Conclusion

It took me a long time to write a conclusion to this blog - in fact, I haven't. But someone asked me about that yesterday so I thought I'd explain.

I left Athens and my work at the Orange House early in April 2017, and headed for Crete where I enjoyed a glorious vacation, first seeking out wild flowers (one of my life's great passions) then hiking alone along the south west coast.  The weather, food, people, scenery and flowers were incomparable. It was all such a contrast to what I had experienced in Athens, and what my friends there continue to experience,  that I found myself at a loss for words.

The End 

Post 6: Who are these people?

Refugees come in all shapes and sizes, with all sorts of stories. My job is not to ask a lot of questions about their past, their escape, the war or other traumatic events, but to help with whatever’s needed in the present moment. If someone wishes to share part of their story with me I lend a sympathetic ear but don’t probe. Our volunteer training tells us that it’s not appropriate to encourage people to re-live traumas with us.

So the stories I hear are partial, and many of them are simple.  These are ordinary people, whom you could meet on the street in any country in the world. The one factor, of course, that ties them all together and is always present as a sub-text, is that for one reason or another, each one of them has had to flee their home, taking little or nothing with them. Each one of them, too, is trying to create a new life for themselves, and often for their family as well. They come to the Orange House mostly for language lessons, sometimes to use the Wi-Fi, sometimes to hang out or help out.



Making zaatar, the Middle Eastern spice mix our organization is named for.

Here are some of the stories: I’ve changed names and some details to protect privacy. Any photos I drop into this post will be generic.

 

·         One of the first conversations I had on arriving at the Orange House was with Yaman, a Syrian man in his twenties who was being re-settled in Dublin and would be leaving in a few weeks for his new life. He had been studying architecture in Syria and hopes to continue in Ireland but he’s also a musician: he plays piano and oud (a traditional stringed instrument). He showed me photos of himself teaching a group of students. He hasn’t played for years and doesn’t want to. He said he’d lost family members, two cousins and others, in the war and it didn’t feel right to play music.  I said I hoped he’d play again someday.

 

Yaman speaks quite good English: he wanted to improve his reading and writing skills, so we began to think of and write down words that begin with different letters of the alphabet, starting with A. I asked him to suggest words and we took off from there, as each word prompted a conversation. It’s a useful technique. I used it again later with Sayid, a Palestinian former soccer player. I suggested we pick words to do with sport. He didn’t really stick to the theme: I’m not sure he understood, but it was something for me to come back to if the conversation flagged. Sayid lapsed into silence after the letter “D” for which he picked “dangerous” - “like the boat journey from Turkey” he said.

Volunteers greet visitors.

 

·         I spent some time with Maren, a young Eritrean mother who had lived most of her life in Saudi Arabia. She has two young children, Ali and Sara.  She wanted to study past, present and future so we worked with regular and irregular verbs. Her English is very good. She’s not well, doesn’t sleep and feels sad and ill. She’s seeing the doctor at Medecins sans Frontiers and seems to have some supports in place but is very down. She says she left Saudi Arabia because life is so difficult there (for foreigners, I believe she meant, although as I know from my nephew who spent a couple of years in luxury there, not for all foreigners). Maren told me that she had escaped to Turkey where she was raped (I think that’s what she said) and then to one of the Greek islands.  I sat and listened and sympathized, made tea, and tried to work back into conversation. Then her children who had gone out with a group led by the American teachers Mary and Laura came back and she re-collected herself.

 

·         Abas is surprised himself at how easily he got asylum in Greece; he’s 25, short and small, very soft spoken and engagingly polite – he touches his heart whenever he greets or leaves me (and no doubt others too). He speaks good English, worked in Kabul as an interpreter and was threatened because of his work. He flew to Teheran, got into Turkey somehow – it included running – then took a bus into Greece and was welcomed, although thoroughly searched, by the Greek police who gave him food and water and something to smoke! He made his way to Athens and is living here looking for work, volunteering at Orange House while he does so. Abas is not sure what his next move will be. He left his whole family – he has parents and siblings - in Afghanistan and as his father is old and he’s the oldest son he believes he is sorely missed. He showed me pictures of his family’s feast for Naw Ruz, the Persian new year, with an empty place set for him.  He’s discovered the OH and is very glad of it. Not only can he attend English lessons – he finds Alia’s very useful – but he can teach English to Farsi speakers and he’s become a regular shift volunteer as well. He sat beside me one recent evening and asked if we could talk for a while, as he misses his mother! 

