Honouring Greek volunteers

Many of these jackets are fake, filled with Styrofoam or plastic. Others, like a tiny blow-up swimming vest featuring a smiling cartoon crab, would not last long in the Aegean Sea. Nevertheless, for the 856,723 refugees who crossed from Turkey to Greece in 2015 – half of whom hailed from war-torn Syria – the risks of this perilous journey were nothing next to the hell they left behind at home.

"This place symbolises the hopes and dreams of people, the fear, and the dangerous journey they made to get here," says Latsoudi. "Now that I see these life jackets fading, I hope that the memory of what happened here will not fade away."

Mitragas says 2015 was a year neither of them will ever forget. "I think we both hope that we will never live that again. This is something we’ll carry with us for the rest of our lives."

Deadly crossing

On the island of Lesvos alone, record numbers of refugees and migrants arrived in 2015, with numbers topping 10,000 in one day in October. Other Greek islands, including Chios, Samos, Leros and Kos, also became safe havens, as conflicts in Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq continued to uproot people from their homes.

Desperately battling to contain this escalating crisis at sea were Mitragas and the 2,500 volunteers of HRT.

"It was absolute horror for them and us," recalls Mitragas, the organisation’s secretary general and a Thessaloniki businessman by trade. Like his colleagues, he works with HRT on a voluntary basis. "It was something you can’t describe. You had to be awake in the night and sleep during the morning."

With 42 branches and 16 sea stations spread across the Greek islands, HRT has been saving lives since 1978. Its volunteers endured a dramatic 2015 in which they regularly went beyond the call of duty to rescue refugees stranded at sea. Many worked day and night, using limited resources and often risking their lives. By the fall of last year, some volunteers were receiving almost nightly calls from the coastguard to provide assistance.

Among the hardest hit were HRT teams on the mountainous island of Samos, one of the closest Greek islands to the Turkish mainland and one of the main gateways into Europe. Here, refugees may cross the Aegean in less than an hour but, while it may be one of the shortest journeys, it is also one of the most hazardous. Those who make it to the beach are the ‘lucky’ ones. Many others often find themselves confronted by sheer cliffs in the middle of the night or, worse, an agonising 4km trek over rocks and vegetation in the blazing heat of the day. Almost 100,000 refugees crossed to Samos in 2015.

Volunteering

Yanis is a 33-year-old paramedic who has been volunteering with HRT on Samos for seven years. He spent much of last year on high alert, often taking calls from the coastguard for assistance in the early hours of the morning. "In the summertime it’s really bad," he says. "It’s over 40 degrees and there’s no shade, so you just boil. If you’re on a boat for five hours in the sun with no water or food, you can imagine walking 4km, especially if you’re an older person with heart problems."

He and his fellow volunteers know how critical a quick response is. Many refugees arrive with heat stroke, dehydration and medical problems. "In these waters, it can take just half an hour for hypothermia to set in," he says. "We try to be out and on the road in 30 minutes. In September, it became 20. We never had so much need to rescue people from the water before 2015." 

Training is crucial. Through regular exercises and drills, volunteers gain a broad understanding of search and rescue skills, including mountain rescue, sea rescue, natural disasters and first aid. HRT has experienced a significant increase in volunteers over the last two years. However, it has called for more, in order to expand its operation following the refugee influx of 2015.

Training is crucial. Through regular exercises and drills, volunteers gain a broad understanding of search and rescue skills, including mountain rescue, sea rescue, natural disasters and first aid. HRT has experienced a significant increase in volunteers over the last two years. However, it has called for more, in order to expand its operation following the refugee influx of 2015.

Nawaf, who fled Syria with his pregnant wife and children, was saved by rescue teams off the coast of Samos. During a terrifying boat journey through the night, he pleaded with the other refugees to turn back. "The waves were very high and I thought about going back to Syria," he remembers. "There, I thought maybe one or two will die, but not all of my family together."

