Changes

Lesvos is a paradox; the only thing that never changes is that everything changes, yet somehow everything feels the same.  If one was to come to the island, one will see the same faces yet they will be different each day.  Volunteers and refugees come and go, only to be replaced by fresh initiative and more seeking shelter.  The “rules” of the island seem to be constantly in flux.  Moria is open.  Moria is closed.  Moria is semi-open.  Moria has all but officially given up monitoring all its refugees.  Boats are coming.  Boats are not coming.  Some people died trying to reach Greece’s shores.  The deal struck by the EU and Turkey, which was hastily implemented upon its signing, has lost steam.  Hundreds of refugees that were boarded onto ferries for deportation at the beginning of the deal have trickled to only tens of refugees taken back to Turkey discreetly via airplane.  Resettlement of Syrians in Turkey to European countries has been even slower.

As the June deadline for the enactment of visa-free travel for Turkish citizens approaches, so does the concern that if the EU fails to deliver on it, Turkey will open the floodgates again just as the harsh winter and spring conditions have given way to much calmer summer weather.  The presence of NGOs and volunteers has shifted towards the mainland, camps deconstructed and moved elsewhere.  The facilities and infrastructure that once existed here in the height of the crisis have mostly left.  If the proverbial faucet were to be turned back on, the island would almost immediately return to its conditions in the fall of last year.  Organizations will be left with decisions to make; stay the course on the mainland where most of the pre-March 20th refugees have been taken or leave the mainland to once again return to Lesvos to rebuild the former organization and infrastructure.

Perhaps what is most difficult for me is that there is no way I can properly explain to you, the reader, life here.  I read the blogs of current and former volunteers on Lesvos and I undoubtedly disagree with them internally to some extent.  The crisis has the same changing face but we seem to all react and analyze it differently.  We cope with emotions differently.  We solve problems differently.  Some are subtle in their words while others are dramatic or grandiose.  We help each other without hesitance with aid while at the same time we are almost competing for those very same resources.  Yet we’ve all come here to do, ideally, the same humanitarian work.  “Of course everyone handles problems and the crisis differently and of course not everyone will get along”, one would say.  And I think ultimately that’s my point.  It’s different in a way I could never fully communicate.

Communication isn’t immune to the paradox of Lesvos.  Sometimes rumor and fact form an amalgam that becomes the basis for decision-making.  Volunteers collectively think they have communicated with one another but there are still communication breakdowns.  Hell, I would be foolish to consider myself immune and think that I’ve communicated effectively with everyone here that I’ve interacted or worked with.  Plans change, roles change, communication changes.

Some thought the high-profile visit of Pope Francis, Patriarch Bartholomew, Archbishop Ieronymos, and Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras on April 16th would finally give the world a real glimpse into the crisis on the island that has been glossed over in favor of reports about the mass of humanity huddled on the Greek side of the Greek-Macedonian border in Eidomeni.  Some thought that this would finally be the sign of change former, current, and future volunteers were looking for.  A saving grace, almost literally, to finally take the crisis seriously and provide some amount of real care to those confined in fences and borders.  Instead of the crisis being highlighted, what we received were news stories praising the Pope for taking twelve refugees with him.  No coverage of the conditions, no coverage of the ugly reality of it all. 

The island changed, oh so briefly, with that glimmer of hope that maybe it was our collective day to be seen by the world.  Instead what we received were hastily whitewashed walls.