 



Naw Ruz (Persian New Year) feast prepared by Orange House residents.

 

 

·         Adnan is a 15-year-old Syrian boy.  He seems to be a bit intellectually delayed. Some of the other volunteers – Arabic speaking males -  say he steals and they don’t like him. He’s had some conflict with one of the boys who lives in the OH.   I established a rapport with Adnan from the outset. He kept asking every day for something, I thought it was trousers. I passed on the request but no one seemed to take any notice. At last, after about two weeks, I happened to be on shift at distribution time on a very quiet day and it turned out that he was asking for diapers for his baby brothers – also socks. I gave him what I could and he doesn’t seem to have asked again since.  He attended “school” with the two American teachers even though he was much older than the others, but he won’t go to any of the adult lessons. Rana, a newly minted volunteer, a young Syrian refugee, is going to offer an English alphabet class and I think I’ll try to direct him to that.  I’ve been told that Adnan is illiterate in Arabic and is from a family of shepherds in a rural area. He apparently first came to OH with his family, about the time I arrived in early February, but has come alone ever since.



Adnan

·         Sadia is from Afghanistan. She’s here with her daughter Vida (18), and her son, Hafez (15) (ages approximate).  Her husband and older son (21) are in Sweden and she hopes they can all go there soon to be reunited. Her husband worked as a car mechanic in Afghanistan and lost a foot in a bomb blast. She worked at a government project on women’s rights. It might be because of that that they had to leave, I don’t know. She and the children spent a year in Elleniki camp, south of Athens, before finding a place to live in a refugee project in the city.



·         Usman is a Pakistani who told me he had escaped to Turkey where he was attacked by other Pakistanis who were trying to kill him. He was badly injured, has had several operations and I think his condition helped him get into Greece. But he left his 19-year-old brother behind in Turkey. The brother was in the same fight but not injured. The brother had managed to get to Kos and was trying to get to Athens, Usman had to take some papers in the next day. I really felt helpless as I know nothing about the system but I looked at them and told him what the English bits said. Two weeks later he had managed to get his brother safely to Athens with him -  although Athens is not very safe for Pakistanis; many of them apparently sleep rough.

 

(Some volunteers go out to help the rough sleepers. Working at Orange House I see only one aspect of the international effort in Athens. There are many organizations and hundreds of volunteers working  to address the different needs of refugees.)

 

 Athens

·         Joram is an adult from Syria, late twenties in age. He was a carpenter back in Aleppo, a skill which he learned from his father.   When Joram speaks of Aleppo now he just makes a dismissive gesture – it’s gone.  He’s obtained permission to settle in Ireland and will be moving to Dublin soon. His father and mother also fled Aleppo but remain in Syria, in a village near the Turkish border.  He’d like eventually to bring them to live with him in Ireland. He doesn’t like to go to Alia’s English lessons because her accent is American. He likes to talk with me because mine is English (almost).  He sometimes helps me with the washing up in the basement kitchen and we “do” English conversation that way. He has some attention deficit I think, always wants to finish my sentences for me even though he has no idea what I’m going to say. He’s made me think that “Listen” would be a really good theme for a dance camp.



·         Karim is a young North African man whose sexual orientation and atheism led to persecution in his home country. Eventually he fled to Turkey. He took a boat across to Samos and because he had no money had to pay by giving his cellphone. It seems the smuggler’s girlfriend particularly wanted his phone.  He said that the Greek police treated the arriving refugees "kindly". Karim has been volunteering at OH but has just secured a job as an interpreter with an ngo (non-governmental organization) working with refugees here in Athens. He speaks French, Arabic and English: valuable skills in the ngo job market!

·         Lili became distressed when we drove out of Athens towards the national park for an outing. That was because we passed a hotel where she’d lived for a month before moving to a refugee residence in the city. It was a nice hotel, she said, but she was there because she was negotiating with people smugglers to obtain a passport that would get her to London and they swindled her out of 10,000 Euros.

