Madeira - Days 1 & 2

Day 1

Here I am on a little jolly on my own in Madeira. This is pay-back time for R's annual golf piss-up in the Algarve with his Monmouth mates. Not really, but it is quite tricky for us to get away together for any longer than a couple of days, what with us being slaves to four dogs, five cats and ten chickens, and having daughters who are increasingly and annoyingly bound up with their own commitments. Poor us, huh?

This isn't my first trip to Madeira (and it won't be my last). We were here for an Easter holiday when the girls were teenagers, and I've always wanted to come back and explore the gardens more, as there's only so much of that you can do when you have teenaged kids who absolutely HAVE to get a suntan, and don't know an agapanthus from an aquilegia. 

I arrived yesterday lunchtime after a smooth hour and a half flight from Lisbon, and an expectedly scary landing, due to the position of the airport.  Madeira doesn't really have any flat bits, suitable for an airport, because it's an old volcano and just erupts straight up out of the deep blue sea.  There aren't even any sandy beaches really, or at least very few natural ones, which is good as far as I'm concerned as it keeps all the particularly irritating tourists away (apart from the ones who arrive on huge cruise ships, that is). So the relatively new airport is sort of precariously stuck on the edge between the sea and the mountains and makes me a bit nervous.

I got a bus to the centre of Funchal where I'm renting a nice studio apartment. Funchal is a beautiful city on the south coast of the island, surrounded by mountains, and it's the third largest city in Portugal. Madeira is Portuguese, so the lack of culture shock on this visit was noticeable and quite nice - same language, same money, same shops etc.  I popped into Pingo a few doors down and stocked up on a few provisions, then walked the few blocks down to the sea.  After a long walk along the sea front, I stopped for glass of wine at the marina and watched the huge cruise ship Queen Mary II reverse out of the harbour. I was really hoping it would bash into the harbour wall and sink, because cruise ships are full of ghastly people and I'm not very nice, but it honked its horn ostentatiously and sailed off into the Atlantic.

Back in the apartment I watched MacMafia on my laptop which made my head explode.

Day 2

It was raining when I woke up.  When the bloke showed me around yesterday he asked that if I cook anything could I make sure I switch the extractor hood on AND open the Velux window next to the hob as the fire alarm is VERY SENSITIVE. I did all that but whilst my eggs were boiling a sudden very loud alarm went off which gave me a heart attack, and sent me scurrying around putting lids on things and opening all the other windows, before I discovered, on flinging open the apartment door, that it was the cleaner ringing my door bell (I'm on the third floor, no-one told me I had a doorbell).  Anyway, now I'm frightened of the cooker.

I decided to walk to Monte, which is right up on top of a mountain over-looking Funchal.  There're some lovely gardens there, one of which we visited last time we were here.  We got there via cable car from the seafront in Funchal.  It was absolutely fucking terrifying and Holly and I both came out in a florid rash, so this time I decided to walk.  I found the best road to take on my map - dead straight, about three miles long and, it turned out, relentlessly steep.  And I mean really steep.  About 1in 3.  Even cars struggle to get up it.  It took me an hour and a half, and I was sweating like a pig when I finally got to Monte. Also, the sun came out soon after I set off, which didn't help.

Wandered all round the very very beautiful Monte Palace tropical gardens for a couple of hours, then around the very lovely but entirely different gardens of the Quinta de Monte hotel, then the also very lovely municipal park of Monte. Soul soothed and pockets mysteriously full of seed pods and little cuttings, I wandered over to have a look at the other shorter cable car ride that goes from Monte down and across to the Botanical Gardens, but took one look at the massive ravine it crossed and thought Fuck That.

So I started my descent on foot, down the route used by the Carros de Cesto.  These are wicker basket 'sleds' that take two people and slide all the way down the steep road back to Funchal.  There are two guys standing on the back using their rubber-sole-booted feet as brakes.  It's good fun - we did it last time we were here - but also quite expensive, so I decided to walk again, what with it being all downhill an' all. Could literally hardly walk when I got back down to sea level and was finally able to disengage my rectus femoris (thigh muscles), and after I sat down in the marina for a glass of wine I couldn't get up again.  Walked back to the apartment looking like I'd shat myself.  Getting out of bed tomorrow should be interesting.

LESBOS - Days 15 - 28

The pattern over the past week or so has been no boats for a couple of days, so everyone relaxes and starts doing other stuff, like cleaning the beaches and sorting through donated medication, and then a flurry of boats that take everyone by surprise.  Then quiet for a few days again......
Meanwhile we continue to hear of 'capsizing boats' in Turkish waters and the helicopters buzz overhead looking for people in the water and then we read of the drownings. We also hear that Greece has formed an agreement that recognises Turkey as a 'safe country'. This means that the refugees that arrive in Lesbos, provided they didn't originate in Turkey but only passed through it, can be simply returned there. A torturous and tortuous 'solution' that merely sweeps the problem out of Europe and under Turkey's carpet. More recently we hear of NATO sending ships and we wonder whether Lesbos will see any more refugee boats. Or maybe the NATO ships have nothing to do with refugees and everything to do with Russia. We also wonder what will become of the ever increasing number of refugees accumulating in Turkey like a time bomb.

A group of five volunteers from Lighthouse decided to go to Idomeni on the Greek-Macedonia border where there is a bottleneck of refugees who are apparently cold and hungry and in need of support, particularly during the periods when the border is closed.  Lighthouse let them take their van, which they will fill with supplies and deliver to the refugees.  Shortly afterwards Lighthouse sent a small medical team to Idomeni to do a reccy and assess the medical need.

Grace and I found a room in Skala and moved across from Molyvos ten days ago.  It's a huge relief not to have to drive either of those treacherous roads everyday and it's great to be in Skala - so close to camp. Downside is shared bathrooms - but the five rooms are occupied by eleven Lighthouse volunteers, so we're all in it together and it's like being a student again, complete with vodka parties on the kitchen floor. And shared bathrooms are frankly a massive improvement on the camp Portaloos (boak).

