I came out to Greece because crowds of people were going hungry. On the island of Samos, a group of housewives led by Iokasti (Jocasta) had turned their kitchens into canteens to feed the hundreds of refugees who daily risked life and limb to cross the Eastern Aegean after the long road trip westwards from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq.They were families: mums and dads, sons and daughters, uncles and aunts, grandparents and in-laws. The traffickers sold them imitation life-jackets; they poured an inadequate supply of fuel into the tank of the outboard motor and – at gunpoint – ordered one of the party to steer for the land on the horizon.
There were worse stories, of the inflatable being chased by a speedboat and robbed of its outboard motor mid-way into the crossing, leaving the terrified passengers – many of whom had never seen any expanse of water bigger than a pond or small lake – to paddle furiously to reach the rocky beach of Samos, or Chios, or Lesvos.
A million souls made this journey in 2015, and thousands never survived.
Such stories brought me to Greece with a desire to do whatever I could to alleviate the suffering. Refugees were being driven off the islands and relocated in Athens. In Samos, Neezo, a Welshman Muslim from Swansea took over Iokasti’s idea and as the refugees were forced off the island, he relocated to Athens.
A few days later, I arrived in Athens and joined Neezo and his colleagues, and immediately I knew that we were making a real contribution. We expanded the operation and bought more kitchen equipment, and by the middle of last week, we were preparing 600 meals twice daily, freshly cooked, and catering to unfamiliar tastes and palates.
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| Child-refugee's picture: Crossing in the hope of a better future |
Elsewhere in Athens and Piraeus, volunteers were helping in other ways. In the port, girls from some of the teams monitored the showers, handing out soap and shampoo and keeping the queues moving. Others set up ad-hoc schools, and played games with the children, or gave them paper and crayons and encouraged them to create pictures of whatever they wanted. Many of the pictures were tragic representations of separation, of fear, and of suffering when they depicted war, destruction, and loss.
The volunteers filled the void created by the inactivity of national governments across Europe, and exacerbated by the pathetic, politically compromised, and totally unrealistic intervention of the European Union.
Back in Westminster, our elected representatives have voted to block the immediate admission of 3,000 unaccompanied child refugees.
I cannot believe Cameron’s insistence that these children cannot be taken from Europe, but must be transported only from their country of origin. I have never been so ashamed of my government, so disgusted by such a whimsical condition, and so angry when I look at the forlorn faces of the families in Victoria Square in Athens or study photographs of conditions in the camps in Calais, Dunkirk and Idomeni.
Meanwhile, in Athens, the Greek government is embarrassed, and the anarchists are mobilising; the former to try and ignore what is happening and the latter to seek ways of using the situation to further their own agenda.
Loitering groups of refugees are perceived as an eyesore in a city that wants its tourists to have a glamorous impression of a World Heritage Site that is steeped in history. Athens wants to be remembered as the birthplace of modern civilisation, the historical source of so much philosophical thinking, mathematical rationale, and logical debate.
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| Welcome visitors |
Tourists on cruise liners come in their droves in their coaches from Piraeus, to gawp and click and selfie and share; just as the refugees have come in their droves in their coaches from Piraeus. The latter, however,are not pink-faced holiday-makers in crisp new casual attire. These others are travel-weary émigrés who have been shipped unwillingly from their detention camps on the islands and left to fend for themselves in Athens.
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| Unwelcome visitors |
Some will leave Athens, choosing to be accommodated in rural camps, where they will spend their summer – or longer – in the lonely limbo that is the tragic life of millions of refugees seeking asylum from conflicts all around the world. They may be tradespeople who long to apply their skills to build and rebuild a better society. There will be professionals, who are isolated from the opportunity to practise their expertise; and everywhere there will be children of all ages, who are segregated from the opportunity to study and learn – whether this be to read and write, or to complete a doctoral thesis.
The other element of the response of the Greek government is to try and eliminate the volunteers, like myself, whose very presence highlights both the size of the problem, and the government’s inadequate response to deal with it. Not that the rest of Europe or the EU has done much to help alleviate the situation. Iokasti’s Kitchen is now being prevented from distributing meals in many areas.
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| Iokasti's Kitchen - feeding people at Victoria Square |
We are being “moved along” and are trying to define our new modus operandi. One possibility is combining with another mobile-kitchen group and working together in the splendid kitchen of a disused hotel, which has been allocated for refugee accommodation, though this does not solve the problem of distributing meals elsewhere to hungry people all around Athens. Another possibility is to provide meals for detention centres that are away from the centre of Athens, but still using central Athens for food preparation and cooking.
It is frustrating. It is political. It is a human disaster.
I hate to see this happening, but there is nowhere I would rather be right now. This is history, and it needs to be observed. I want to keep telling my children and grandchildren so that they are determined to do better than the failed attempts of us “Baby Boomers.” It pains me to think back to the positive optimism and dreams that many of us espoused in the ‘60s.
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