Even my own plans have potentially changed.  In the beginning, I thought that this would be a three-month long journey to help those in dire need.  I saved enough to be abroad for exactly three months and fundraised to be able to donate whatever and wherever I could until the money was gone during that period.  And now, one week until I leave the island, donation money spent on food, clothes, charitable gifts for projects, and camp resources and with enough personal money for the week, I find myself in a position to potentially return to Pikpa with a visa extension provided by the University of the Aegean and facilitated by Pikpa to continue working.  My role at camp has changed so dramatically since I first came here.  As I wrote in a prior blog, I worked in the kitchens when I first came, also cutting lifejackets, cleaning, and just overall general work.  Then after March 20th, I moved to “Plan B” planning (preparation for a possible eviction from Pikpa’s current site and preparing a new site), helping move and log excess stock at camp to its warehouse, deconstructing unused tents and storing them, along with general work.  In my last few weeks, I moved to a position that is far more natural to me: Tech Support.  Along with more glamorous tasks like managing the camp’s Wi-Fi network, office computers, and monitoring the camp’s social media, I help volunteers and residents with cell phone and computer issues.  Along with general labor, I now help drafting plans and proposals. 

In these last weeks, I’ve been counted on for English lessons from the residents, who cheerfully approach me in the morning wondering what time we can sit down and learn.  What is beautiful about this is that it isn’t a one-way street; these same residents have made it their mission to teach me Farsi, sometimes willingly, sometimes kicking and screaming.  They see my determination and friendship and they exceed it with me.  Since I live here at camp, one night over tea I was asked why I came here to volunteer by a man who barely speaks English, who is illiterate, and who has a heart of gold.  I told him about how my family came long ago to America and faced discrimination and how I felt it was my duty to help him on his journey.  I told him never to thank me because I only do for him what I would like others to do for me.  I told him that I am him and he is me.  And he responded in broken English, “You are in my heart.”

Powerful.

With the summer coming, with uncertainty in lockstep, I feel it is important for me to continue here.  I mentioned coming here with patience and flexibility in mind in my first blog post.  It’s that patience and flexibility that allowed me to thrive in this environment.  I cannot predict whether I’ll have a visa in time or whether the Pikpa I know now will even exist by the time I can return when my tourist visa resets in August.

What I do know is that everything changes.  What I know is that everything stays the same.  What I know is that I don’t know.

I’m comfortable with that.

March 20th

All names are abbreviated to maintain anonymity.

Prior to March 20^th, we went about our business at camp; cooking, cleaning, involving the residents in daily life, helping other camps with burgeoning needs, bringing supplies and meals to the port for refugees departing via ferry to Athens.  Activity would slowly wind down as the sun set, the residents retreating to their homes and the volunteers catching the last shuttle into Mytilini.  Underlying the routines of the day were feelings of confusion, of uncertainty.  Residents and volunteers alike monitored the news, awaiting the results of the agreement being finalized between the EU and Turkey regarding how they would manage this crisis.  Everyone knew deportations were coming but no one knew in what exact form they would take.

March 11^th was my first visit to the main camp, Moria, under foreshadowing circumstances.  Everyday, a driver would come to pick up the hundreds of individual meals that we packed to feed the overcrowded camp.  5pm came and went, the driver nowhere in sight.  V., T., and I decided to drive the food ourselves to the camp.  As the Greek military personnel raised the gate so we could enter the camp, which at this point was restricted to select volunteers that were working with approved organizations, I was taken aback at how much fencing and razor wire surrounded and herded the refugees that were there.  Tents overlapped each other along the main road of the camp, speaking to how overcapacity the camp was.  Lines for food, water, medicine, and clothes zigzagged along most of the road.  Upon seeing all this, it’s entirely disingenuous to call it camp; it is a prison.  We found the volunteers who were to receive and distribute the food, smiling at us in relief.  Half of the camp had yet to receive food and they were almost out of portions.  I wondered what actual role of well known and high profile organizations were here.  Major news agencies back home and abroad would often cite them in what few reports would come out of Moria but it was quite obvious their effect was often exaggerated.  In about a week and half, these same organizations would be pulling out of Moria for the most part.

For me, the horror stories of intimidation, ineptitude, and inefficiency kept piling.

Camp life continued with flexibility and caution.  We continued prepping and packaging meals, taking them to Moria and the port in Mytilini, I continued waking up and making the morning’s coffee and tea, cleaning, helping other volunteers and residents with their daily tasks, helping some residents with their English homework.  No one other than the volunteers talked about the upcoming news on the deal and typically we talked outside of earshot of the residents.  Rumors were already the cause of the violence and arrests occurring at the border town of Eidomeni.  Misinformation was rampant even among volunteers.  At Pikpa, we tried our best to avoid that.  Some of the residents themselves looked increasingly anxious.