The evening before we moved over to Skala there was a 'last night' celebration for a couple of people who were leaving.  We had a stupendous feast in a restaurant in the harbour then popped into the local café Goji for 'just one more drink'.  Unfortunately that drink turned out to be Ouzo....and the rest, as they say, is history.  The next minute it was 4am and we were dancing to Stevie Wonder. I have no idea how that happened. As Grace and I had nowhere to stay some of the night-shift volunteers had offered their beds and poor Marcy - the sweetest, smiliest 19 year old Californian girl - arrived back, shattered, after her nightshift and is far too lovely to kick the unconscious middle-aged snoring woman out of her bed, so sat patiently in the kitchen reading a book until I emerged, staggering, like some sort of bleary-eyed and much less attractive Patsy, from Ab Fab.

Unfortunately, a few days later (but entirely unrelated),  I succumbed to what we're calling 'Syrian Flu' - chills, sweat and rigors followed by (in my case) an episode of profuse vomiting, and morphing into an unpleasant and painful bronchitis. Although that might have something to do with the fact that I've been smoking since I've been here. Which is very bad. But in my defence so has everyone else.  It's almost impossible not to.  And I promise promise promise I won't smoke when I get home.  It's a temporary aberration associated with being transported into an insane topsy-turvy world full of uncertainty, stress, loitering, sociability, anxiety, sadness, anticipation, confusion, misery, comradery and reflection.

 *lights another fag*

We had a day off and took a drive down to Moria, the big camp in the south where all refugees are required to register. The main part is in a former prison and we're not allowed in.  Double barbed wire topped boundaries keep us out and the refugees in. There's a big military presence.  Adjacent is another camp called 'Afghan Hill', a camp created and run entirely by volunteers to accommodate refugees who are awaiting registration or have registration and are awaiting the opportunity to catch the ferry to Athens. Prior to the evolution of the camp they were sleeping in the open.

The past few days have been spent looking after George, the new abandoned deaf lamb who's been adopted by camp, dolphin-watching and hanging out in Goji cafe, speculating about what's actually going on on the stretch of water between us and Turkey, and what the future will hold for Lesbos, the volunteers and the refugees, whilst Dimitri, a local cross-dresser, parades along the quay-side in his latest risqué ensemble. The three medics (myself, Jenny and Killian) have been juggling the on-call medics phone between us and Grace did a night shift in camp during which she had a little kip in the warming tent and got into a furious strop when she woke to find that she'd missed Ai Weiwei, who'd come to have a look around camp.

On the day before we left we went for a long hike along the coast to the lighthouse at Korakas, on the most easterly point of the north shore, where we met up with a team from Lighthouse Relief who were beach cleaning and boat cutting (the abandoned rubber dinghies that have been washing about in the surf and rocks need cutting into sections in order to remove them). On the way back, Jenny and Grace went for a swim in the icy Aegean sea.  Not me though.  Obviously.

The day after a brilliant Last Supper we left the island and started our comfortable journey back across Europe to our comfortable homes and our comfortable lives. It's been a privilege to have been able to spend some time in Lesbos, helping to welcome Syrians, Afghans and Iraqis to Europe and offer them a tiny bit of comfort after the terrible ordeal they've been through. Shame  on us all that the love and respect and compassion shown to them on the beaches of Lesbos will likely not be echoed throughout their uncomfortable and treacherous journey through Europe, but I hope that they will at least stay safe and will eventually find some sort of secure lives for themselves and their families, and that the scars of the losses they suffered along the way will eventually heal. And I hope they manage to avoid those nasty little pockets of ignorant fear and bigotry that fester throughout society.

It's been an odd month. I've intentionally avoided sentimentality whilst writing this blog (far too British), despite the heart-breaking tales that punctuate every day spent on Lesbos. But it's not all been tragic. The best thing about the whole experience is the people.  They are completely and utterly brilliant. That includes the Greek locals and the diverse groups of volunteers from all over the world, from all walks of life, and from all age groups.  Everyone smiles at each other. Everyone helps each other. Everyone is kind to each other, regardless of race, age, nationality, gender or social background. No-one is paid and no-one is in charge and yet everyone works together and pulls together and co-operates with each other to create an effective and efficient response to the crisis of thousands of cold ,wet and distraught refugees washing up on the beaches of the northern shore. It has literally restored my faith in humanity. It's wonderfully heartening to find yourself surrounded by people who share your view of the world, rather than having to seek them out, which I find gets harder as I get older for some reason, I know not why. It's this, rather than the horrors of why we're all here, that has touched me most and has shifted my perception of the world.  Perhaps love will conquer evil after all - who knows? Lesbos has at least given me hope.

(Sorry about the sentimentality.)

*burps*

*farts*

LESVOS - Days 11,12,13 & 14

Funny old days. Having braced ourselves for a camp full of resident refugees, nothing happened. The shit missed the fan.  The next day no boats came.  Nor the next day. We heard that the Turks were escorting refugee boats to Greek waters and that Greek naval ships were picking them up and taking them to Mytilene to register and then straight onto ferries to Athens. Or in other words, doing what they should have been doing all along. 

The sun shone and there was a mood of cautious optimism (with undertones of suspicion) on the shore. We watched the patrolling ships and marvelled at the beauty of the deadly sea.  A meeting was called.  It was decided that we would use the lull as an opportunity to improve things - e.g.  build a bigger women and children’s changing area,  cut up boats, etc  I set about reorganising and making an inventory of the medical unit. Jenny started work on an induction package for future medics. Grace went beach cleaning.

One evening we went to a slightly grotty-looking and remote  taverna/hotel where Proactiva (voluntary Spanish lifeguards) are based and had the most fabulous traditional Greek food (including a whole fried squid) to celebrate Milou’s last night.  Milou is a very lovely young Dutch girl, whose Paediatrician father was here too, last week.

The next evening we climbed up into a derelict hotel on the cliff behind the camp and watched dolphins leapfrogging across the pink sea then stayed up late drinking with Flo, a Swiss retired lawyer who insisted on paying for all the wine as it was his last night.