 

 So, those are some of the people I’ve met. They’re just ordinary people into whose lives a huge and dangerous disruption intruded. Their lives will never be the same again.

 

The organization that runs Orange House can be reached at zaatarngo.org

 

Child's Play

Skipping (jumping rope) in our tiny yard at the Orange House

Some of you may know that while I can happily and creatively work with young children some of the time, I can’t do it full time: I need my adults, too!  So, luckily, the “School” program I’ve offered to take over in partnership with the young German volunteer Sophia is only two hours five mornings a week, 12 noon to 2pm. I’ve also decided, though, to make myself available at 4pm for a couple of hours, because that’s when we like to take the children out to the park if we have enough volunteers.  These scheduling considerations radically affect how many and which of the regular six-hour shifts I can now do at the Orange House.  

 “School” is a very loose term: the program was started two weeks ago by two retired schoolteachers from the USA, Mary and Laura, and Sophia and I volunteered to try to keep it going. We’re less academically oriented than the two teachers were, so we’re feeling our way along with identifying farm animals, making cut-out paper owls and masks, and physical activities like skipping (jumping rope) and brief visits to the local playpark. Suggestions for simple, cheap kids’ crafts are welcome.

You might wonder why these school-age kids are not in an actual school. The answer seems to be that the process of enrolling refugee children in Greek schools is long and tedious, and lack of immunizations has to be remedied before enrollment. Zaatar, the organization that runs the Orange House, is working on getting our resident children into school, but no definite date is in sight yet.

In the meantime, our students are a mixed bunch: the serious students – mean the ones who come for pretty much the whole session – range in age from about 7 to about 12 years old. Peripheral students who pop in for a few minutes now and then include both younger and older siblings.  

Sahar hanging in the park with a little help from Sophia

Sahar is a regular: she’s a sturdy, bubbly eight-year-old from Afghanistan, who loves everyone, or at least clings to everyone, indiscriminately. She lives here in the Orange House with her mother. So, too, does Tareek, from Syria, small for his age at 12, moody, but always ready to help and a useful and willing interpreter - his English is the best of the bunch.  

Those two are residents, but we also welcome other children, many of them left with us while their parents  attend language classes here at the Orange House.

There’s clutch of lovely Syrian girls and boys: Rawan, Haia; Taema; Jude; Almar; Mohammed(spellings are approximate) and a whole other gang of boys, also Syrian, who can be unruly, which is not pleasant in the confined and echoing premises of the Orange House. That’s why we need to take them out sometimes!

Sadly, the Orange House has only a tiny “outdoor” yard, hemmed in by high buildings and not suitable even for kicking a ball around.  So we try to go out every afternoon and sometimes in the morning too, to one of three local parks, each of which has a different character: large, small and football (soccer).

Yesterday at 4pm, Sophia and I set out, accompanied by a new Greek volunteer, Sotiria, and very quiet Syrian mother called Rawa carrying a two-month-old baby and leading her shy five-year-old daughter. Our pack of kids numbered seven (eight with the baby) which is the sort of adult:child ratio we aspire to and often fall short of.   We had Ali; Mohammed; two Tareeks; Sahar and Haia as well as little Noor and her baby brother.

We walked through Exarchia Square, the central point of the Athenian anarchist movement and always a colorful experience, especially at night with the bonfires; then up a very steep sort-of pedestrianized street where you have to watch out for the ubiquitous Athenian motor scooters.

Cut and paste is a perennial favorite:
Mohammed is making paper baby owls for our mural

 

The (football) park we were headed for is on the slopes of Streffi Hill, an unkempt rocky outcrop just north of the center of Athens, networked by paths and heavily fouled by dogs as all the streets and green spaces round here are. The approach to the park is up some very long, steep flights of steps. These, and the tree-lined alleys they intersect, present picturesque vistas, but I could see that poor Rawa found the climb difficult though she didn’t complain. She was holding the baby tucked under one arm – I’d asked if she had a stroller, but she’d indicated no, she’d just carry the baby.

So we sat and moderated the children’s play for an hour: the younger volunteers Sotiria and Sophia engaging with ball play and skipping and keeping track of kids wandering between play park and ball-play area, while Rawa and I sat and took turns holding the baby.

