Welcome in the hell of Lesvos

(photo: here at the coast...)

Some weeks ago a senior government dignitary visiting the refugee centre Pagani in Mytilini said: “It looks like Dante’s Hell”. The last line of a 9 line verse written on the Gate to the Inferno of Dante (Canto III) says: ‘All ye who enter here, abandon hope.’

It may seem strange to compare a refugee centre with Dante’s Hell. The Inferno consists of 9 circles and the outer circle is filled with pagan people — but the refugees here are mostly Muslim people with strong beliefs. In the next circle you are awaited by King Minos who will judge your sins and send you to the place in Hell you deserve, just like the Greek officials will send refugees to their places, although for them it will always be a better place to go. Young boys without parents or guardians go to the refugee centre at Agiasos, and what all refugees really want is to continue their journey to Athens, and Europe.

You will find all kind of sinners in Dante’s Hell, but I don’t think all our refugees are voracious, greedy, prodigal blasphemers, crooks, schismatics, alchemists, violent people or even killers; although there are some malevolent people who do try to sneak into the country amongst genuine asylum seekers — like the Georgian murderer of the Greek actor Nikos Sergianopoulos who re-entered the country with a group of refugees to the island of Samos (after he was already expelled from Greece).

These last weeks some refugees have used violence to protest being locked up for long periods in the Pagani centre. While the support action group ‘No border’ has been in Mytilini, refugees kept on protesting. There were at least seven hundred people living in the centre — which was built to house only two hundred people maximum — so the conditions, especially hygiene, were appalling. People were locked up in cages that, rather than being a modern refugee centre really were like Dante’s Hell. Last week parts of the centre were even set on fire by the refugees, to protest against their inhumane situation. So indeed it did look like a hellish inferno.

Since September the authorities have tried to ameliorate the situation in Pagani by sending away large groups of people to Athens by boat. Some refugees were so keen to leave they begged doctors to pronounce them sick so that they could get a boat ticket to Athens. When the doctor refused they went beserk and attacked him.

So the doctor left the refugee centre, and because they too felt threatened so did other people working there. Even the police would no longer remain inside the centre, and kept guard outside of the gates. This was really because inmates believed the police had beaten up a seventeen year old refugee boy.

After months of struggle, the refugee centre has been closed down this weekend. It had become an untenable situation. However, I doubt if this is a real solution, because all new refugees now coming to the island (and they will keep coming) will be sent to another refugee centre on the neighbouring island of Chios, where I am sure, nobody will be happy to receive them, because they too have refugees arriving from Turkey. Probably in no time the centre on Chios will be just as overcrowded as Pagani on Lesvos.

In most hells you will find a flaming inferno. Last Tuesday however a kind of inferno happened at sea when a small boat with seventeen refugees capsized. On board were people from Afghanistan and one Turkish ‘asylum seeker’ (he had just got out of prison and could not find work in Turkey so for a good sum of money he smuggled the refugees group to Greece, thinking afterwards he could find himself a job in Greece). The boat hit rocks just near the little port of Skala Sykaminia, and three women and five children drowned.

One boy of 14 lost his mother and two brothers. A man already living in Germany who thought this ‘illegal’ route would be a quicker way to have his wife and child join him, rather than spending of time and trying to get them accepted the ‘legal, lost both of them. It is not known whether the husband of another woman who drowned with her two children (according to the papers) has survived or is missing.

People only make such dangerous journeys if they really want to escape a hell: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Palestine, Sudan and many such countries where the lives of people are persecuted and hounded by ruthless people craving power. It is those people, of course, who should be cast into the deepest point of Dante’s Hell: Cocytus, the frozen lake where traitors must remain for all eternity.

It is sad that our world knows so many hells that make so many people flee their homes. From one hell into another — which, of course they cannot know before they start their journey. But to compare the refugee centre on Lesvos to Dante’s Hell might be a little exaggerated — certainly if you go look at those countries where they come from...

(With thanks to Tony Barrell)

@ Smitaki 2009

Unbounded Europe

Panic in Molyvos: where is the fire? On Sunday morning fat white low clouds sneaked over the north of the island in the direction of Molyvos from Turkey. In no time the medieval village was covered in clouds and many people asked themselves where the flames were. After all, people are still anxious about fires because the arsonist of Molyvos is still around and because of the big fires in Attica, so not surprisingly these days people first think of fire when they see dense clouds rolling in.

Sea fog is such a rarity here only a few people are familiar with it as a weather phenomenon. That is why so many people grabbed the phone to ask friends what was happening. A friend of mine, living high up and seeing the wall of clouds approaching from the sea, even thought for a moment that a tsunami was attacking the island.