 

There are volunteers here from all corners of the globe and all walks of life. Eric, the 55year old Alaskan paramedic. Karen and Colin, the middle-aged British couple. Justine and Julie, Swiss students. Marie, Spanish nurse.  Lots of Catalonians. Stefan, German film-maker. Curtis, 19year old EMT from Portland. Cath, Australian nurse.  Mustafa, Swedish doctor of Pakistan origin. And Lasse, 74year old Swede who works tirelessly, chopping wood and cleaning out dustbins. What a guy. The joy of being surrounded by people with the same view of the world. And ZERO bigotry. That’s definitely the best bit.

Newer volunteers wondered whether Lesvos had seen its last refugee boat. Long term volunteers were more skeptical; there had been a similar hiatus in November.There were speculations about the reasons - is it a result of pressure from the EU? Or is it because of the presence on the island of visiting dignitaries? Or is it because the Greek football team staged a sit down protest about the latest tragic drownings?

We started hearing various rumours and detected an air of anxiety amongst the NGOs.  The camp had a visit from officials who said we were no longer permitted to cook food for refugees or volunteers.  We worry about the fate Carolina, the camp black lamb who likes to sleep in the kitchen, so a barrier was built to keep her out of that particular tent. She’s very upset. We have been asked to throw out all out-of-date medication and all codeine, opiates and benzodiazepines have been taken away as they are illegal.  It looks like we will have to get rid of all non-Greek medication too (basically all of it) and restock, somehow, with Greek meds. Marie, a Spanish nurse, returned from a visit to the Hope Centre where she had found a sombre mood - they had had a visit from Greek officials who had declared their operation illegal.  They had no licence and were not permitted to house refugees, even on a temporary basis. All volunteers, independent or attached to NGOs are going to be required to register at the Ministry of the Aegean or risk arrest. Everyone is a bit twitchy.  Except Platanos, the anarchists, who don’t give a fuck about rules and regulations and won’t be told what to do by anyone.  Go Platanos, you brilliant people.

 

It feels as if there are moves afoot to criminalise NGOs and discourage volunteers from coming to Lesvos. A local Swedish nurse, who is married to a Greek and has lived in Skala for 26 years (and works every day at Lighthouse), tells us that some local factions feel that by welcoming refugees on the beaches the NGOs are encouraging them to come.  I sympathise with local Greeks - not only is their economy crippled but they have lost their income from tourism because of this crisis. But there is NO WAY a mother or father would put their children in a flimsy rubber dinghy on icy seas in the pitch black, with full knowledge of the thousands of previous drownings, unless they were fleeing death or a life not worth living.  No way. They certainly wouldn’t be encouraged to do so by the promise of a dry pair of socks and a cup of sweet tea.

Having been lulled into a false sense of security, yesterday the boats started arriving again. Marit (the Swedish nurse) lives in a house on the beach and last night in the early hours she was woken by shouting. A refugee boat had made it to shore.  It wasn’t a dinghy, but some sort of speedboat, with 27 refugees on board.  It was hotly pursued by a Frontex boat (Frontex is the European border agency) and the police on board threatened the refugees with guns, forcing them to sit down on the beach or they would be shot. Four or five refugees tried to escape but were captured, and all the refugees were then taken on board the Frontex boat, which took them off, presumably to Mytilene. Marit has never known this to happen before. 

At camp the next morning I received a call on the medical phone from Greenpeace to say two boats were headed to Skala.  This took everyone by surprise and there was a bit of confusion (there are organised channels of communication regarding news of refugee boats, which Greenpeace don’t seem to be entirely familiar with), but the boats arrived safely and everyone was OK.  Except one man, who could speak no English, and handed me his mobile phone. A friend of his told me in English that this man had lost his family - they had been separated in Turkey - and wanted to know how he could find them. I had absolutely no idea. He was given the number of the Red Cross who are working to reunite families. I hope they are alive and that he finds them.  He looked utterly bereft.

One of the Proactiva lifeguards said that the Greek coastguards have a brand new boat, and there was a big inauguration ceremony yesterday, hence the absence of the coastguard on the water and the ‘slipping through the net’ of refugee boats.  But that’s just speculation.  There’s a lot of speculation.

In the meantime we shall wait, with baited breath, dry clothes and a welcoming smile.

LESVOS Days 8,9 & 10

We enjoyed our day off.  We slept, mostly, and ate a late lunch in the harbour, drank some wine, replenished our supplies, then slept some more. The next day we had a 6am start again and made our way to Skala.  Thank goodness the weather has improved, the temperatures have risen, and the seas are a little calmer.  The bitter cold was deeply unpleasant for the volunteers to work in and desperately dangerous and agonising for the refugees.

The first few hours in the morning are spent dealing with new arrivals and moving on the refugees who arrived in the night.  When refugees arrive in the night they stay in the camp until morning.  There are two sleeping tents - one male and one female, kitted out with lots of blankets and sleeping bags, where they can rest for a few hours. Some stay around the fires and the volunteers share soup and sweet tea with them and maybe make music and sing.

After they are warm and dry refugees who are sick or injured will often ask to see a doctor.  Many of them have colds and coughs and earaches, babies are full of snot or have terrible nappy rash from sitting in a dirty nappy for hours or days, some have twisted ankles or bruises and contusions where they’ve been beaten with sticks by the Turkish police.  They are inordinately grateful for a swig of calpol or a couple of ibuprofen or a Strepsil or a tubigrip, which I dole out liberally and willingly. If I’d been through what they’ve been through I’d want a bucket of morphine and half a bottle of gin as a bare minimum. It’s a very different story from A&E in the UK. 

By the late morning all the refugees have usually left in buses en route to Moria, and the volunteers set about cleaning up and restocking and anything else that needs to be done (like learning some Farsi and Arabic, so we can at least welcome people). Yesterday myself and Grace and Jenny went to the local shop and bought the ingredients to make a huge leek/cheese/pasta dish for the 30 or so volunteers that were around for a lunchtime meeting. (I hope you don’t mind me spending some of your donations on feeding the volunteers. It only cost €16.) It was bloody delicious, if I do say so myself.

