and wanted to give them space. Before even getting off the ferry, Samuel assured me I would come to the house, meet everybody, and eat African food. Fu fu specifically. Fu fu is dough made from boiled and ground plantain or cassava, a staple food in parts of western and central Africa. After over a month of waiting in Moria food lines with the fighting and the 3 hour waits, I’m sure the prospect of fufu made by loved ones was heaven. “Everybody” turned out to be 6 gorgeous young women from the Congo and Cameroon. They had all been given an apartment together in Chios town because they were alone and deemed especially vulnerable. There were 3 babies there. At the door before we rang I tried to sense Samuel’s emotions. “You won’t see me cry,'' he told me. “When I saw the first picture of Rachel, I cried all night. Now I have to be strong.”
The couple’s reunion was unceremonious. To my embarrassment they were more focused on being good hosts. The other women were kind and welcoming, instructing I take my shoes off, serving cookies and wine, and inviting me to hold the babies. They even repeatedly asked me to cancel my hotel reservation and stay the night with them. A postpartum mother offered me her bed and said she’d stay on the couch. I loved the community between these women, obviously caring for each other, everyone treating the babies as if they were their own. If a child was crying, whomever was closest comforted it. They had quickly become family here, even though none of them had made this journey together initially.
One of the girls that never stopped smiling was named Maxine. She danced and sang around a stovetop making fufu, greens, and roasted chicken. When we all ate, they tried to show me how to handle and mold fufu, turning it into a little bowls to scoop the greens using fingers. They howled with laughter with every attempt I made, recorded me, a few of them Facetimed relatives and put me on the camera to eat. Uncles from home laughed into their headsets at my technique. It was such a joyful meal. They played their favorite songs, bounced and danced with the crying babies, and tried to get to know each other through bits of English, pantomime, and Samuel’s translation.
We talked about going to the beach to swim the next day while one of the girls braided my hair. They lived within walking distance to a beautiful beach where they had never been. The locals were very unfriendly to refugees and the whole island probably felt hostile to them. Also, Rachel needed a stroller to go out in.
Samuel, his wife, and baby met me the next morning at a cafe downtown and we hailed a taxi. A big bellied Greek man chain-smoked and yelled at me in the front seat while he drove. “The refugees are ruining this island!” he waved his hands around the steering wheel. “This used to be a nice place for tourists. I have a daughter in college, in Athens, and I can’t send her money. Less tourists come to these islands now, and the refugees don’t have any money.”
I awkwardly tried to change the subject, worried about how the 3 refugees in the back would react to his xenophobic rant. But they were busy changing a diaper and trying to console a crying newborn. We tried to explain where the shop that allegedly sold strollers was, but when we arrived it was the wrong place. Through a series of gestures, and words in French, Greek, and English that didn’t resonate with anybody, finally we managed to communicate what we wanted. The Greek man turned the car around, determined to get this refugee family that he had just expressed so much frustration with what they needed. He even came into the store. The young parents were so busy trying to placate the screaming baby, the taxi driver and I did most of the searching at the shop. The driver never once stopped chain-smoking inside the baby store. Finally we found the one, purple and foldable, 99 Euros- over a month’s allowance for an asylum-seeker. “First baby?” The cashier asked Samuel. He glanced over at me and then unshakingly responded “Let’s just say yes.”
The rest of the African girls met us downtown after we were dropped off. They didn’t have swimsuits so were dressed in a combination of sportswear and lingerie, pushing two baby carriages down the hot city streets. We rolled up to a beach bar and everyone was hungry. The girls were so amped to be out of the house and doing something fun, they spent the time shouting French into snapchat videos, ordering snacks, laughing, and generally overwhelming the Greek bartenders. The ones with babies started breastfeeding at the bar. The ones with no babies to take care of got drunk off wine slushies. It was a wild scene.
On the beach we were approached by a few young Syrian and Yemeni men. The girls recognized them from the local refugee camp called Vial, before they had been moved to the house. The boys told us that the camp was currently out of potable water. They went on to relentlessly flirt with the Congolese women, using scraps of English and gifts including pieces of jewelry, compliments, and spare cigarettes. Really, it doesn’t matter how bleak a situation might be or what the barriers are, people are out here trying to flirt.
We waded in the sea, and I tried beginner swimming lessons with the girls. On of my favorite girls, Dalia, was so afraid to put her head under the water. She shrieked and screamed every time we tried to kick and paddle. I held her back up in a foot of water while she closed her eyes and tried to relax and stay afloat. The other girls told me later that Dalia’s dinghy had sank in the sea, and she had to be helicopter rescued. Many of the people she tried to cross with died in that same sea just a few kilometers east.
Hearing the stories of the refugees was an honor. I felt privileged to be close to people who had overcome inconceivable challenges in the face of an uncertain future. It is also a burden to have this knowledge, and it’s painful to bear witness to their experiences and have such little control to impact their lives in any large way. The weekend in Chios was one of my most memorable experiences of living and working with refugees because it’s a representation of the beautiful moments of connection, contrasted with the painful and searing differences in life experience between us.