When the fuel ran out, three people dived into the water and swam for shore. Every minute felt like an eternity for Nawaf and his family, as they prayed for help. But rescue teams like HRT are always ready to respond.

"First, we assess the situation and ask for back-up depending on what we need," explains Yanis. "Then we group up. The coastguard gives orders to the smaller boats to do a coastal search, because they can go in shallow waters, and we in the bigger boats start patterns. You calculate currents and wind to see how they might travel. And you make an area that you search."

Yanis claims his hearing has become so attuned to the sound of people shouting for help at sea that he can pinpoint a boat almost instinctively.

"Some people can make it to shore if they’re strong swimmers," he concedes. "But in the wintertime it’s really cold and a lot of people don’t know how to swim, so it’s hard unless you’re close to the land."

Safe on Samos

Thanks to the tireless efforts of rescue teams like HRT, Nawaf and his family are now safe on Samos. However, other rescues took a heavier toll.

Yanis’ lasting memory of 2015 is one of two children holding each other as they floated, having died from hypothermia before rescuers could reach them. Panagiotis, a farmer who volunteers as a diver with HRT on Lesvos, also recalls retrieving countless bodies from capsized boats. For many volunteers, 2015 was traumatic. But, often, they found strength in each another. "Talk," advises Panagiotis. "Or the water will break your heart."

Thanks to the tireless efforts of rescue teams like HRT, Nawaf and his family are now safe on Samos. However, other rescues took a heavier toll.

Yanis’ lasting memory of 2015 is one of two children holding each other as they floated, having died from hypothermia before rescuers could reach them. Panagiotis, a farmer who volunteers as a diver with HRT on Lesvos, also recalls retrieving countless bodies from capsized boats. For many volunteers, 2015 was traumatic. But, often, they found strength in each another. "Talk," advises Panagiotis. "Or the water will break your heart."

During 2015, HRT undertook 48 refugee rescue operations and saved 1,148 lives. The assistance it provided to the Greek Coast Guard, Civil Protection, Fire Service and Hellenic Air Force helped to restore hope when so much seemed lost.

And, across Greece, volunteers from far and wide echoed their response. Last year, thousands came together to lend their support to refugees, in an extraordinary outpouring of solidarity and compassion that Yanis attributed to ‘philoxenia’ – a Greek term meaning ‘love of the stranger’.

On the shores of Lesvos, Efi Latsoudi and the volunteer team at PIKPA village were among the volunteers proving him right.

Dry land

Boris Chershirkov, UNHCR’s spokesman on Lesvos, can’t remember how cold the water was. All he knows is that adrenaline took over.

"Before the boat landed, it swerved," he says, gazing out across the Aegean Sea, as he did that freezing December morning. "People were hysterical. Men were jumping into the water. I could see the locals coming down and my colleagues running. So I went in and started to carry people off. Wahad, wahad, I said – one by one! By end of the day, over a dozen boats had landed."

This is just one of many memories from 2015 that still haunt Chershirkov. Other UNCHR colleagues, locals and a dedicated community of volunteers from all over the world also share similar stories from a year in which the number of refugees and migrants arriving on the shores of Lesvos surpassed 500,000.

Yet the connection the island shares with refugees runs far deeper. Many people living here already know what it means to be displaced.

Today, a significant percentage of locals are descended from the 1.2 million Greek Orthodox Christians who fled Turkey in the 1920s. Their ancestors travelled on boats and rafts, even crossing the same waters, to find safety on Lesvos and rebuild their lives away from home. Many of the Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans who arrived in 2015 had been hoping to do the same in Europe.

But, as European States failed to deliver a collaborative response and the boats kept coming, a crisis began to unfold on Greek islands like Lesvos.

PIKPA village

In response, an army of NGOs and volunteers sprang into action to fill the void. Together, they worked around the clock to help hundreds of thousands of refugees with food, clothes, blankets and longer-term assistance in an overwhelming show of generosity and support. Latsoudi, a human rights activist at the heart of the Lesvos volunteer community, was among those firmly leading the way. Open to refugees since 2012, the PIKPA village where she dedicates her time has not only changed lives on the island, it has changed attitudes too.