The meeting was a special one, and volunteers had been alerted to it by the Lighthouse WhatsApp group.  (I can’t imagine how this refugee crisis would have been managed pre-internet/mobile phones.) The meeting was called because the shit is about to hit the fan.  There’s been a ferry strike on Lesvos and there’s another one planned for three days later this week.  All the ferries that sail in the intervening days are fully booked. Refugees can’t leave the island and yet they continue to arrive at a rate of about 1000-2000 per day. Moria camp is at full capacity as are all the other big camps. The hope is that it’s a temporary backlog, but in the meantime, and for a period of 72 hours, UNHCR have asked Lighthouse camp to convert itself to a holding camp, as there will be nowhere else for the refugees to go.

The plan is that Platanos will receive the incoming boats and get the refugees dry and warm, and then they will come to Lighthouse to stay until there is capacity at Moria for them to be moved on.  So all the tents, including storage tents and changing tents, have to be converted into sleeping tents, in the expectation that there may be several hundred refugees at the camp for up to three days.  This has implications for volunteers and in order to ensure enough volunteers are present in camp to deal with the situation they have changed the shift pattern to two 12 hour shifts - 3am-3pm and 3pm-3am. Eek.

I’m really worried that there’s going to be an outbreak of disease so I’ve become like one of those people off ‘How Clean Is My House?’, going round with a spray of disinfectant, changing tea towels and applying alcohol hand rub like there’s no tomorrow.

Yesterday afternoon, we watched a big Greek coastguard boat out at sea that was scooping up refugees.  We heard later that it took 150 of them to the not-even-remotely finished Hope Centre as there was nowhere else to take them.  Well done to the Hope Centre for coping with that number of people, although I guess they had no choice. We also heard yesterday that a right-wing bunch of complete and utter spunktrumpets had set fire to the WAHA-run medical unit at the IRC camp. I don’t believe in capital punishment but I’d willingly shoot the twisted arsewipes who did that.  They have no place in the world I want to live in.

Yesterday evening, to round off  an increasingly alarming day, I attended a meeting to discuss the plans for a Mass Casualty Incident. Representatives from all the medical NGOs were there along with the Spanish volunteer lifeguards and the Greek lifeguards as well as non-medical NGO representatives and The Priest…  an omnipresent and very high profile American, multi-lingual (seven languages including Farsi and Arabic), pony-tailed, motorbike-riding, chain-smoking, cassock-wearing priest who I’ll tell you more about when I find out more about him. 

All in all there seems to be a feeling of impending doom here on Lesvos at the moment.  I do hope it passes.

LESBOS - DAYS 2,3,4,5,6,& 7

We’ve been here a week now and I promised I’d write a blog to keep people who donated and/or people who are interested updated. Sorry ‘bout that, been a bit distracted.

It’s been a peculiar week.  My faith in humanity has been alternately dashed against the rocks and then heart-warmingly restored. I’ve bemoaned my own physical discomfort then witnessed the unimaginable agony of others. And I’ve feared for my life then feared for the lives of others and my ability to help them. Frankly, I’m bloody exhausted.

It quickly became apparent, to me and the other six or seven doctors who had arrived recently (some from as far away as USA) under the umbrella of the same particular organisation that I did, that they (the organisation) don’t have an effing clue what they’re doing with regards to sending medics into disaster zones. This would be because they’ve never done it before, have no medical expertise, and didn’t think it necessary to do a medical needs assessment. Tossers.

I won’t go into the details *here* (but almost certainly will elsewhere) but this has resulted in several emergency doctors traipsing all over Lesbos for several days without coming anywhere close to what they came here to do. And some of them are only here for a week and most have used their own limited annual leave and funds to be here. The organisation has no representatives on the island and consists of one person who is attempting to coordinate their medical response from Scotland. It’s fair to say that me and the head of the organisation involved have had ‘words’. Tosser.

Fortunately, there are other NGOs on this island who have got their shit together, and we’ve managed to hook up with one of them. We didn’t entirely waste our days prior to this though.  We went to Mytilene to register with the Medical Society, and we painted a bathroom in the Hope Centre - a project by a local British couple who have rented a derelict local hotel and are renovating it for use as an eventual temporary reception camp for refugees landing in 'zone 1’.

The north shore of Lesvos is approximately 15km long and runs parallel to the coast of Turkey, about 5 miles way. At the western end is Molyvos - a beautiful little town where our hotel is. At the eastern end is Skala Sykmania, a charming little fishing village. Between the two the coastline varies between welcoming bays and rocky cliffs. Because of its proximity to Turkey, and its numerous bays, the northern shore receives a lot of refugee boats.

The road from Molyvos to Skala is a tarmac lane for the first 5km and a pot-hole ridden, cliff-hugging winding dirt track for the next 10 km.  To assist in the practicalities of refugee rescue the coast has been divided into three zones: zone 1 stretches from Molyvos to the beginning of the dirt track, zone 2 from the beginning of the dirt track to a point called ‘Chapel’ (because there is a small chapel there), and zone 3, from Chapel to Skala.

When refugees first started arriving on the north shore of Lesbos about a year ago, there was no help for them.  It was left to locals to pull them out of the sea, dead or alive.  Then a few volunteer groups started arriving to help and over the past year the refugees that float up to the north shore are ‘received’ by NGOs that have emerged and grown out of little groups of volunteers.  Various temporary ‘camps’ have evolved where refugees are provided with dry clothes, hot drinks and warmth before being taken by bus to the large camp, Moria, in the south. 

 

In zone 1 the NGO ‘Starfish’ operates, and also the Kempsons, a local British couple.  There is no camp in zone 1 yet. 

In zone 2 is a relatively new camp funded by the International Rescue Committee (IRC).  This is a largely US-funded organisation headed by David Milliband.  It’s the only camp staffed by paid workers employed by the IRC, rather than volunteers.  Unfortunately, I’m told (although I don’t know if it’s true), it’s been staffed by the right wing local council, and there are concerns that they don’t treat the refugees kindly.  They’re certainly not very friendly - I know this because I’ve been there. Currently all refugees who arrive in zones 1 and 2 are taken by minibus to the IRC camp.

In zone 3 there are two camps next door to each other - one is called Lighthouse and the other is called Platanos. Both are run entirely by volunteers and have evolved over the past 5 months.

