Home of the ancient poet Sappho, Lesvos is a small Greek island tucked into the northeast corner of the Aegean Sea. It is famed for its acidic green olives, its many natural hot springs and – most recently – for the 950,000 refugees that have been smuggled onto the island since the start of 2015.
Two months ago, when I typed the destination of a plane ticket I had already bought into Google, this résumé of poetry and olives is what I found. Lesvos was described as a quiet vacationer’s paradise, charged with tranquility between its harbors and rolling hills.
At that time, I didn’t know what volunteering in the largest refugee crisis since World War II could feel like, but I was aware that this island paradise had become the epicenter of transition from Middle Eastern war zones toward European asylum. The paradox of beauty and chaos was already evident.
I was on the island for four weeks, volunteering with a local aid organization called the Starfish Foundation. This is one of many organizations born on the island, formed by local and international volunteers to address a specific need in each region or town. For Starfish, that town was Molyvos – a harbor community near the northern Eftalou beaches that face the Turkish shore. This overlooks a stretch of sea in which more than 300 people drowned during the month I spent there.
Boats will leave Turkey at any time of day or night, dependent more on the weather conditions and the strength of the wind. Typically, smugglers sell tickets to upwards of 70 people before cramming them all onto a single rubber dinghy and handing over a boat engine that often only functions for a portion of the trip. The Greek Coast Guard works around the clock to find these broken-down boats before waves cause the rafts to capsize.
My work started when the boats in some way reached our shores and people unloaded in variant states of need for dry clothes, medical attention, water and answers about where to go next. They are bused from the numerous beaches to the registration compound in the south of the island, and there I worked to house them safely while they await papers that give them temporary asylum in Greece. Sometimes my tasks were as simple as holding children on my lap and changing their soaking wet socks, or directing a mother into a dorm room where she could sleep for the night. Other times I was left speechless, as men with wives and families approached me, asking for answers about how to get to a place they would be allowed to call home.
Because I was in this compound, the conflict and political struggle that surround this situation have become something more tangible than numbers broadcast across the news. When I read about the EU closing its borders and our own nation refusing their entry, it’s individual faces that pop into my mind.
I think of Nor, a well-educated Syrian woman in her early twenties who proudly and carefully represented her family of nine with flawless English. This family stayed on the island for three nights due to an elongated ferry strike, and Nor passed each day alongside volunteers, translating what we could not explain, calming worries and providing direction for those on the same journey as she. When she said her good-byes with a characteristic grin, I was stricken with a feeling that whichever community offers her a place to set her roots will be infinitely rewarded with all she will give to it.
I think of Ali, who broke down in terror when a lack of Kurdish translators led to him misunderstanding the registration process and believing that he was being sent back to Iraq – a home where every one of his family members had been beheaded.
And I think of every single kid that was passed into my arms or trusted in my hands, kids who deserve to be in school or at soccer practice, kids who shouldn’t be so familiar with the sound of bombs going off around them or the feeling of a boat slowly sinking in the middle of the sea.
That’s what I gained in a month spent on Lesvos. I did not solve anything, change much, or save any one person’s life. I just gained pieces of them – inspiration on how to remain generous in the midst of crisis, and perspective of what I believe people deserve. In them I found the paradox of something both gorgeous and tragic – something displaced, but still so gently strong.
Jenna Mulligan is a Durango native who left the San Juan mountains to pursue journalism in the Pacific Northwest and abroad. Reach her at mullig.jen@gmail.com.