On Sunday, March 20^th, I woke up especially early in order to read the news.  The deal was in effect.  Under the agreement, 1) all “irregular migrants” would be deported back to Turkey, 2) each “irregular” Syrian migrant returned to Turkey would see one Syrian in Turkey resettled in Europe (a one-for-one exchange), 3) priority would be given to Syrians who did not try to enter the EU illegally, 4) Turkish citizens would be given visa free access to the EU’s Schengen Agreement countries by June, and 5) the EU would speed up the allocation of three billion euros to “aid Turkey to help the migrants.”  The number of migrants to be taken in under the agreement was capped at 72,000.  I then went to the social media groups I belong to see what was happening on the island.  While I slept for the five hours I could, EU and Greek officials had already started, in the dead of night, arriving at the camps on the island with buses to take those already on the island to the mainland, to camps that weren’t even built yet.  The migrants that were here had only moments to collect their few belongings before being taken to the port to be put on a ferry.  Volunteers on the island were scrambling to make packs of food and supplies for the thousands being transported off the island.  That is when I heard the sounds of vehicles and volunteers in camp.

Our kitchen had been working throughout the night on little to no sleep, arming other Pikpa volunteers as they drove back and forth from our kitchen to the port with hot food.  As the first round of relocations wound down, so did the activities in the camp.  Some continued quietly in the kitchen.  It was about 8am.  The camp felt eerily quiet with the news of events during the early morning.  No one else was stirring.  I went about my morning routine, pondering the EU-Turkey deal now that it was here, sympathizing with those that had been dragged from their tents and herded into buses in the middle of the night to be sent to camps that didn’t even really exist yet.  I believed (and still do) the deal is unsustainable, made with promises neither party is willing to keep.  I doubted Turkish commitment to humanely stopping the crossings to Lesvos over the long-term or house those deported back.  I scoffed at how the EU could label Turkey a “safe country” when parts of Turkey itself look like war zones, as Turkish Kurds are a segment of the migrant population here seeking refuge.  I was certain that although the EU may provide the money on time, it would not grant visa free travel by June.  This seemed like a short-term solution for a long-term problem made specifically to fail in a way no one party could be fully faulted.

The coffee and tea were ready and the communal kitchen cleaned.

By this time a few more volunteers had woken up or arrived and we briefed each other on what we knew.  We filled in gaps.  I went to get a cup of coffee and an unfamiliar van pulled in.  Well-dressed men piled out surrounding another well-dressed man; it was the mayor.  I immediately made a phone call to K., a member of our sea rescue crew, who I knew would most likely be awake for backup.  He was, just finishing a shift just a minute away.  The mayor had come to survey the camp with journalists from around Europe.  Later that day he would announce his intentions to close the camp and turn it back into a children’s summer camp.  After he left, I spoke with K., inquiring about if boats were still crossing in order to get here before the deal took effect.  Indeed, many had.  And two died on the beach just mere moments away from camp.

As the day wore on, the volunteers got together to discuss the camp.  We decided to lock the gates, a first for me since being here, in a vain gesture of defiance against the mayor and the police that we believed would come at any moment.  Reports of buses from Moria and Kara Tepe to the port filled with migrants continued to flow in.  As much as we wanted to sit down and discuss the fate of the camp in detail, which had now been given a two week deadline to evacuate, we shifted our attention and efforts to the port.  I volunteered with others to go to the port with our next batch of packaged meals for distribution.  We stood there, with volunteers from other organizations, for hours passing out what we had to the long the hundreds of migrants that were lining up to board the ferry.  The police had barred volunteers from approaching and handing out anything to anyone while they were in line, a move that undoubtedly hampered our efforts to give aid to those boarding.  The atmosphere was an odd mix of calm and confusion, some migrants accepting the relocation as best they could, others not fully understanding what was happening.  Some rushed to the boarding line without taking anything, others casually walking and sipping on tea a group of volunteers were providing.  Some took nothing because their hands were full and they had no time to stop, others deliberately repacked their belongings to make sure they had something for their trip into uncertainty.  Eventually, activity wound down, volunteers went home or to other camps with their supplies.  I stood there with the man I met on the ferry, A., who had also come down to the port and M., a Pikpa volunteer who was one of the early morning cooks that day, and together we passed the remaining meals we had to anyone who was arriving late.  At around 8pm, the flow had stopped.