A fresh wind propelled the low clouds across the sea and it reminded me of my past, of being at the crowded beach of Zandvoort (Netherlands) when a sea mist rolled in over the beach, covering us completely in dense fog where nothing could be seen at all and my mother panicked and gathered up all us children and our belongings. A sea fog might spoil a beautiful day at the seaside, but now it was like a woolen veil was uncovering a tip of faraway memories.

For a time Molyvos disappeared completely from view. I do hope there were no refugees still on their way at sea because they probably would have panicked: where is Greece? They still think Greece is a land of milk and honey. (TB: Like many islands on the Turksih side of the Agean, Lesbos is a destination for refugees from the middle east and even Africa)

Lesvos made the news recently when an UN-organization alarmed the media about the distressing situation at the refugee centre Pagani in Mytilini, the capital of the island. The centre has space for about 250 people, but there are more than 800 refugees kept there, including 200 children. Some of the children recently started a protest hunger strike and this is what alerted the media.

To relief pressure at Pagani, refugees were transported to other camps elsewhere in the country. Protests from the refugees and human rights organizations followed. Just like with the huge fire in Attica, the government has done little to ameliorate the refugee problem. In Greece applying for asylum is such a slow process a hundred years would not be enough time to interview all the refugees now in Greece.

After all the commotion about the hunger strike of the kids in Pagani, another uproar occurred thanks to the Noborder camp in Mytilini. Noborder is an anarchistic-like organization that fights for refugees and they made their camp this summer on Lesvos. They demand better accommodation and faster asylum application processing. Noborder’s final goal is to have all borders disappear in Europe and to let all people travel without documents. I am an old pessimist and do not believe a Europe without borders will ever happen, let alone a whole world without borders. Just like I do not believe anymore in peace for the entire world, even if I really wish it could be true.

There will always be people to spoil it for the others, a human being unfortunately is not perfect. Look at the Greek government. The ministers are far from being perfect, they are even negligent. For years Greece has had problems with the refugees, but nothing has really improved.

For example, all refugees have to go to Athens by regular transport to apply for asylum. Everybody knows that in August, ferries and flights are overbooked by local and international tourists, so that there is no room for refugees, and therefore they have to wait in the detention centres on the islands, which get very full. Why can’t the government arrange special transport?

The Pagani centre owes millions of euros to the companies that provide food for the refugees. That money is supposed to be paid by Athens, but the government is never quick to pay up. The same happened to the firemen who fought so hard the blazes of 2 years ago.

I do not agree with everything this Noborder group does, but at least they stand up and do something. While in Molyvos people were gaping at the sea fog, the inhabitants of Mytilini were stupefied seeing scenes in their town just like the riots in Athens last year. Riot police were brought from Athens and on several occasions marched into battle with the activists. The youngsters of Noborder tried to occupy local government offices, they chased the Frontex boat out of the harbour (Frontexf is the EU agency based in Warsaw, created as a specialized and independent body to coordinate operational cooperation between Member States in the field of border security) and they tried to free the refugees detained in the Pagani-centre.

The Noborder camp was set up on the 25th of August and was due to end on 31st of August. Hopefully they made people think more about this problem, although the Governor of Lesvos has warned them that their drastic actions could be a negative influence on public attitudes towards refugees. Athens is still so busy sorting out the political consequences of the fires in Attica politicians have barely acknowledged the riots on an island so far away from their beds.

(With thanks to Tony Barrell. Listen to his radio show on ex-pats and his story about a boat of refugees, arriving at the beach in Lesvos)

@ Smitaki 2009

Christmas thought

In Athens and Thessaloniki the student riots continue. They occupied a TV studio and the cinema in Thessaloniki where the International Film Festival was held in November and where in March 2009 the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival will be held, they hang garbage bags in the large Christmas tree in Athens (the VIT [Very Important Tree] that was just replaced after the previous one was destroyed in the riots), or they hang huge banners with international protest slogans fluttering from the Acropolis in Athens.

Here on Lesvos everything remains calm and we're not much affected by the various strikes. What counts is that the gasoline and oil prices are significantly lower, a relief for a large number of people, because many people have very little money in the winter, also thanks to the officials who in charge of the various benefits (a.o. IKA), who make no efforts to get the money to the people in time.

What also continues is the arrival of refugees. Good or bad weather, they still come. Last week it almost went very wrong. In the night, when a strong south wind was blowing, a rubber boat was detected just outside the harbour at Molyvos, with 26 people on board.