"Last year was an explosion of volunteers and NGOs," she says. "We did a lot of work and we covered a lot of gaps. We didn’t have the means, but we had the contact with the locals, we had the experience and we knew how to move. After that, the authorities understood that they needed to do something."

PIKPA lies in the south of Lesvos, nestled peacefully beneath a grove of pine trees. Over the course of four years, the camp has become a haven for some of the most vulnerable refugees on Lesvos.

Previously a children’s summer camp, this warren of wooden chalets and bell tents is different from the island’s two main reception facilities – Moria, a former military camp, and the open accommodation site in Kara Tepe. At PIKPA, children play on swings, washing hangs from lines strung between pine trees, and the smell of cooking drifts from the windows of a shared kitchen. In one corner, a wooden scarecrow, dressed in a lifejacket, supervises a flourishing vegetable patch.

"Nice to meet you," echo a chorus of voices in unison, from inside a small, white-washed chapel. Inside, a local teacher is teaching four Afghan refugees how to speak Greek. Their latest new word is ‘happiness.’

Every day, food, clothes, medical care, education, legal assistance and leisure activities are on offer to vulnerable refugees such as children, pregnant women and people with disabilities. But it is perhaps the safe space and sense of shared respect here that residents value the most.

Many who have fled war zones, or been transferred from Moria or Kara Tepe, know just how important this can be.

Safe harbour

In the brightly-coloured courtyard, 31-year-old Kinaz from Syria is waiting her turn to see the nurse. For a mother of three travelling alone, with a son who suffers from epilepsy, PIKPA has become a sanctuary.

"In Moria and Kara Tepe, it was difficult," she says, watching Jiwan play on the grass with other children. "There was no treatment for my son and I couldn’t leave him for a minute. PIKPA village is different. Here, it is so calm. From the first moment that I entered, I thought it was a beautiful and safe place."

Before the outbreak of war in Syria, Jiwan had been healthy. Now, he has severe learning difficulties and sometimes uses a wheelchair to get around. He and his family live in a wooden chalet, where Kinaz has tried her best to make things feel familiar. Stuffed toys line the shelves. Toothbrushes hint at a sense of routine. On the wall, a pink Hello Kitty lifejacket belonging to 11-year-old Alaa is a reminder of the risks they took to get this far. It is thanks to Latsoudi and the PIKPA volunteers that Kinaz can once again face the future.

"Efi is a kind person, she is like our mother," she says, tearfully. "My son changed when he came here. Now it is better."

Over in the small clinic that overlooks PIKPA’s courtyard, Dimitra, a 26-year-old nurse, takes a moment to clean her spectacles. "Don’t ask me how much I work," she says, with a wry smile. "You don’t want to know."

Dimitra has been volunteering at the camp for three years, caring for vulnerable refugees like Jiwan whose needs might otherwise have fallen by the wayside. "Kinaz is a woman travelling alone and the boy in a very serious condition," she explains. "She was worrying about how to provide him with medication – the cost here is more than 300 EUR a month. At PIKPA, we provide the medication, we take her to hospital, we take the results and we explain them. Here, it is like a family. If you go to the hospital, the other lady looks after your children. They are loved, they support each other and they can communicate."

PIKPA, and the profoundly human values it espouses, is in many ways a reflection of Latsoudi herself. Softly-spoken but quietly powerful, the 48-year-old hails from Athens, where she spent many years working with marginalized people such as the disabled and young prisoners. After moving to Lesvos in 2001, she quickly became a leading voice on the island, campaigning to protect the local wetlands and even hosting a weekly radio show. There, her attention soon turned to the rising numbers of refugees – many of whom, by 2006, were perishing at sea. She can still remember the horror she felt when she saw the death certificates multiplying. "I thought, it is not possible that this is happening next to us and we don’t know anything," she says.