In about 24 hours, the “official” camps had been mostly cleared.

The next day, Pikpa hosted a meeting with representatives from all the organizations and NGOs operating on the island, independent or official to discuss the status of the island and our next steps.  Reports about the treatment of the new arrivals, migrants who were now affected by the deal, migrants marked for deportation, flooded in.  People being handcuffed.  People being stripped of their personal belongings, especially their phones so they could not talk to the outside world.  Volunteers attending the meeting recounted a story about a child with a very high fever being refused medical attention and water, being told by the Greek soldier receiving the request that the boy was fine and it’ll go away*.  The UN and Doctors Without Borders (MSF) had pulled out of these camps, leaving almost no independent supervision.  Now that the camp was closed to almost everyone, supplies and meals were being provided solely by the Greek government.  Even with a dramatically reduced population, these things were scarce.

We expressed our concerns; we tried to make sense of it all.  The status quo of an island that had been receiving refugees for years had been broken.  The infrastructure that had been built by the hands and the money of kindhearted and generous people from around the world in response to the tens of thousands coming through Lesvos, in response to a crisis neither Europe, Greece, or Turkey were prepared to handle, were now to be cut out of the equation.  Soon, their camps would be empty, NATO and FRONTEX would be intercepting most boats, and another wave of humanity would be coming to shore in mainland Greece.

As these camps one by one ceased operating on Lesvos and moving to hotspots on the mainland, Pikpa would be waging a battle on the island that is ongoing today for its very existence.  As March 20^th and the 48 hours that followed changed the island, so did my role at camp.

*We later learned that the boy was taken to the hospital a few hours later after immense pressure from activist groups.

Pre-March 20th

All names are abbreviated to maintain anonymity.

It was somewhat poetic taking the ferry across the Aegean in the cover of night.  I made my way to the outdoor deck, my preferred place to sit whenever taking a ferry in Greece, and stared out to Piraeus, gazing silently at the gates I volunteered briefly at while in Athens (which will have a separate post dedicated to it).  Here was a new tent town in its infancy, filled with refugees struggling to make sense of where to go and what to do after making their ferry trip across the Aegean.  The border between Greece and the Republic of Macedonia was at that time letting only hundreds of people cross a day while thousands flocked to the border town of Eidomeni.  Information was scarce.  As I sat there, staring, I knew that next time I would see images of gates E1 and E2, the number of tents would have at least tripled.  I thought about the juxtaposition of our journeys across the Aegean; I was in a modernized ship that had a fast food restaurant and cafes, warm places to sleep, Wi-Fi, and would be kept dry.  Refugees on the other hand were setting off on overcrowded dinghies, unaware whether the lifejackets that they were wearing were real or fake, and fighting off hypothermia just long enough to know that they made it to Greece.  Stories flooded in of refugees being segregated from the general passenger population and not allowed to sleep or buy food while taking a ferry to mainland.  I spent hours at sea talking to a British volunteer I met on Facebook named A., discussing what we expected to encounter in our separate journeys, discussing world events, our likes and dislikes, never once questioning whether we were in peril.

I arrived in Mytilini not knowing exactly where and how I would be volunteering.  I had contacted a few organizations that were still accepting volunteers and was ready to find something that would be the right fit.  Immediately off the boat I took a taxi to the town of Neapoli, which is near the airport, and visited the camp that would soon be the first and only camp that I would stay at.

