“Yesterday started early in a container yard! Fill up the blue van with 250 food packs and 250 winter packs and then the white van with 150 of each. (The white van gets less because it’s very old and lucky to be still running!)
It was just 9 am when we got to the distribution point. Close to Vial Refugee Camp, but not within sight of it. An off-road area where the police and locals tolerate our presence. (Do they have a choice? We’re not doing anything wrong, even if we’re made to feel like we are.)
A man and his two little children were already waiting for us. Some of our community team go into the camp to give the tickets. The authorities don’t let volunteers like me into the camps anymore because they don’t want us telling, or showing, the outside world how awful they are, and because it serves their agenda to try and further divide “us and them”. The ticketing team goes section by section in camp knocking on iso box and tent doors, checking the person or family’s police papers (Charti, White cards, Red cards, Ausveis… they go by lots of names!) to say when they can come to distribution and what they can get.
Armed with a raffle ticket and their police papers, people come and find us on our road where they queue for their turn.
If people didn’t need they wouldn’t come. Everyone always comes.
Everyone in a family gets a food bag. Those over the age of 10 get a winter pack. Over time, with costs going up and fundraising getting harder the contents have got a bit less. But still, everyone comes because their need is real.
Food pack – cooking oil, sugar, rice, coffee, a tin of tomatoes, a tin of chickpeas & a tin of fish.
Winter pack – raincoat/poncho, thermal socks & thermal gloves.
The blue van was empty, so back to the containers for more. Another 88 food packs were collected whilst the rest of the team continued giving out the 150 packs in the white van.
We stop when everyone with a ticket has had the chance to come. The moon replaced the sun in the sky and us volunteers reached for our scarves and coats because the winter night temperatures drop a lot.
We ran out of packs and realised there were more people in the camp than the official UNHCR numbers of 1094. We need another 200 packs but it’s Sunday and the items can’t be ordered. Chios is an island and the food has to come from Athens which means it’ll be Tuesday at the earliest before we can continue. We still have the unaccompanied minors and a “Sudanese tent with nearly 100 people in it” to help. Not finishing everyone equally just isn’t an option.
Later that night the heavens opened and all our minds inevitably went to the people in the camp. In tents, in leaky old iso boxes… The torrential rain continued throughout today 💔.
Tonight the ferry left for Athens from opposite where we’re staying. I watched about 200 people in the queue – families, young babies and toddlers, groups of young friends. I was thinking about how excited and happy they must be to leave Chios. And I couldn’t help but wonder if they were relieved to be leaving safely on a ferry and even with suitcases and belongings, instead of a dinghy in the hands of smugglers.
At the same time, they have no idea what’s coming next.
I know what’s next for them.
They have a long ferry crossing, followed by a long bus journey, followed by months in a remote CCAC – Closed Controlled Access Centre.
Some could end up in detention, others just stuck for a long time in limbo. Bad accommodation, bad food, bad hygiene, and severe boredom. As one friend said tonight – Their real alienation from their homelands began from this moment. Good luck to them.🤍.
Can they at least find kindness 🙌?”
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