As far as medical cover is concerned, each NGO/camp has its own medical unit and doctors, in most cases provided by well-established medical NGOs such as MSF and WAHA. There are also numerous mobile medical units patrolling the northern shores such as ISRaid, a group of 12 Belgian medics whose name I forget, and, the week we arrived, also a group of 20 American medics from an organisation called International Medical Rescue. 

Anyway, it quickly became apparent that there are an awful lot of doctors here and, as the organisation that sent us here doesn’t have a clue what it’s doing, it would be up to us to try and find somewhere to work in an area already brimming with medics. 

In brief, the medical need here is not as great as I, or I imagine you, believed it to be, and what need there is appears to be pretty well covered.  Fortunately, after a pretty frustrating few days, we (and by ‘we’ I mean myself, Grace and a doctor friend we’ve met here called Jenny) drove to Skala and met up with the people who run ‘Lighthouse’.

  

I actually can’t praise this organisation enough.  They are warm, welcoming, compassionate, well-organised, democratic and effective.  They welcomed us and invited us to become a part of their team, by being part of the medical team as well as helping as general volunteers. 

The volunteers were a little gloomy on the day we met them because the body of a four year old, thought to be from a boat that had sunk some days ago, had been washed up on the beach adjacent to the camp. A local nurse had come across it whilst walking her dog. A four year old little girl and nobody knows who she is. Somebody’s baby. This is a mightily fucked up world we’re living in.

   

Most refugee boats leave Turkey after dark so arrive in Lesbos sometime between midnight and 11am so the day before we started work at Lighthouse (day 5) we got up at 4:30am and picked up a young Norwegian NGO worker who agreed to go with us to ‘work the beaches’.  This basically involves driving along the dangerous dirt track between Molyvos and Skala, looking out for boats that may have landed.  There’s a pretty efficient telescope ‘look-out' system (again, run by volunteers) that spots most boats so they can be guided to a safe landing spot by the coastguards, but occasionally, especially at night, the boats arrive unexpectedly.  This is because they have no lights and make no noise because they don’t want to be spotted in case the Turkish Lifeguard takes them back (or sinks them).

 

I was a bit grumpy, to be honest, as I drove gingerly along the track in the pitch black.  This was because (i) it was 5 am, (ii) I was driving along a track which is dangerous and that my car insurers had specified neither the car nor its occupants were covered to drive on, and (iii) I felt that the whole exercise was no more an attempt to shut me up by the stupid organisation that sent me, because I’d been so gobby about their incompetence.

As we drove along a stretch literally feet from the sea, Grace spotted something on the road in the beam of the headlights.  Up ahead, huddled together in the pitch black and wearing bright orange lifejackets were a group of about 40 refugees. They had literally just landed and had managed to get themselves out of the boat.  They were soaking wet and the temperatures were close to freezing.  No-one else was there but us.  ‘Thank-you-for-coming-thank-you-for-coming!’ cried one man, as we tried to check that everyone was OK. ‘Baby baby!’ cried another and a large bundle was passed overhead to me and I realised that this tightly wrapped and swaddled parcel was a baby. It was cold and rigid and as I ran with it to my car, shouting to Grace to put the interior lights on and open the back door, I thought ‘What the FUCKING FUCK am I going to do with a dead baby in the middle of fucking nowhere in the back of my car in the pitch fucking black?!’ There’s not much that can be done to resuscitate a hypothermic dead baby in the back of a car with your bare hands, no matter how highly skilled you might be. 

I lay the bundle down and tried to get to its face - it was so well wrapped in hat,  several layers of clothes, then lifejacket, then blanket, that it was difficult to get at it, but it was completely unresponsive.  I pulled the blankets away and put my ear to its face….. and felt a tiny wisp of warm breath. I pulled more blankets away and it wrinkled its nose, opened one eye and let out an almighty squawk.  It was well pissed off to be woken from its sleep by a crazed middle-aged woman with spiky white hair and I’ve never been so relieved to hear a screaming baby in my entire life.

We piled the baby, its Mum and toddler sibling into the front passenger seat, plus another woman and her three children in the back, and put the heating on full blast.  They were all soaking wet and the older children, who sat on Grace’s lap in the back, were covered in vomit. We drove them to the IRC camp, back along the track, and they sent minibuses out to pick up all the others. We were greeted by a surly and unsmiling middle-aged man who ushered them into a big white tent without saying a word.  As we left the women hugged me and the children clung to Grace’s hands. 

This was our first intimate encounter with refugees, and I hope it won’t be long before they encounter warmth and kindness again. Fuck you, David Cameron, you ham-faced wanker.

In Skala over the next few days we have encountered many more refugees.  In the early morning the boats arrive one after the other. The sight of a boat overloaded with people, with expressions of hope, terror, anxiety, weariness, desperation and helplessness, bobbing precariously towards the stony shore, and the wet-suited rescuers crashing through the icy water to greet them and guide the boat in safely is simultaneously utterly heartbreaking and utterly heart-warming, and every time I see it I have to blink back tears and swallow a little sob.  (It's my hormones. I can’t help it.)

Volunteers (including Ai Weiwei one morning) form two parallel lines up the beach and guide the refugees up over the pebbles to safety. Some are crying, some are close to collapse, some are confused, some are joyous.  All are very very cold. The medics look out for anyone in need of medical attention - the babies, the quiet ones, the still ones, the grey ones - and they are taken to the warming tent or the medical bay. The others are directed to the warmed changing tents in the camp, where they are provided with clean dry clothes and then they go and warm themselves around three large oil drum fires and are provided with hot sweet tea and soup and sandwiches. When they are all dry and warmish they are taken by bus to the big camp in Moria, in the south, where they must register. Huge efforts are made not to split them up because the boats often contain groups of large families and if they get separated before they get to Moria they may never find each other again.

