Hello dear friends. Happy Holidaze and Happy New Year!!
I hope this email finds you well. I, as most of you know, have been home from the refugee camps abroad for several months, but continue to stay in contact with families, individuals,volunteers and NGOs helping refugees abroad. Although at home, I continue to help those I met abroad, as well as help people I have learned to trust who are helping others on the move. The world continues to be influx…people giving up everything they know, risking their lives, all moving for safety and with hope for a better life,… fleeing wars, persecution, poverty often secondary to climate change. But amidst these ongoing travails, came the last few days that brought some light:
Bashar: a 26 year old Syrian man who I met five years ago in the camp. So disheveled and mentally disturbed, screaming or crying frantically most of the time, that others in the camp stayed their distance. One afternoon, I noticed him desperate and crying, trying to get someone to help him. I left the medical clinic where I was volunteering and walked to him and asked him to sit down with me. That started a five year relationship, although admittedly, we lost touch for two of those years while Bashar traveled alone by foot crossing border after border to get to where he now resides… Belgium. Bashar told me his story…finding his wife and baby daughter’s bodies torn to bits after their building in Aleppo was bombed (he showed me a video of their bodies…something that still haunts me). He fled his country alone, and along the way, in Turkey, took a job in which he was badly electrocuted by accident. Since that time, he had lost a huge amount of weight, had bleeding internally as well as from his nose and mouth and received little treatment. While I was home, he called me two years ago describing to me that he was on foot in northern Greece, cold and hungry after trying to cross the border unsuccessfully for days. He told me that he wanted to end his life. We text (through Google translate) for hours and I arranged for him to walk to the nearest town (about 6 miles away) where I had booked a hotel for five nights…an all inclusive hotel where he would receive breakfast and dinner. He survived and then we lost touch. And two days ago, he contacted me through my Facebook page. He is settled in Belgium, working for the Red Cross, and happy!!
Jardowi and his daughters: I met Jardowi as I used to bring his two young daughters (ages 4 and 6) to the little school in the camp each morning. I noticed that he was alone with his daughters and despite the horrors of the camp, had created a beautiful little garden filled with flowers and small boxes to sit on to enjoy his afternoon tea. Through an interpreter, I learned he and his wife and two young children had fled Syria in 2016 and made it to Greece in 2018. For some reason (often the case with asylum processing in Greece), they gave permission to his pregnant wife to move to the Netherlands but did not give asylum to him and his two young daughters. Three years later…this week, he was FINALLY granted passports for he and his daughters to join his wife. BUT, he had no money for air tickets (approximately $600 for the three of them). I tried writing to many NGOs but got no response. I checked the air tickets and the cheapest fares were the very next day, with fares rising significantly in the future. SO…I purchased the tickets and gave them less than 24 hours notice to pack their life’s belongings and get ready to fly out of Athens the next day. After 3 years apart, Jardowi and his family are finally united.
Rahemi: is a 23 year old boy from Afghanistan. I met him the first time when he was 19 in the camps on Lesvos Island, and was reunited with him twice in the camps outside Athens. He came alone to Europe, having no family left in his country. Like so many of the unaccompanied minors, he became very depressed and began cutting on his arms and chest. In Athens, he was hospitalized for the cutting, but was injected with some type of antipsychotic medication that left him very flat in affect and not the same person. I and others in the camp helped him, but over time, I returned home and his fellow refugees made their way out of the camp and to other countries, leaving him alone. Rahemi began cutting again, ended up in a hospital and was eventually discharged onto the streets of Athens with no food or money. For days, he slept on the curb outside of his old camp (now closed) and fortunately ran into an Albanian man he had befriended who knew and called some of the refugees Rahemi knew. One was Fardeen who immediately called me, and through my contacts, I was able to have a Greek friend pick him up, give him some money and return him to the new camp far outside of Athens. Today, Fardeen and I are working on getting him asylum in Austria where Fardeen is now located. I’m on the phone with Rahemi daily and he seems to be doing much better.
