Street roots., December 11, 2015, Page 8, Image 8

Commentary
Page 8
Street Roots • Dec. 11-17, 2015
Street Roots • Dec. 11-17, 2015
Commentary
through Turkey have arrived on the shores
of Lesvos each day for the past several
months. With a population of just 86,000,
Lesvos is one of several remote, rural Greek
islands overwhelmed by the recent
explosion in the number of refugees landing
on its shores. The unfortunate reality is that
BY COLLEEN SINSKY
people will not stop fleeing violent countries
C O N T R IB U T IN G C O L U M N IS T
destabilized by war, so Lesvos has become
was driving my small rental car, full of
established as a dramatic stop in a long
fellow volunteers and supplies, dining a
journey toward the hope of safety.
beach patrol shift when we got the call
The United Nations High Commission for
about a nearby boat in trouble. The engine Refugees, the Red Cross and other
of the small wooden boat that 5-year-old
multinational aid organizations each have a
“Sara” and her family were on had given out
presence here but still leave major,
while crossing the 4-mile stretch of the
acknowledged gaps in providing lifesaving
Aegean Sea between
services to refugees.
Turkey and the Greek
This is where private
island of Lesvos, leaving
donations and
the Syrian refugees on
grassroots volunteer
board to drift helplessly
organizations come in.
toward a dangerous
After landing on the
coastline.
beach, refugees may
We stood on a nearby
have to spend up to
cliff beside a team of
seven days in
Greek lifeguards, unable
substandard transit
to do anything but watch
camps while waiting to
and pray that the coast
register with Greek
guard arrived in time.
authorities and take the
The boat was close
ferry to Athens to
enough for us to see the
continue their journey
scared children and hear
north, where they will
Colleen Sinsky
the shouts from the
not be warmly
people aboard waving
welcomed into the
frantically as the swell
overburdened European
pushed them toward the rocks below us. I
Union.
took a deep breath and rehearsed CPR in
Volunteering here has moments of
my mind.
photogenic glamor and adrenaline on the
This story, unlike many others in the
beaches with arriving boats, but so much
Aegean this year, has a happy ending. A
work also happens in Warehouses sorting
local fisherman appeared, seemingly from
donations, taking shifts at a lookout tower to
nowhere, and managed to tow the boat to a
radio in boats in distress, picking up litter,
rocky cove, where the lifeguards and my
driving families to camps, and serving tea.
team of six volunteers had raced to meet
For me, volunteering is no heroic rescue
them. We formed a human chain to pass the
mission. Those stories do happen every day,
babies and small children safely to shore. I
and I’m privileged to work alongside the
didn’t hear the chaos around as my world
people who do so. For me, it feels as
zoomed in to carefully receive the tiny
important to be in a position where I can
crying baby that was handed to me. I took
share a genuine smile while loading a bus,
the hand of a lost little girl, and the three of
listen to stories of home, high-five while
us sat down out of the way of the action, but yelling “Welcome!” in Arabic, or help a tired
within sight of their mother, so that I could
mother dress her child in a new set of dry
remove their inflatable toy life jackets and
clothes. At a time when the world feels
check for injuries.
fractured by mistrust and fear, maybe it’s
More volunteers descended with
these shared moments that are the most
lollipops, emergency Mylar blankets and dry
heroic. The beauty of that kind of heroism is
clothes. I blinked back tears and smiled for
that you don’t have to be on Lesvos to
the terrified children, who watched as their
accomplish i t
mother rushed from the boat to embrace us
I’ve been on Lesvos for three weeks now,
in a sobbing hug of relief. They had made it
and will be here until mid-December. The
to Greece.
decision to come was last-minute and
Sara is blind in one eye from shrapnel
motivated by seeing Syrian families sleeping
from a rocket blast hitting their
under bridges in Istanbul, Turkey, on a
neighborhood in Damascus, Syria. You
recent trip there. It was the part of my
would never guess what she has been
heart that I used working with Portland’s
through, though, from how well she looks
homeless community for years that wouldn’t
after her younger sisters, how ready she is
let me leave this part of the world without
to play a game, and how quickly she figured
getting involved. So I took a ferry to Lesvos
out my iPhone camera.
without knowing anyone here, or how to
start volunteering.
I cannot imagine the anguish of risking
I quickly learned that this island has
the open sea in an overcrowded boat with
become home to a community of hundreds
one’s children. I cannot imagine the horror
of dynamic and compassionate volunteers
that they are escaping. H er family has one
from around the world. I joined the small
suitcase among them and nothing left of
Norwegian team, “A Drop In The Ocean.”
their home. There is nowhere to go but
Our name nicely summarizes the impact
forward. Sara is whose life is tom apart by a
that each of us has on an issue like this,
war that we Americans only vaguely
whether on a Greek beach or at home. To
understand and whose future will be made
be here is to bear witness to the extremes
hopeless by xenophobic border closures.
of human suffering, but we do our best and
An average of 3,000 refugees smuggled
Page 9
A volunteer’s perspective
on the international
Syrian refugee crisis
I
PHOTO BY COLLEEN SINSKY
Help is always easy to fin d in the transit refugee camps on Lesvos. These three
helped me pass out food and water to a large group o f people from Afghanistan
who’d been stuck waiting in a registration line fo r hours.
PHO TO BY COLLEEN SINSKY
Two children in a fam ily o f Afghans who had left Turkey and were waiting to get
clearance to take the ferry to Athens, Greece.
PHOTO BY COLLEEN SINSKY
7Ats girl from Syria had ju st arrived with her father to Lesvos and were
PHO TO BY COLLEEN SINSKY
The transit refugee camp on the island o f Lesvos.
w aiting fo r a bus to take them to register.
PHO TO BY COLLEEN SINSKY
The “Refugees Welcome” sentim ent was a street a rt theme throughout
Greece. Despite the crippling financial crisis a n d being overwhelmed by
hundreds o f thousands o f refugees, Greeks tend to be amazingly
compassionate.
then tearfully share stories and hugs in a
dimly lit te n t
What I do here, though, is the easy work.
It’s obvious that sharing compassion and
lifesaving assistance at this dangerous
crossing is the right thing to do. The
difficulty comes in zooming out to the
overwhelming causes of why desperate
migrations like this are happening, and
where these people will go.
When the Paris attacks happened, it felt
as though the mainstream news I had been
following suddenly shifted its tone.
Suddenly, it seemed, the United States was
terrified of the very people that I was
helping off rafts in Greece. Suddenly,
governors were jumping on the bandwagon
of bigotry and proudly proclaiming to their
constituents that Syrian refugees would not
be allowed into their states. I can’t describe
what an emotional blow that was - to feel
that my country was abandoning the very
families whom I had been working hard to
protect and welcome. I’ve felt isolated and
betrayed on behalf of the refugees.
It’s impossible to feel the anti-Muslim
sentiment the media tells me to feel when I
spend all day talking to and shaking hands
with the people I’m supposed to fear. The
headlines I read break my heart in ways
worse than seeing sobbing m others on the
beach, or the hope that I know will be short­
lived in men’s eyes. The refugees think that
they are escaping oppression, but there is
no end to the horrible journey that they are
on.
I wish that I could be optimistic. I wish
that I could propose a solution. I wish that
these people weren’t forced from their
homes in the first place. But each time
another overcrowded raft makes its way to
shore and terrified refugees pile off of it and
into our arms, the terrible reality hits me
again, and I remember that our futures are
bound together and that we are collectively
in the same slowly sinking ra ft
Colleen Sinsky is from P ortland a n d a
form er retention worker with the homeless
outreach nonprofit J O IN