Eventually the warm March sun began to sink; the kids began to tire. We headed back down steps and slopes, through the square to the sanctuary of the Orange House. Parents were emerging from lessons, children were being whisked off to other classes, other lessons at other centers. One group of kids at least had had their daily dose of outdoor play.  

Hassan learns geography via jigsaw puzzle.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mycenaean Gold

I hadn’t planned to write another post so soon, but it turns out that I am in Athens, just a stone’s
throw, literally a three-minute walk, from the Greek National Museum of Archeology. This museum just happens, strangely enough, to contain what must be the best and biggest collection of Greek antiquities in the world.

So, since I’m not working at the Orange House until 10pm today, I strolled over to the impressive building that is the museum this morning, paid my five Euro entrance fee, walked into the first gallery and was totally blown away. Captivated, I think, would be the best description.
 
Beautifully displayed and amazingly well lit, the treasures of the Mycenaean civilization, dating back three or four thousand years, fill many display cases. When I say well lit, I mean they’ve made it possible for visitors to take photos, even with the humble iPhone, without reflection, and the glass of the cases is so clean and clear I frequently bumped my nose against it as I moved in to get a closer look at decorated vases, carved signet rings or anthropomorphic figurines (of course the bumping could have had something to do with my eyesight).

I walked around open mouthed: the death mask that Heinrich Schliemann declared to be the face of Agamemnon was here! In a further gallery a young boy galloped on a huge horse, cast in bronze more than 2,000 years ago and rescued from the sea to thrill awestruck twenty-first century visitors.

The place is stunning!

 

Here’s a brief gallery:

 

 

 

 

 

Gold funeral mask, from the royal shaft graves at Mycenae, about 1500 BCE

(Not really Agamemnon, too old)

 



 

        Gold body wrap for a dead infant, also from the royal shaft graves at Mycenae, about 1500 BCE

 



Oh, yes, all the descriptions are in English as well as Greek! What a gift!

This sword, buried with its owner, was deliberately bent so that the sword, too, would be “dead”.

 

 

There’s a whole lot more, of course from many periods, not just Mycenaean. My visit to the museum reminded me of the many happy hours I’d spent in the Welsh National Museum (Amgueddfa Genedlaethol Cymru - just to show I remember the Welsh!) as a child. I learned a lot there, just wandering unchecked from exhibit to exhibit.  It was good to see several groups of well-behaved Greek school children viewing their national treasures in their museum  today.  I wonder if they’ll be moved to come back alone in later life and gawp at the treasures as I did today.

 

 

 

     

 

 

So, Julia, what exactly are you doing in Athens?

So far - and this is day seven - I’ve worked six shifts at the Orange House and had one day off when I visited the island of Aegina.

This is me at the Temple of Aphaea on the island of Aegina.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Orange House is a small residential shelter and community center for refugees. Twenty people live here, all women and children under 18. They’re from Syria, Afghanistan, Cameroon and Sierra Leone. They live on the upper two floors of the house and come down into the community center area for language classes, to go in and out and, in the case of the children, to play and hang out with volunteers. The children are not at present enrolled in Greek schools: that’s being worked on.

 

Volunteer Mohammed opening the door.

 Many other people come in and out all day, so volunteers are ever alert for the doorbell – or people banging on the door if the bell isn’t working – because we need to keep an eye on who’s coming in. Two volunteers are scheduled 10 am to 4pm and two are scheduled 4pm to 10pm, but there are often others present too, sometimes for particular reasons and sometimes for no reason. There’s an overnight shift, too, very quiet, 10pm to 2am, which I haven’t done yet.

 

 Every day is different: people arrive in waves, especially just before classes: I open the door to beautifully serious teenage Syrian girls carrying their German notebooks; to elderly gentlemen coming for English conversation; to shy young men hoping someone will be present who understands their language, to families with babies and young children, and to various representatives of different organizations working with Zaatar, the organization that runs the Orange House. We’re meant to inquire politely of visitors what their business is but sometimes it’s a guessing game, especially when you’re new and can’t tell a refugee from a volunteer from a teacher! After all, it’s not emblazoned on their foreheads! And the situation is complicated because there are several volunteers who are refugees themselves.

 

 

Me with team from another organization: Goodwill Caravan.
They arrived like Santa Claus at 9pm with sacks
full of fresh fruit and vegetables.
They were mostly British.