Pikpa, or the “Village of All Together”, is a camp on the island like no other.  Besides what you can read on their website (http://www.lesvossolidarity.org/index.php/en/), it was striking to see how many smiles will greet a person as they enter the camp.  This is a place where vulnerable refugees can receive the care they would otherwise not receive in the main camps like Moria.  This is a camp that is not driven on notions of white, western savior-ism but rather a place of community building and shared responsibility.  This is not a camp of food or clothing lines but a camp where we all cook for each other and work together towards similar goals.  We create bonds with victims of violence and who have witnessed their family members drown.  We create an environment of normality versus imprisonment.  The camp is multinational and eclectic; volunteers from all over the world work together with our residents from Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Kurdistan, Morocco, Pakistan, and Syria.

Volunteering here involves a high degree of self-motivation.  As I’ve told many new volunteers: If you see a project, do a project.  Language lessons, the community garden, arts and crafts, building shelves and storage; these are all things done by the camp’s volunteers and residents.  The kitchen of the camp was also incredibly active on the island.  On any given day, the kitchen of the camp would cook and package up to about 1200 individual meals to be sent to the overcrowded and struggling camps of the island.  There are no shifts here.  Volunteers come and go as they please.  Many, including myself, come early and stay late.

Pikpa is the perfect camp for me.

I started my volunteering at Pikpa in the communal kitchen and the main kitchen.  I was staying on campus in one of the tents set up that used to house residents.  Typically my days consisted of waking up at 7am, cleaning the percolators and making coffee and tea, and cleaning the communal kitchen throughout the day.  I got myself involved in various organizational tasks and disassembling used lifejackets from sea rescues in preparation to be made into bags that the camp sells to raise money.  At 4:30pm we would start packing the food that would be transported to other camps.  These tasks were done alongside the residents, like C. from Kurdistan, who primarily worked in the main kitchen.

I made certain boundaries for myself philosophically very easily and quickly.  Every now and then I would be approached by journalists from some group from around the world asking for an interview from volunteers.  If it involved using my name and face, I declined.  I told them that this isn’t about me, my name isn’t important.  I am one of many that have come in solidarity with people risking their lives everyday.  I risk nothing by doing this.  They risk everything.  Concentrate on the refugees and the camps and tell these stories.  I am not in this for personal satisfaction or glory.  Taking photographs are also something I am hesitant to do.  I feel that there are enough people taking photographs of beach rescues, crying women and children, and refugees protesting for better treatment and open borders.  These things to me are well documented.  When people come to Pikpa and take out their cameras, it makes me feel almost like we are a sideshow and denigrates the whole idea of the community we try to maintain.  It’s as if someone came to your house and started taking pictures of your children and life.  Any photograph I do take is something personal to me and personal to the people in it and is not something I wish to use as a fundraising tool or post on Facebook to share.

One thing that loomed very heavy on the camp, and the entire island, was the negotiations between the EU and Turkey on how to handle this humanitarian crisis (also to be the subject of another post).  The talks went on but no one really knew for sure what it would look like.  All we could do is speculate.  Each day, boats came ashore, volunteers went to work, and all the mechanisms that were built by organizations went through their daily motions.

Sunday, March 20^th, was different.

An Introduction, Pt. II: A Disconnect

Disclaimer – This is neither a justification nor an excuse for current attitudes and actions; it is a very simplistic, watered down mechanism in which to understand the region, its history, and its attitudes.  It’s the International Relations in me that can’t help but write this one.

The Balkans is “not worth the bones of a single Pomeranian grenadier.”  Any student of European history knows this quote attributed to Otto von Bismarck made to the Reichstag.  A couple years later, at the Congress of Berlin in 1878, he said, “Europe today is a powder keg and the leaders are like men smoking in an arsenal…  A single spark will set off an explosion that will consume us all…  I cannot tell you when that explosion will occur, but I can tell you where… Some damned foolish thing in the Balkans will set it off.”  On June 28, 1914, thirty-six years after Bismarck’s prediction and sixteen years after his death, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria ignored threats against his life and visited Sarajevo.  He was met by Black Hand member, Gavrilo Princip.