Group of activists

Determined to highlight a mounting tragedy, Latsoudi formed a small activist group, regularly visiting the existing hosting facilities and helping refugees to shore. But, by 2012, the crisis had worsened. The two transit camps were overwhelmed, and thousands of refugees and migrants began sleeping in the parks, streets and main port of Mytilene. Latsoudi knew that a place urgently needed to be found for the most vulnerable among them – the disabled, sick, pregnant, young and old – who had already suffered long enough.

Doctor Eirini, another PIKPA volunteer, was among those who lent a hand. "At the start it was just a few us going around Mytilene, trying to help people," she recalls. "Then, when we opened the camp [in 2012], we brought them here. Efi was doing all paperwork, all the press work and all the communication with the police authorities, and I was doing the medical treatment. Everybody did whatever they could do."

By 2015, with boats arriving on Lesvos by the hour, PIKPA had become a lifeline for thousands. It hosted around 600 people every day, despite a capacity of just 150. More than 2,000 meals were prepared on site daily.

"It was overwhelming," recalls Latsoudi. "We couldn’t survive with the two or three people that we had before, so others became involved. The situation became enormous and the level of solidarity was huge."

But while arrivals were growing, so too were the deaths at sea.

On a hill overlooking Lesvos, many refugees who drowned in the Aegean Sea lie buried beneath mounds of earth. Their final resting place can be found in a narrow plot of land at the rear of a cemetery, beyond the elaborate tombs and memorials of local Greeks. Although small numbered plaques are their only markers, this is a closure hundreds of others may never know.

Latsoudi and others on the island have played an integral role in the burials of refugees who lost their lives in the Aegean Sea over the years. It is a responsibility they feel deeply.

"I remember from June to August in 2015 we had funerals every day," she says. "It was something inhuman – I don’t know how I did it."

"Every time we had a burial, I was thinking it was the last time. And I still cannot accept it. I believe that this will stop, because it has to stop. There is no meaning in these deaths. It is a huge injustice to die trying to save your life and your children in this friendly sea. It doesn’t make sense."

Restoring faith in humanity

For many of those who survived a sea crossing that claimed so many lives in 2015, it was PIKPA and Latsoudi who restored their faith in humanity.

Mohammed spent his first day in Europe in the closed facility of Moria, which in 2015 was so overcrowded that conditions were not good, particularly for children. At just 17, he had fled Damascus alone, terrified that he would be forced to join the military. Now his fears shifted. "When I looked at Moria, I thought it was a prison. I was scared because I was tired from the journey and I was alone. I thought they were going to put me in prison."

The next day, he was referred to PIKPA. "I felt safe," he remembers, the relief washing over his face. "I felt like I have a family, people who protect me. We eat together, I can go swimming – I can be free here."

Luise and Sarah travelled from Germany and the USA respectively to help refugees like Mohammed. As volunteers with Christian Peacemaker Teams, they spend most of their mornings distributing food at PIKPA and their afternoons playing with the children. Sometimes, they assist Proem-Aid, another volunteer group made up of Spanish firemen who teach the children how to swim.

Luise, a 24-year-old social worker, echoes the sentiments of not just Latsoudi, but volunteers all over Greece. "The work I do here is not about saving the world," she says. "It is about making someone smile. It’s about listening to people no-one wants to listen to. It’s about showing respect."

Over the course 2015, Latsoudi and PIKPA inspired thousands of people like Luise to come together and help refugees, at a time when political cooperation from European States was falling apart.

"Solidarity is key," says Latsoudi. But it is not the answer.

"I think it’s a very simple human thing we have to do and if we do it things can be very different. Solidarity saved lives here. But solidarity is not enough. There should be political decisions so that we won’t experience this again."

Thanks to her knowledge and compassion, and the extraordinary efforts of volunteers at PIKPA village, thousands of refugees have been given the chance to restart their lives in safety and dignity.

"There is a face of Europe that is very human and it’s amazing," Latsoudi insists. "It can do miracles. And this is a miracle."