Molyvos - the first 24 hours AKA Volunteer on Sandwich duty
I had a 10 day hole in my schedule and someone I met at breakfast in the hostel I was staying at had just come from Molyvos and said they needed people there so off I went to do the volunteering thing for, as my grandfather would have said, both the right reasons and the wrong reasons, but, I must admit, mostly for the wrong reasons - i.e. mostly because I thought it would be interesting rather than because I am am noble.
And it is interesting. There's a 'new volunteers intro talk' each day at 10 am where they tell you about the process and ask about your skills so they can use you efficiently. I took an overnight ferry which arrived on the island of Lesvos at 8 am thinking I'd be able to catch a bus and make it the 50 km to Molyvos by 10, but it turned out I had come on a national holiday and no busses were running. I walked/hitchhiked instead - which took forever - and didn't get there till noon.
And it is interesting. There's a 'new volunteers intro talk' each day at 10 am where they tell you about the process and ask about your skills so they can use you efficiently. I took an overnight ferry which arrived on the island of Lesvos at 8 am thinking I'd be able to catch a bus and make it the 50 km to Molyvos by 10, but it turned out I had come on a national holiday and no busses were running. I walked/hitchhiked instead - which took forever - and didn't get there till noon.
It's a lovely island, with olive trees and goats and rocky mountains in abundance ofc but also wetlands with thousands of flamingos and hills of drying salt.
About 11 am as I was walking up up up an endless switchback hill in the hot sun, none of the very few cars that passed stopping to pick me up, the thought crossed my mind that being a volunteer was harder than I'd expected.
I'm sure the same thought was on the mind of one of the young volunteers already at Molyvos - a pediatric emergency room doctor whose speciation is drowning - as a toddler lay dying in his arms.
Needless to say the mood was very somber when I arrived. Lots of kids had been on the boat that had come in that morning, the family of the dead boy were inconsolable and the families of four other children, who had at least made it alive into ambulances, were frantic.
The volunteer coordinator first told me to come back the next day at 10 am for processing but just then got word another boat was coming in and so asked me to join the sandwich team instead. My first job was to hand out cheese sandwiches to dozens of wet cold scared people. They get off the boats, are given emergency blankets and real blankets, have their names listed, get given a sandwich, can trade their wet clothes for other drier ones that previous boats' occupants had discarded that have been sun dried, but not washed or cleaned, and then are loaded onto busses and taken to the refugee camp a few miles away where they are processed properly. Within 2 hours four more boats had arrived and I was busy not only handing out sandwiches but also doing many other jobs. It was very gratifying with small kids and old men all equally extremely grateful, to be on land and to be offered a sandwich and dry clothes. They had a gazillion questions; what island was this, where could they buy a sim card, what would happen next, where was Germany, etc etc (often asked in Arabic) and many of which I couldn't answer even if asked in English.
As more and more refugees arrived chaos ensued. Part of my job was to keep the groups separate which, with one of me and several dozen in each of them, proved difficult.
Needless to say the mood was very somber when I arrived. Lots of kids had been on the boat that had come in that morning, the family of the dead boy were inconsolable and the families of four other children, who had at least made it alive into ambulances, were frantic.
The volunteer coordinator first told me to come back the next day at 10 am for processing but just then got word another boat was coming in and so asked me to join the sandwich team instead. My first job was to hand out cheese sandwiches to dozens of wet cold scared people. They get off the boats, are given emergency blankets and real blankets, have their names listed, get given a sandwich, can trade their wet clothes for other drier ones that previous boats' occupants had discarded that have been sun dried, but not washed or cleaned, and then are loaded onto busses and taken to the refugee camp a few miles away where they are processed properly. Within 2 hours four more boats had arrived and I was busy not only handing out sandwiches but also doing many other jobs. It was very gratifying with small kids and old men all equally extremely grateful, to be on land and to be offered a sandwich and dry clothes. They had a gazillion questions; what island was this, where could they buy a sim card, what would happen next, where was Germany, etc etc (often asked in Arabic) and many of which I couldn't answer even if asked in English.
As more and more refugees arrived chaos ensued. Part of my job was to keep the groups separate which, with one of me and several dozen in each of them, proved difficult.
One old man had a heart attack and while the two doctors were looking after him a woman right in front of me who was sitting on a stone wall in the sun fainted and dropped her newborn baby 6' onto the cobblestones below...
At 3 pm I was sent with a mini van to the grocery store in the next town, which had opened up just for us, to buy ALL the sliced bread, sliced cheese, and bottled water they had, and then, as everyone else with training was busy, I made 40 loaves of bread into sandwiches all by myself, some for the incoming people and others for the refugee camp. When I was done I glanced at my watch to see if it was after midnight or not and it was 7 pm.
At 3 pm I was sent with a mini van to the grocery store in the next town, which had opened up just for us, to buy ALL the sliced bread, sliced cheese, and bottled water they had, and then, as everyone else with training was busy, I made 40 loaves of bread into sandwiches all by myself, some for the incoming people and others for the refugee camp. When I was done I glanced at my watch to see if it was after midnight or not and it was 7 pm.
I returned to the harbour to ask if I ought to bring the sandwiches down.
The situation was indescribable.
It was dark. More boatloads of people had arrived. The young doctors were doing CPR frantically trying to save several half drowned kids, ambulances were coming and going, dry clothes had run out, the press had arrived in droves and was getting in everyone's face and tensions were running high. Then another boat was found capsized at sea by the coast guard after a refugee, who had been swimming for 5 hours, was rescued by a fisherman and a helicopter with a searchlight started combing the sea looking for more survivors (or bodies)...
It was dark. More boatloads of people had arrived. The young doctors were doing CPR frantically trying to save several half drowned kids, ambulances were coming and going, dry clothes had run out, the press had arrived in droves and was getting in everyone's face and tensions were running high. Then another boat was found capsized at sea by the coast guard after a refugee, who had been swimming for 5 hours, was rescued by a fisherman and a helicopter with a searchlight started combing the sea looking for more survivors (or bodies)...
I hadn't slept well on the ferry the night before, had walked miles on the hot sun in the morning, and it was more that I could deal with right then so I went to check in to my hotel (which would have been closed for the season by now but has stayed open just for volunteers and is letting rooms at the hugely discounted rate if 10€/night).
I got back to the harbour early the next morning and went straight to help making sandwiches again, as I knew how to do that, until 10, when I went for the processing meeting. The coordinator was just too busy to do a meeting that day and said that she needed me to help serve breakfast to the 400!! new refugees who had arrived overnight and then take a break so I'd be good to do a full shift from 3 pm to 11 pm later that day and that she'd try to run a meeting the following day.
I got back to the harbour early the next morning and went straight to help making sandwiches again, as I knew how to do that, until 10, when I went for the processing meeting. The coordinator was just too busy to do a meeting that day and said that she needed me to help serve breakfast to the 400!! new refugees who had arrived overnight and then take a break so I'd be good to do a full shift from 3 pm to 11 pm later that day and that she'd try to run a meeting the following day.
Then we learn that 40 people drowned just offshore.
It's noon now. I've been here 24 hours.
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| Molyvos is an idyllic little town crowned with a castle. |
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| The harbour is deceptively quiet looking. It was beneath the green tent that we fed breakfast to 400 newly arrived refugees many wet, scared, and very uncertain about their immediate future. |
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| One girl fills a water bottle while another walks along the top of a wall on which clothes have been put to dry. |
