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.