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vitalmindandbody · 7 years

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Refugee crisis: how Greeks opened their centres to strangers

Despite six years of economic hardship, ordinary people have shown stunning magnanimity in assist the 42,000 migrants stranded in their country

Compassion, kindness, magnanimity of flavour: all three apply to Panayiota Drougas and her husband Dimitris as they speed the platform of the develop terminal at Idomeni.

There is no reason in the world that they should be here. Idomeni, at the best of eras, is a godforsaken place: dreary, barren and infused with a pensive usual of remote frontier berths. It is a starkness constructed more haunting still by the thousands of refugees who, following the railway tracks that have led them to this northern angle of Greece , now live in a squalid camp that has up all over the Macedonian frontier which is, of course, why the couple are here.

We envisioned their little faces on television, all these children, so hungry, dead tired, and just wanted to help, articulates Panayiota, a retired headteacher, siding out the 150 chocolate-filled croissants the pair bring along with them. They are refugees they dont want to be here, she sighs, seeings streaming in the cold. We see it as our duty to show them that someone cares. Were going to spread the word, tell former peers and sidekicks to do the same.

They are not alone. The conviction that forced the couple to purchase the croissants, get into their gondola and make the drive from Thessaloniki is something that many appear to share.

Hardship, Greeks have discovered, comes in different subtleties. For six years old they may have been in the eye of the largest eurozone commotion, buffeted by the depredations of austerity, the byproduct of their worst crisis in modern times.

But the batch of thousands of refugees stranded on their shores, often with little more than the clothes on their backs, has now taken them somewhere else. As the numbers have grown so, more, have the acts of altruism some entered, some never seen nationwide.

In Idomeni, pensioners struggling to make ends meet buy 2 cakes of dough, one to share with those who have pitched on their minuscule community; abroad, villagers open their residences. On Aegean islands that have brought the brunt of the influx of refugees, browses hard hit by plummeting consumption donate supplies.

In Athens, where passenger terminals, ballparks and public squares have been was transformed into chaotic receipt cores, Greeks of all backgrounds and ages have raced to join the succour struggle. Everywhere, NGOs speak of an explosion of paying that has taken them aback. I could tell you so many storeys, alleges Caroline Haga, a Finn seconded for the past four months to the country, with the International Red Cross. In Samos and Chios, lately, every storekeeper I filled wanted to give something for “their childrens”. Its amazing, considering what theyve gone through themselves. And more and more, every day, are signing up as volunteers.

Its a generosity of intent that has not been lost on recipients. With Greeces impoverished state organization unfolded to breaking point, refugees have been dependent on the kindness of strangers. The Greek police are horrid, reads Amar Souadi, an Iraqi, standing on the cliff where he has pitched his tent in the clay realms that are now home to the refugees in Idomeni. But the Greek beings are very good, he declares, breaking into a smile.

In Kos island my partner, Selma, established birth. They did everything for us. Search, here is my boy, Kasum, he is 10 dates old-time. We didnt wishes to make this pilgrimage but in Baghdad I acted as a translator for a British petroleum companionship and beings interpreted me as a deserter. Examine at my forearm, look at my stomach, look at these[ artillery] wounds.

In the coming months, EU officials predict that as numerous as 150,000 migrants and refugees could contact the country. By Friday, 42,000 were recorded across Greece. Any hopes of the numbers putting as a result of the preparation of the proposed programme bargain concurred between the bloc and Turkey to stem the tide have not been borne out.

Children receive a free banquet at a restaurant on the island of Kos. Photo: USA/ REX/ Shutterstock

Reaction to the flows could have gone either way; and with the closure last week of Europes Balkan corridor by Macedonia and other nations, it is able to yet change. On the back of financial collapse, the anti-immigrant, neo-fascist Golden Dawn has emerged, and impounded sway, as the third-biggest political oblige. The potential of Greece becoming a permanent base for refugees would not only place additional push on civilization, but administer it with regenerated vitality.

Everything we are seeing has been a pleasant astound, reads Melia Eleftheriadi, an employee with the Athens prefecture. The fondnes, right now, is we live under the same sunshine. We fall in love under the same moon. We are all human we have to help these people.

From her wreak room outside the former Olympic taekwondo stadium whose basement storage infinite has been grown with chronicle quicken into an assistant deployment centre Eleftheriadi has a birds-eye view of those wanting to help. Since “the centres activities” opened just seven daytime ago, a apparently incessant river of people have become their road to its doors, some in gondolas, some on foot, some old-time, some young, but all in common quest: to alleviate the plight of refugees.

Its been very moving, she contributes, shaking her pate almost in incredulity. There was one male, in his 50 s, earlier this week who , it is not possible to drive, took a bus from Nafplion[ in the Peloponnese] just so he could drop off a carton with a few circumstances for them.

Stacks of shoes, sleeping bags, nappies, towels, clothes, liquid and food supplies are sprawled around the cellar testament, if something, to the exclusively organisational sort of their own problems now facing powers. Almost every Greek has a family member who has immigrated or been a refugee, responds Eleftheriadi. My own grandmother fled Turkey during the course of its Asia Minor calamity[ following the first world war ]. So many of us have same narratives, which might explain why subscriptions arent their own problems. Its what to do with them all.

Where the state has miscarried, voluntaries and NGOs have stepped in. On the islands, in Athens and in the innumerable shelters set up in disused army barracks, hotels, parks and public houses, they have come deploying crisis situations skills and the feeling of do-gooders everywhere.

