After being back home for Christmas and New Year´s Eve and spending some time with family and friends, I travelled to Greece on 3rd January.
I have been in Greece for a week now. The work with the refugees is very interesting and it is also lots of fun. I really enjoy being here. I am working for the NGO Lifting Hands International in Serres, Greece. The NGO is well organized. In Greece, they are focusing on refugees from one ethnical-religious group – the Yezidis.
The Yezidis and the genocide committed by ISIS
Yezidis are coming from Syria and Iraq, where they have been an ethnical-religious minority. In 2014 the 74th genocide was committed against Yezidis by ISIS. ISIS stormed the towns and villages. Many men and teenage boys were captured and executed, sometimes in front of their wives and families. The rest of the men and boys were forced to convert to Islam, if they did not, you can imagine what happened to them. When they “converted” they were held captive and forced to work for ISIS in constructions projects, digging trenches and so on. Women around 60 years and older were slaughtered in a mass killing. The rest of the women was captured and traded as slaves. Not only slaves for helping in the household, no as sex slaves. Often sold and re-sold several times. Young girls were allowed to stay with their mums until reaching the age of 9. Then they were traded themselves as sex slaves. Boys were taken from their mothers when they became seven and were put into “training camps” to learn how to fight and to learn the “Islam” and the “Jihad” (Just putting this in “” as it is not the true Islam ISIS taught, but their interpretation of it). The women were usually not given an Abaya (traditional Moslem clothes), which made them easy to spot. So if they tried to escape, it was easy to spot them and they were caught sooner or later and punished for trying to escape. Means of threat were rape, gang rape, killing the children and so on. It is horrific what happened and a text cannot capture what they have endured. If you like to learn more, please have a look at the report provided by the UN in 2016 (link https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/HRBodies/HRCouncil/CoISyria/A_HRC_32_CRP.2_en.pdf)
Serres, Greece – Refugee Camp
The Yezidis are considered a vulnerable minority given the long lists of genocides committed against them. Being together in refugee camps with other ethnicities or religions did not turn out very well, therefore the Yezidis have now they “own – Yezidis only” camp in Serres.
The NGO I am working for is not doing crisis response and is not running the camp. The NGO is running a refugee centre close to the camp, where refugees can have a “time-out” or attend English and/or German classes. The NGO has several different activities spread over the day from Fitness and Yoga classes to piano and guitar lessons or just a nice space for little kids to play or a space for women only, where they can just sit and talk, paint, knit and so on without having any men or children entering the space.
I am teaching German here on pre-ABC and ABC level. I.e. the students first need to learn the alphabet, how to pronounce German words/letters and some of them even need to learn how to write. The mother tongue of Yezidis is Kumanci (Kurdish), which is a spoken language only. Many people can speak Arabic as well, but yeah the Arabic letters are as far away from the Latin alphabet as it could possibly be. So I am teaching on a level, which is about the alphabet, introducing yourself and describing the weather 😊 A long way to go. What I love about the NGO is that they already have a curriculum, stating what the students have to learn at what stage. When I was volunteering in El Salvador, teaching English, there was nothing – I did not know, what the kids had already learnt, or what they are supposed to learn at their age. So working for this NGO is completely different – only that the German materials provided are by far not as complete as the English materials, so I am spending quite some time preparing the lessons, making my own flashcards and worksheets. But it is fun. I love teaching – and the best is here the people come voluntarily to your class – it is not some teenager stuck in puberty being forced to attend school.
The only thing which is challenging for me is the weather. At the moment Greece is colder than Germany. I knew that winter in Greece can be cold, but I did not expect -5°C during night and morning hours. If the sun is out, it is “nice” (with lots of clothes on), but as soon as the sun is going down – it becomes freezing. The houses are also not very well isolated so you even notice some draft when being in the room, even if all doors and windows are closed. So wearing lots of clothes is the new normal. Sometimes I even sleep with scarf… But ok, my problems are nothing compared to all the other problems in the world.