The rest is history.

The Western world views this region both romantically and dismissively.  These views have held the region hostage for centuries.  On one hand it falls in love with the concept - not reality - of Ancient Greece, the conquests of Alexander the Great, the rise and fall of the Byzantine Empire, the exotic nature that is the crossroads between Eastern mysticism and Western Enlightenment.  On the other hand is held a centuries’ old notion that Southeastern Europe is not a part of Europe or a European concern.  What happens in the Balkans is the Balkans’ problem.  The weakness, the instability, the territorial infighting; it is never worth the bones of their soldiers or the time for serious policy analysis.

Southeastern Europe is less than two hundred years removed from its Ottoman yoke.  Under Ottoman rule, the region was known as Rumelia, meaning “Land of the Romans.”  Although the region was ethnically heterogeneous, ethnicity was not the driving force behind how the empire’s subjects were governed.  Everyday identity was governed by religion.  Religion separated whether one was allowed to ride a horse.  Religion governed what taxes one paid, where one could live, what occupation one could pursue, and what type of education one could be given.  Populations moved through the land not as Bulgarians, Greeks, Serbs, etc but as Roum (Romans, Orthodox Christians).

The wars for independence were just the opening battles of a much larger war, one that is ongoing to this very day.  As new nations formed from the wastes of Ottoman Europe, the war to establish - and project - a new national identity, to claim ancestral lands, and to seek recognition and legitimacy from major powers began.  Borders diminished and swelled, nations and kingdoms were formed and dissolved.  Religious classifications and identifications evaporated while national identities burgeoned.  Rumelia, with an ethnically heterogeneous population, descended into chaos as populations sought to make desired land ethnically homogeneous to further territorial ambitions.  19^th century Rumelia saw massacre after massacre by all sides, be it Roum or Turk, Christian or Muslim, to achieve homogeny or revenge, in the hopes of solidifying claims to villages, cities, and ports.  Alliances were made to curb the territorial ambitions of another; backroom deals made on how to divvy the spoils.  The 20^th century was no better.  Before World War I came the Balkan Wars.  After came a disastrous military campaign by the Greeks in order to claim more land from a dissolved Ottoman Empire; its consequences, from the burning of Smyrna to the “Convention Concerning the Exchange of Greek and Turkish Populations,” are ingrained into their culture, memory and written history. 

World War II.  Churchill’s Iron Curtain.  The Greek Civil War.  Further population exchanges.  The Turkish invasion of Cyprus.  The dissolution of the Soviet Bloc.  The dissolution of Yugoslavia.  The repression or total denial of minority groups in the Balkans.  The Bosnian War.  The genocide in Kosovo.  Today.

So what is the point?

We cannot hope to understand the Balkans if we cannot be troubled to take it seriously.  We cannot condemn Balkan nations for erecting fences and shutting its borders through only Western eyes.  Stability has never come cheap here and has far too many times been paid for in far too much blood.  People and their respective governments see another descent into instability.  People and their respective governments see another descent into Muslim rule.  People and their respective governments see their borders and lands being carved up.  People and their respective governments are still fighting this very day to have their identity recognized by the outside world.   Time and time again it never makes complete sense to the Western world.  I have encountered more than one volunteer that has metaphorically lifted one refugee with his right hand while he damned a Balkan nation with his left.  I have talked to more than one volunteer that has summarily rejected the very real fears and insecurities that dwell within a number for Greeks, Bulgarians, Macedonians, Serbians, Hungarians, Romanians, etc as mere childishness.  I have read more than one article dismissing the needs of Greeks while asserting that the refugee crisis is the only concern here.  All of these were from Westerns, whether they be American, British, or German.

I suppose all I am saying is that we can reject the fear but first we must understand it.  Everyone shouldn’t lose here and no one should be discounted.