The door is kept locked; people entering are monitored; I will not tell you the address of the Orange House, nor of the volunteer apartment where I’m staying, nor will I post any identifiable photographs of refugees. Why? Because there are people in Athens, as there are everywhere, who dislike and even target refugees and those who work with them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But, then, there are also plenty of people who accept and help. Athens is full of refugees, but I’m sure we were still noticeable as we walked through the streets to the Acropolis Museum today. We’d been offered free tickets, so a motley bunch of volunteers and refugees took a half-hour walk to the magnificent modern building that houses thousands of items from the Acropolis and offers a spectacular view of Athens.

 

 

Our group of 16 ranged in age from Sahar who is eight, to me, the oldest. It included people from Syria, Afghanistan; Guinea, Mauritania, Spain, Germany, New Zealand and USA/UK (that’s me). We had a blast! Everyone seemed to enjoy it, and there was a lot of laughter. Knowing that these are people who’ve suffered dislocation and trauma made their enjoyment poignant to me.

 

Chess at the Orange House

Over the past 20+ years, I’ve experienced several different nodes on the refugee continuum: I’ve been part of an aid delivery team to refugee camps in Croatia in 1995 and ’96;  I’ve worked with refugees settled in Vermont; last summer I volunteered  at the extraordinary Jungle camp in Calais where thousands of migrants and refugees gathered with the express purpose of stowing away on lorries to England, and now at the Orange House I’m seeing the day-to-day life of people stuck in the limbo that is Greece, a country where refugees are marooned,  hoping and planning their next step, waiting patiently or impatiently for documents, passports, papers and visas, suffering rejection or rejoicing in acceptance of asylum applications.

 

So what am I doing here? Spending hours deeply focused on conversations with English learners; playing card games, doing puzzles or cutting and pasting paper and card creations with the children; trying to take the youngsters out to the park as often as possible; welcoming visitors and directing them to classes; just trying to communicate, to help people relax.

 

 Saturday evening I’m scheduled to lead a Circle Dance. I have no idea how many people will turn up, or how it will be received, but I’m preparing what I hope will be an appropriate program and I’ll trust the outcome to luck and good will. There seems to be quite a lot of that about.

 

Some photos of the Orange House follow:




Kitchen



Patio

Big Room decorated for Valentine's Day

Bathroom

Classroom

Library corner of Big Room



Other end of Big Room, with volunteer.



 

An Avian Omen

I had thought that my next post would be from Greece, but something happened just before I left that I want to share with you.

I was rather anxious about the whole adventure, uncertain of where I was headed, so on the day I was due to leave I took a little time to walk in my sister’s garden – I was staying at her home in England – to calm my mind and to ask the Universe to help me approach the coming challenge with grace. Spring flowers were just beginning to bloom in the garden: snowdrops, a few early crocuses and even a violet or two. I wandered around, and came near the fence along the side of the garden. It’s a six-foot high palisade fence with overlapping vertical wooden slats.

As I approached, a blackbird fluttered against the fence. I thought it was just taking flight and I wondered if it was nest-building in the garden. Now the blackbird, you may know, is the prime songster in English gardens at this time of year, and it’s a handsome bird: a little larger than an American robin, entirely jet black with a vivid yellow beak and a yellow ring around each eye. Blackbirds are a delight for the ears and the eyes!

Here's a photograph I took of a blackbird
at the Findhorn Foundation in Scotland in 2013

But this one didn’t take off; it just flapped against the fence and as I approached I saw that it had managed to trap one of it legs between two of the slats. It was firmly stuck, and panicking. I approached and reached out to help it. The first thing it did was to peck me with that magnificent yellow beak, just once, and it didn’t do any harm. I clasped the bird gently, holding both wings in to the body. It shrieked, then grew calm. It must have taken me about a minute, cradling the little feathered body, to push and pull the slats of the fence far enough apart to release the foot. The instant its foot came free, it took off, escaping my grasp and disappearing into the nearest hedge. I found it greatly satisfying to see it fly free.

I have rarely, if ever, in my life had the privilege of really helping a wild bird, so I couldn’t help feeling that this was a sign from the Universe, a good omen to overlight my Greek adventure.