The boat crossing from Turkey in the rubber dinghy is *supposed* to take about an hour and a half, but most of them have been on the water for at least four or five hours before they arrive.  If the boat sinks and there is no rescue boat to pull them out within a few minutes then they will drown, as many have already.  The water is very very cold.  If they make it to shore then most will survive, although there have been some deaths from hypothermia. So, the main medical problem is hypothermia and the priority is to get people warm. Aside from that there are many other less serious medical problems that need taking care of.  Many of these people haven’t had access to medical care for weeks or months.  Many have spent several days in the freezing Turkish mountains.  Many have been beaten by the Turkish police or smugglers. Some may have pre-existing medical conditions such as cardiac problems etc. Some are heavily pregnant. 

Various nationalities are arriving - not only Syrians, but also refugees from Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan.  The two main languages spoken are Farsi and Arabic.  It’s hard to assess a patient when you don’t understand each other.  Fortunately there are some volunteer interpreters (one of whom, a lovely bloke from California, was an Afghan refugee himself when he was a child) who are an enormous help, but there’s a lot of gesticulation and miming going on. 

When there’s no need for a medic I’m doing general volunteer work.  Grace is mostly working in the women and children changing tent - this is pretty chaotic because it’s not a large area and trying to help freezing people out of wet ones and finding them suitably sized dry ones, often using only head torches because the generator has packed in, is not easy.  It’s pretty chaotic in there, and afterwards all the wet clothes need to be bagged up, and the shelves of dry clothes need to be restocked from the storage tents and the whole area needs to be cleaned in preparation for the next boat. On Wednesday eight boats came in to Skala in succession, each carrying about 30-40 people. I think back in the autumn they were sometimes getting twenty to thirty a day, into Skala alone.

The boats tend to stop coming after about 11 am so after that there is other work to be done, such as general sorting and storing of clothes, cleaning, cooking and collecting firewood.  Yesterday afternoon we had a ‘socks on the beach’ party, which wasn’t as much fun as sex on the beach and was quite a lot smellier. Basically when collecting discarded wet clothes they are sorted into bags containing shoes (tied together), socks and gloves (paired), and all other clothes.  Every few days an NGO called Dirty Girls comes and collects them all and takes them off to launder them in industrial washing machines and tumble driers.  The clean clothes are then sorted according to gender/size and delivered back to the camps for use by future refugees.  It’s a fantastic initiative and I can’t imagine what would happen to the mountain of discarded wet and dirty clothes if they hadn’t come up with it.  Go Dirty Girls.

But we all know what happens to pairs of socks in the washing machine, so before they take the socks, the bags of paired socks are emptied onto a large tarpaulin on the beach. If you can imagine that these 8 or 10 bin bags full of wet socks have been festering in plastic bags for several days and prior to that have probably been worn for days if not weeks on a journey through all kinds of terrain and conditions then you can probably get some idea of the smell. They need to be sorted into three pairs of roughly the same foot size and pinned together with a safety pin, then re-bagged for Dirty Girls to take off and launder.  It wasn’t the most pleasant of jobs but many hands make light work and it was quite a laugh, in a mild-hysteria kind of way.

If boats are coming in in quick succession then they are received alternately by Lighthouse camp and Platanos, which is the camp next door.  Platanos operates a similar system to Lighthouse but is a little messier - it is run by anarchists (literally) who are wonderful people apparently although I’ve not yet had a chance to get to know them.  The Lighthouse camp is beautiful (well, as beautiful as it’s possible for a volunteer-run and donor-funded temporary refugee camp to be).  The tents are positioned in an ancient olive grove and meandering gravel paths have been constructed and lights strung through the branches.  They have a camp black sheep called Carolina who likes to curl up on someone’s lap in front of the fire. There are Portaloos and washbasins with toothbrushes and soaps and sanitary protection and nappies provided. There is a swing and a small children’s play area. 

This is in contrast to the IRC camp in zone 2 which is stark and even to me has a sinister vibe - I can’t imagine how it must feel to a refugee.  It’s also in stark contrast to the nearby ‘stage 2’ camp, and also Moria, both of which are UNHCR run and both of which exactly resemble prisons, complete with 3 metre barbed wire fences and herding pens.  It really is a fucked up world.

The problem with working at Lighthouse is that it is in Skala and our hotel is in Molyvos. Aside from the hideously dangerous dirt track, the only other route to Skala is the mountain road, which takes about 15 minutes longer as it climbs high into the mountains before dropping back down into Skala.  It’s a tarmac road but full of hairpin bends and precipitous drops.  We go back and forth by this route because my car isn’t insured for the dirt track, and it’s a bit nerve-wracking.  But the weather has been incredibly cold and a couple of days ago it snowed and rained.  We heard that the mountain road was dangerous so the next morning we chose to risk falling into the sea rather than falling off a mountain, and took the dirt track.  We’ve been starting work at 7am so it was barely light, and because it had been rainy and 4x4s had been patrolling it, it was basically a quagmire.  

It wasn’t my favourite ever drive into work, if I’m honest.  Basically my heart was in my mouth and my foot was hovering on the brake the whole way.  We may have got out of first gear once or twice and we also slid into a ditch, but we made it there safely in the end.  I don’t think there’s much chance of kidding the car hire people that I didn’t use the track though. Plus there are salt stains all over the seats from when we had the wet refugees in there the other night.  I think I’m going to be charged pretty heftily for cleaning. (You might imagine that a huge multinational company such as Hertz might donate these cleaning costs to the refugee crisis, mightn’t you? In an un-fucked up world, anyway.)

The following morning the temperatures had come up a bit so we took the mountain road.  Big mistake. It was fricking terrifying, particularly the descent into Skala. There was ice everywhere and I drove with one wheel on the gravel kerb the whole way. I never got out of second gear and used a LOT of petrol and a LOT of adrenaline. 

In the evenings we’ve mostly been going down to the harbour in Mytilene for something to eat.  It’s a weird sort of vibe because it’s a beautiful Greek fishing village in freezing winter.  In the summer it would be heaving with holiday makers and in the winter it would normally be closed for the season.  But it’s open, and full of volunteers. I guess the locals must be partly pissed off that volunteers are taking over their island and partly massively grateful for the help and the trade. They are very friendly and welcoming though and offer cheap rates for volunteers, and the food is great.