Weekend in Thessaloniki
The centre is closed on Tuesday and Wednesday (our “weekend”), so I took the time to go to Thessaloniki with some other volunteers. In the NGO there was a group of Germans from the Dortmund area. They are actually running their NGO called “Grenzenlose Wärme” (Please also visit their blog: https://grenzenlose-waerme.blog/). They focus on refugees and about three times a year a group of them comes to Greece to help out the local NGOs. Most of them already focus their work and study live on helping the ones in need and then they are spending their vacations doing even more! They came with two vans from Germany bringing donations like clothes to Greece. On top of helping out in the NGO in Serres, they also supported an NGO in Thessaloniki beginning of January before coming to Serres. So during our “weekend-trip” to Thessaloniki, we all helped out in the other NGO in Thessaloniki (further information: https://www.facebook.com/teamphiloxenia/). That was a completely different experience. This was kind of crisis response.
In Thessaloniki, there are of course some refugee camps, but there are also many homeless refugees. Some of them came here from Turkey. One of the guys told us “Yeah, I belong to the crazy ones, who just jumped over the fence”. Or you have some refugees, whose application for asylum was rejected and were supposed to leave Greece/the EU. So they had to go “dark”. Even if some governments claim, that certain countries are “safe” countries, they are not necessarily “safe”, depending on your beliefs, sex, sexual orientation or just in general…
The Team Philoxenia in Thessaloniki cooperates with other institutions helping refugees. The NGO, for example, uses an apartment/ bar to cook food for the homeless refugees, which is also used by others. So, we first went to this place, unloaded one van full of rice and vegetables and began cutting the vegetables. Though we were more than 10 people it took us 2hours to cut everything. A few refugees also voluntarily help out at the NGO by preparing food, cleaning or distributing the food, so we had the chance to chat with some of them, which was a great experience for me to learn more about the issues and the personal stories – one guy from Iran told us, that he got fake Italian passport and went to the airport to catch a flight to his Italian “hometown”, though it seemed to be a well-done passport and he even used his hands to speak like an Italian – it did not work – he could not board the plane – someone from security even started talking Italian with him and he does not speak Italian….
Anyhow, after everything was cooked, we loaded the food back into the van. The NGO rented a huge space to ensure, the hungry refugees have enough space to eat. The only landlord who was willing to rent a space to the NGO has its building in the red light district – so we went to the red light district of Thessaloniki. As you can imagine, the bus connections to this district are far from optimal, so some refugees have lots of difficulties even coming to (or getting home from) the place.
So, we prepared everything – the NGO owner gave out the food tickets at the entrance, one guy changed the ticket against a cup and a spoon – two girls gave out the main dish – I gave out a cereal bar and a tea bag (donated by “Grenzenlose Wärme”) – another one the hot water – three people were washing dishes – others were drying the dishes, cleaning the tables, changing the water etc. So though we were much more volunteers than usual (given that several volunteers from Serres were there) everyone was busy from 14:30 till 20:30 only tiny breaks were possible. We have severed food to 342 refugees that evening. Unfortunately, we ran out of food, otherwise, it would have been more. The founder told me, that the average was 270 people/night last year and currently it is much more probably due to winter – many people who wanted to leave Greece obviously did not make it across the border and are still stuck here. On top of getting food, you can also see the doctor during the food distribution time. In a separate room, the refugees have the chance to see a nurse. She is also from Germany and moved to Greece for good to help refugees. She is supported by medical volunteers – like other nurses or paramedics.
The police seem to tolerate the NGO – though they are dealing with illegal immigrants – given that the crime rate would be much higher without them. If you are not allowed to work, you have only a few options how to get food – the NGO is one of them and due to the collaboration with the nurse, you can also limit the spread of contagious diseases.
The owner of the team philoxenia is from Germany, she left Germany 2 years ago and established this “food and nurse providing” NGO. I really admired her for this. She does this full-time. Everyday buying supplies in the mornings, cooking in the afternoon and distributing food in the evening. On her free days, she has to rely on the “volunteering refugees”. She has a sponsorship by a Dutch organisation – paying her apartment and her food – but everything else like clothes, going out etc. is not covered and therefore she sacrificed a nice lifestyle for helping others. This woman is amazing!
They also accept volunteers for a day. So whenever you are in Thessaloniki and you have a day free, reach out to the team Philoxenia (Facebook page) and help preparing and distributing food 😊
So in my next post, I will let you know more about the city of Thessaloniki and my work in Serres!
Wanderlust 