An Introduction

It is best to begin with a disclosure about my thoughts at present.  I took on this three month journey because I am in a position to do so.  I took this on with an understanding that although I consider myself a “global” citizen, I am a guest here in Greece and the European Union (EU).  I am heavily interested and involved in my own ancestry.  I am the great grandchild of people whom I’ve mostly never met except through the stories of the living and names on monuments and walls.  I studied the political history of Southeastern Europe in Thessaloniki, Greece for the better part of three years.  I cannot help but compare the mass migration of people to the United States (US) in the early 20^th century to what is happening right now; hundreds of thousands fleeing war, poverty, and famine for a chance at a better life, met by a divided populace on whether those fleeing are welcome.  I cannot help but remember my distant family is one of many who fled a war and poverty-stricken Europe.  I took on this mission in my life because we as a whole are sometimes so far removed from the past that we blindly ignore its lessons.  We shrug collectively and indifferently, offering little other than saying, “This is different,” or some rhetorical platitude.  I cringed in horror the moment news broke out about Donald Trump’s (the current US Republican Presidential candidate frontrunner, mind you) comments on creating a national database for Muslims living inside the US and issuing them special identity cards.  It wasn’t so much that Mr. Trump said it.  It is how a large portion of the population agreed with him.  I cringed in horror, and still do, that we found/find it acceptable to even be having this conversation in any serious way.

This is not my America.

For weeks I have contemplated about what this blog will look like.  Will I make this solely about my volunteering and read like a travel book, perhaps in the vein of Robert Kaplan or Rebecca West?  Will I place American politics aside while focusing primarily on EU/Southeastern Europe?  How much of myself am I willing to put in these stories?  Where, if at all, does this story end?

Perhaps the best answer I’ve given myself is that I must be willing to challenge everything and to not be afraid to offer my voice to that challenge.  This crisis changes every day and I knew from the beginning I must be flexible to adapt to the needs on the ground.  So, at the end of the day, this blog will become an amalgamation of all these questions and challenges.  What I do know is that this post will likely be the last in awhile where I use the pronoun “I” so extensively because this isn’t about me.  We are these refugees, we are these immigrants, we are these people.  And the moment we deny that is the moment we spit on those who have come before us and deny the very freedoms and liberties we cherish.

That said Greece is fighting an unwinnable war on all fronts.  A country ravaged by austerity measures forcibly put in place due to decades worth of fiscal irresponsibility is now condemned for not having the money and resources to protect the EU’s southeastern border.  A country struggling to provide services to its own citizens is now condemned for struggling to maintain a minimum level of comfort and aid to hundreds of thousands of people who have crossed the seas.  The EU, likely still bitter over the years of fighting over austerity measures for bailouts, has opted for the same coercive, forceful tactic of threatening Greece, most recently with a temporary exit from Schengen Agreement if it could not control its borders (with the money and resources it doesn’t have).  Greece is bordered by no true allies currently in this crisis.  Macedonia (FYROM) has virtually shut down its border for everyone but a few Syrians.  Bulgaria has constructed kilometers worth of razor wire fences across its border.  The route to Northern Europe has been effectively dammed and Greece is the reservoir.  Meetings meant to discuss what to do about the crisis have excluded Greece from the table.  The EU has opted rather to invest in – or bribe – Turkey in the hopes that the Turkish government would be able or willing to stem the flow coming from their own borders.  People are still coming.

Greece is by no means blameless. Hard to stomach reforms to put Greece back in line with eurozone requirements has made the country stubbornly combative towards the EU.  The Greek government has been offered border assistance which had been denied on the grounds that it infringed on what Greek sovereignty still exists.  Greece has not been too willing to find common ground with the EU’s other member states by resorting to its own rhetoric and victimization.

The undeniable fact is that Greece, right now, is becoming the “permanent warehouse of refugee souls” that Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras warned about this week.  The undeniable fact is that this crisis isn’t going away anytime soon.  The undeniable fact is that this cannot be Greece’s burden to shoulder alone.

So I am here, ready to extend my hand.