Today we have a day off, hence I’ve found the time to write this blog. I’ve been giving a lot of thought about how and where to spend the donation money. One thing that is a vital ongoing requirement is the ability to warm hypothermic patients adequately.  I’m looking into the cost of the heating blankets called (Bair Huggers) used in the UK.  The problem is the difficulty with electrics - if you plug too many things in in the medical unit the electrics trip and cut out.  The other thing is gas bottles - gas heaters are used in the warming tents and are expensive to run.   They also need a decent trolley bed in the medical unit and some scoop stretchers to transport moribund patients quickly and efficiently from the beach to the medical unit with minimal disturbance (important in severe hypothermia). Also hot water bottles…..lots of hot water bottles…...

LESBOS Day 1 (yesterday)

After spending the night in an entirely soulless but very comfortable hotel at Athens airport, Grace and I made our way back across the road to the internal departures area.  The sky is clear and blue today, which is a relief after the past week of wind and snow, but it's still bloody freezing. Grace didn't notice it so much, what with living in miserable old Blighty an' all, but I found it quite a shock having left Portugal basking in heady temperatures of 18 degrees C. 

Fortunately the airport has a shop selling SIM cards because a lot of the communication between volunteer groups is via WhatsApp and also an application called 'Slack' which is designed for 'teams' and is a bit like a cross between Twitter and closed FB groups.  It enables live communication on various channels, e.g. there is a 'voluntary medics' channel and a 'boats landed' channel. Anyway, I was very glad I have Grace with me because all that SIM card activation and buying of megabytes shit makes my brain explode.  It's bad enough being surrounded by Greek speakers when I've just  about got used to being surrounded by Portuguese speakers. I keep speaking Portuguese to them which is ridiculous and embarrassing. ALSO 'Neh' means 'yes' and 'ochi' (sounds very like 'okay') means 'no' which is sending me into some sort of communications vortex and I keep wondering if I might have had a stroke.

At lunchtime we got on a miniature diddy plane with propellors (eek) and had a pleasantly brief flight to Lesbos (which I KEEP referring to as Lemnos. It's a miracle we're on the right island), where we picked up a hire car and promptly got lost in Mytilene (the capital) and found ourselves in a lorry park at the port where a man in combat gear who we happened upon as he was doing a wee between two lorries, turned round and waved his willy at us. So that was nice.

Having flukily found ourselves on the correct road out of Mytilene we headed north west across the island.  I'm not sure of the actual figures but it takes about an hour to drive across Lesbos, on fairly small and sometimes very winding roads, so I'm guessing it's about 30-40 miles across.  The south eastern part is flattish with two huge lagoons and the north western part is mountainous.  The airport and the main town of Mytilene are on the south west coast and the town of Molyvos, where we are staying, is on the north west coast, so the drive there takes us past two lagoons then up over the mountains.  Yesterday the road over the mountains was shut to all vehicles that didn't have snow chains on their tyres (which surely means 'all vehicles' on a Greek Island….surely) and the man at the hire car place had no idea if it was open yet so we headed towards the mountains with some trepidation. We're from Wales though, mun, innit but. Piece of piss.  Bit of melting snow and a few boulders, nothing we couldn't negotiate in our 1.0L Honda. 

The Turkish coast lies parallel to the north coast of the island, divided by about 5 miles of sea which, as we wound our way down the foothills towards Molyvos, looked smooth and calm and almost inviting as the setting sun twinkled across it. So I was shocked to learn that at least twelve people drowned today when a boat sank shortly after leaving Turkish shores.

The north coast has many bays and beaches, and this, combined with it's relative proximity to Turkey has meant that this is where most refugee boats have been landing over the past year, although I understand that the situation has changed over the past six weeks or so and many boats are also arriving in the south now, which means a much longer sea crossing. I'm not entirely sure of the reason for that, but I suspect it might have something to do with the EU shoving a load of dosh at Turkey and telling them to stop the refugees leaving Turkey. I've been listening in on the Slack channels since November and I've heard some terrible tales about the means by which the Turkish Coastguard are trying to stop the refugee boats but I won't repeat them unless someone who actually witnessed it tells me, because they surely, SURELY can't be true.  No-one could be that wicked. 

Once the refugees reach Lesbos (provided they're still alive) they have to go immediately to a huge refugee camp near Mytilene in the south called Moria. Even if they have money, they're not allowed to spend it (e.g. on a hotel) until they have been registered and have their papers. There are buses which take them there, fortunately, because if you were to offer any of them a lift in your car you may well get arrested for people-trafficking. There are one or two other camps too and I think the refugees are divided into the different camps according to nationality and also whether they are families or not, but I'm not sure about that yet. I've heard bad things about Moria though - it's huge and wet and dirty and cold. Once the refugees have their 'papers' - and this can take a variable amount of time - they can leave Moria, and indeed Lesvos, and I think most get the ferry to Athens (and hence, probably, make their way towards northern Europe). 

During the summer there were around 7000 refugees arriving on Lesbos EVERY DAY.  Over the last couple of months, because of the riskier conditions, there have been around 1000-2000 per day. Many still risk it though because the riskier it is, the less it costs.  I think they're paying something like €1500 each for the privilege of risking their lives.  Someone made about €18,000 out of those twelve people who drowned today. There's a big ferry that shuttles backwards and forwards several times a day from Lesbos to Turkey. The fare is €5. But you're only allowed to use it if your home hasn't been bombed and you're not fleeing a war and you're not running for your life. Them's the rules.

Molyvos is very beautiful,but quite unlike any Greek island town I've visited before (and I spent a lot of time island hopping in Greece when I was young).  Instead of white houses, the village is built of un-rendered stone, and the handsome cottages skirt an imposing castle which sits high on a promontory at the north west point. We stopped at a grocery store and bought a few essentials and easily found our hotel, which is on the road east out of Molyvos and overlooks a large bay with Turkey just across the water. I asked the Greek shopkeeper if the town was busy. 'Quite busy', she said, in her heavily accented English. 'Mostly volunteers.  More volunteers than refugees, I think.'

Hmmm. 