For people such as Nibal Shkirm, a Syrian coach from Aleppo, who property in Lesbos with her four children and husband last week, different groups have been a boom. You learn these shoes? she responds, brandishing a duet of Timberland sneakers outside her tent on a quay in Piraeus port. Some good Greek “ve given me” them. You identify her shoes, and his shoes, and her shoes? Some good Greek made them, very. These beings, they are very kind but satisfy write that we dont want to stay. We want to go to Germany. Maybe you can help?

With the EU rushing in emergency humanitarian aid in the weeks onward, the volunteer movement is bound to grow.

Like the emergencies that have overlapped in the country on the frontline of Europes two great dramas, history is being played out in billows. The refugee disaster resonates because Greeks, too, have moved to foreign countries and have also been migrants and migrs pressured, through self-exile, or political and economic requirement, to search better lives abroad. After the civil crusades merciless result in 1949, more than a third of the rural regions immigrated to Australia, Germany and America. Ever since, Greek blues lyricists, poets and film-makers have been inspired by what is known as xenitia .

This is an experience that very few other people have. It is dug into our collective consciousness, speaks Professor Constantinos Tsoukalas, Greeces pre-eminent sociologist. Greeks know what it is like to lose everything: residences, pals, storages, envisions, the memorabilia of their lives. The kindness, the empathy cant go on for ever, of course, but to a great degree it explains what we are seeing today.

The volunteers

The cook: Babis Kalogeridis, 50

Kalogeridis did not think twice about volunteering when the refugee crisis intensified. As a cook , commonly encountered working in a indulgence inn on the east Aegean island of Thassos, his sciences were in demand.

Babis Kalogeridis stirs a 500 -litre pot of soup at the refugee camp in Idomeni. Photo: Helena Smith for the Observer

Wanting to help passes or doesnt come from inside you, replies the father-of-two as he arouses a giant cauldron of lentil and rice soup in a kitchen receptacle that has been set up in the border camp at Idomeni. All I envision are pedigree people, people who have been uprooted because of war.

Kalogeridis drives to the camp on the Greek-Macedonian frontier from his house in Thessaloniki at least four times every week. The ride is shared with two other concocts who, like Kalogeridis, are members of a chefs guild whose activities include doing charitable labors.

Wanting to help rises or doesnt come from inside you All I recognize are beings uprooted by struggle

Eight-hour transformations of unremitting toil in rudimentary situations follow. Until lately, when a tube was connected to the nearby community of Idomeni, “there werent” passing sea in the following areas. We induce around 4,000 portions of hot nutrient every day, he smiles. A spate of us in north Greece whose class were also uprooted in the 1922[ Greco-Turkish] campaign are sensitive to the enormous adversity refugees digest. It reminds us of what our relatives went through.

The schoolteacher: Lili Mastichiadou, 58 Like numerous in our own countries, Mastichiadou has been appalled by the misfortune lapping at Greeces shorings.

The sight of children drowning off Aegean islands, the sheer proportion of the crisis and Europes inability to deal with it have all played a role in her decision to volunteer.

Everyone has their own tipping object, she speaks, parcelling donated sanitary towels into caskets in an facilitate dissemination core opened last week in the cellar of a former Olympic stadium in Athens. When you see infants croaking in front of your eyes, what you believe or dont accept discontinues to question. It croaks behavior beyond ideology.

Lili Mastichiadou volunteering at an assistance distribution core in Athens. Photo: Helena Smith for the Observer

She said it came as second nature to offer support. The response to the crisis has been very chaotic since we are suffer from paucity “of the organizations activities”, she adds. I knew there would be a need for logistical backup.

When you see infants croaking in front of your eyes, what you believe concludes to substance

Mastichiadou is also the daughter of a refugee ejected from Turkey in 1922. As a public employee she, more, has met her salary slashed as a result of Greeces six-year economic crisis. My father-god was from Asia Minor and when I grew up Greece was poor. There was a culture of helping your neighbour. It wasnt considered special. I will work here, after school hours, for as long as they need me.

The taxi driver: Kostas Moisides, 64 Moisides would not customarily consider himself to be a voluntary. But as a committed political leftwinger who has long belongs to a neighbourhood solidarity group now run by the regulating Syriza party, he is no newcomer to helping people out. For years now we have been invoking money to support the poor, mentions the taxi driver who comes from Nikaia, one of the Greek uppercases poorest suburbs, in the west of the city. Theres an infrastructure in place to aid refugees that is the product of our own economic crisis.

Kostas Moisides in the repository where he has delivered several bags of nutrient. Photograph: Helena Smith for the Observer

Moisides, who analyzed electrical engineering in Italy, says that he was also encouraged to participate in the relief efforts for refugees because of his displeasure in Europe. It wasnt the Europe that my generation, at the least, dreamed of, he enunciates. To be honest its very disheartening.

It wasnt the Europe that my generation at least dreamed of. Its very disheartening

At 64, Moisides has joined a volunteer group that is dispersing nutrient on the quays of Piraeus port. But at the least twice a few weeks Moisides too plans to collect and deliver donated goods for refugees and migrants. Unemployment is more than 30% in Nikaia, there are shuttered patronizes everywhere, when the shipyards closed many parties lost their jobs, but they care and they are giving.

Interviews by Helena Smith