Hotels out of season are always a bit sad, and this one can be best described as Crossroads Motel meets The Shining.  Unlike the soulless airport hotel we stayed in last night, this hotel definitely has a soul but it's old and tired and has seen better days (a bit like me, really). It would normally be closed but it's open only for volunteers and at a special rate.  There's a central reception/lounge/restaurant building and chalet like rooms on the slopes around it.  There are no staff at all except a (very lovely) jeans-clad and hoodied young man, who is around between 5 and 9pm, which is the only time the reception building is open. 

Our room has a sort of kitchenette in it - a fridge and sink and a two-ring hob.  Unfortunately there were no plates, cutlery or pans of any sort, but the Hooded Young Man made a phone call and managed to find us one saucepan, a couple of plates and cups and some cutlery, so we can make a cup of tea and boil some eggs.  It has an air conditioning unit, but it isn't very efficient and it's very very cold. As I type this both Grace and I are in bed, fully clothed including hats and scarves and thanking the Powers of the Universe for the fact that we were born where we were and aren't now huddled in a damp tent in Moria with a buried past and an uncertain future. I'm also cursing Holly who told me not to pack a hot water bottle. 

WIFI is available in the reception area between 5 and 9pm, so we went and did a bit of interwebbing amongst a few of the other volunteers of various nationalities who were scattered about, wrapped in blankets, clickety-clicking on their iPhones. 
'Are you eating in the hotel restaurant tonight?' asked Richard via FB messenger, which made me do a LOL. We ate chicken noodles in our room - those packets that you pour hot water on that I packed just in case of a dire emergency but never intended to eat because, well, they're not actually food, are they.

I think it's going to be a very interesting month.

Lake Como - Days 6 and 7

The weather is a bit hit and miss - within the space of a few days we seem to have gone from summer to winter and from high season to low season with a couple of days of autumn and confusion in between. I keep finding myself inappropriately dressed.

I looked out if the window on Wednesday morning to see blue skies and sunshine twinkling on the lake, so I dressed appropriately, I thought, for my planned stroll to Fumiolatte, the shortest river in Europe and a centuries old enigma. The river bursts out of the mountain just south of Varenna in May, and then just as abruptly stops completely in October, which is odd when you think about it. And a lot of people have thought about it. Including Leonardo Da Vinci and numerous more recent scientists.
Anyway, I understood it was a short stroll away, so I felt a bit foolish an hour later scrambling through a densely wooded and slippery path on the precipitous mountain side wearing flip flops. It occurred me that if I slipped and mortally injured myself no-one would know, and no-one would even know I was missing for at least two days. I was very careful where I put my feet. (Note to FB chums: if I don't post anything for more than 24 hours, call the police. ;-))
The river maybe short (250metres long) but it's impressively fierce.

Afterwards I made my way back to Varenna where I got on a boat to Managgio, a lovely, well-kept and rather grand town on the other side of the lake. I wandered all around the cobbled lanes, following the old castle walls, finishing at the Hotel du Lac where I had an Aperol Spritz, before getting the car ferry back to Varenna. Every village and town here has a 'Hotel du Lac' and for the sake if completeness I've been re-reading Anita Brookner's 'Hotel Du Lac', because I thought it would be apt and atmospheric, which it was. (Although her Hotel du Lac was on Lake Geneva, and based in 1984, which seems even more odd now than it did in 1984.)

Pasta and ice cream for supper (can feel my arse expanding by the minute) and an early night.

Yesterday morning I packed up and left my apartment, and got on the slow boat to Como. I spent most of the journey in the lovely wood-clad bar drinking coffee and getting cross with people for repeatedly leaving the door to the deck open (inappropriately dressed again).
Checked into hotel in Como then spent the afternoon wandering about sussing out likely restaurants to have dinner. Had a look inside the Duomo, which was magnificent and where people were queuing up to kneel in front of a man in a wooden booth and confess their sins, which made me snort, then went to have a look at the Casa de ?, inside of which a European Cardiology Society 'Thrombosis Conference' was in progress and outside of which was a gaggle of conference delegates smoking their heads off, which made me snort a second time. Chickened out of going up the funicular because it was too high and steep and I thought I might freak out, which would be particularly awkward with no-one there to call me an idiot.

Last night I had a delicious meal, served by the rudest waiter in Italy, or possibly the world. It was very entertaining. He was quite young and I wondered whether he was trying to get the sack. He was certainly going the right way about it. Having reluctantly permitted me to sit down and look at the menu, he took my order then decided to pick on another lone female who had dared to sit, uninvited, on a table for four (the restaurant was outdoors and empty). He marched up to her and barked 'This table's for four people!'

She, a swivel-eyed large-boned I-don't-take-shit-off-waiters American, barked back 'Well where do you want me to sit?!' at which he threw his arm towards some smaller tables and stomped off. She clearly wasn't going anywhere unless he asked her nicely and he clearly was going to steadfastly ignore her until she moved, no matter how much eye-swivelling she did and in the end she got up and left, metaphorically slamming the door behind her.

An effusively polite group of five Chinese people arrived and were also bewildered by his bad-temper, caused by him having to add a place setting to a table of four to accommodate them.

Half way through my meal I realised he hadn't brought me my side salad, and when I asked him for it he snapped 'It's THERE!' pointing to a table over by the till, as though I'd left it there or something. He fetched it for me and slammed it down on my table like a petulant teenager. Then, when I was three quarters through my meal, knife and fork poised as I peered over my shoulder at the Australians behind me (I'm very nosey) he picked up my plate and tried to take it away and I had to shout 'WOAH!' to stop him and rather than apologise he rolled his eyes and tutted at me.

As I left, and perhaps because I didn't leave a tip, he accused me of being a lesbian, which I've written of elsewhere and which I wouldn't mind at all other than the fact that if I were it would be none of his business.

It was the best evening of the holiday and I chuckled all the way back to my hotel.

As I write this I'm on the plane back to Lisbon. I'm not a nervous flier but we've just been through forty minutes of the worst turbulence I've ever experienced. It was terrifying. And went on for forty minutes. Drinks were spilled. People were crying. Cabin crew definitely looked a bit worried.

I've had a lovely week and I'm very much looking forward to landing safely and seeing my family again, please dear God, who I love so much. I'm so very sorry I snorted in the Duomo.