Due to the high waves it took the Coast Guard a few hours in to get the boat bearing the frightened refugees, including women and children, into the harbour. They arrived ashore at half past twelve and then there was no chance to take the group to Mytilini, where the refugee centre is. So they were brought to the Saint Nicolas church (Saint Nicolas is the patron saint of seafarers), where residents of Molyvos, led by Melinda and Theo Kosmetos (also known as the owners of the Captain's Table, a summer restaurant in the harbour) ensured that the nearly-drowned got dry clothes and food to spend the night in Molyvos.

The mayor of Molyvos expressed his outrage that the refugee policy is so poorly regulated here on the island (which he has already done for months, but in Athens the politicians seem to have to deal with more important things). There are still not enough people to man the Coast Guard in order to give the refugees adequate help, and transportation to the capital is insufficient.

Some citizens offered to take the people themselves to Mytilini, but that is strictly forbidden: "you could catch a disease and the risk of an accident is too great" (as if not all Molyvosians travel to the capital at least once a week)! Instead of the government, now residents of Molyvos combined to organize a decent reception for the refugees. Last week there was a group of 40 Somalis who arrived in the late hours in the village and they had to spend the night in the rain on the street.

That night the weather was still fairly mild, but the weather forecasts for the holiday season speak for themselves: the temperature will drop towards freezing, the northeastern wind will arrive and at various places in Greece there might be a chance of a white Christmas. That will be no weather for the refugees to cross the sea.

While we are comfortable sitting close to our heater discussing the menu for the Christmas dinner, this discussion will be a short one for the Greeks, because most of them will have Christmas dinner with pork with celery (selinato) and also a bit of lamb, in case someone doesn't want pork. Served with well-known Greek dishes such as the pea puree Fava, tsatsiki and salad. During the whole day there are biscuits served such as the melomakarona that drip from honey. Christmas dinner in Greece is mostly served on the 25th in the afternoon and there is no official second Christmas Day, but the 26th is used by many to recover from the heavy eating on the day before.

While we sit happy around the fireplace dreaming of a white Christmas, across the sea in Turkey hundreds of people in a camp in harsh conditions are waiting for their chance to go to Europe. They are dependent on the weather and the smugglers that they have to pay a substantial sum to risk their lives in order to make the crossing in a rickety boat.

The refugees will only have one thought: reach shiny Europe, which continues to sink in an economic crisis. Not such a nice thought for Christmas, but still let us give some thought to all those people that left their homes to flee from war and other difficult circumstances.

I WISH YOU A HAPPY CHRISTMAS

Copyright © Smitaki 2008

Sad Records

This September several records were broken on the island. That's why I again have to mention refugees, the fires and the weather.

A record number of refugees arrived on Lesvos in September. Some days hundreds of people arrived, despite the many alarming cries in the media. The government of the island is desperate because of the bulging refugee centres and too few police to handle them and at the places where the refugees plan to go after Lesvos: Athens and Patras, the problems continue to escalate.

Most refugees arrive by boat, somewhere on the coast between Molyvos and Mandamados. Then they want to go as quickly as possible to Mytilini, from where they hope to continue their journey via Athens to the rest of Europe. When early in the morning you drive from Molyvos to Petra, you will see them walking in small groups to Petra, or on the other side, towards Mandamados.

Mandamados is a small and quiet village, which faces more and more refugees trekking through it. Besides the many young men, there are women and small children still shivering from the cold seawater who make such a pitiful sight, that the villagers, seized by these images, provide them with food and warm clothing.

The residents of Mandamados don't only give, but also take. More and more refugees come by motorboat and upon arrival, the boat and the engine have to be destroyed, otherwise they risk being sent back to the shore where they came from. The boat is slashed and generally they sink the engine. Many islanders believe that's really a pity because they see a new trade. For example, last week a number of people were arrested because they took the engines and tried to sell them. The engines and boats officially should be taken to the police, but it's easy to understand the traders, with that many boats lying around on the beaches. If the boats were not slashed, every islander would have a boat by now and who knows, next year with an outboard motor!

However, the danger is that the residents will wait for the refugees, in order to seize their boats (which already seems to happen). So this can lead to tensions because the refugees want to destroy their water transport, while the islanders want to keep them intact.

The destroyed rubber boats you see become more and more part of the Lesvorian landscape. In addition to the discarded iron bedsteads, the brightly colored rubber boats have become popular material for sheepfolds and other barns. The hundreds of plastic oars that are lying around everywhere, are for example used as fence posts. So you must admit: the Greek farmer is very inventive with rubbish.

This September a weather record was also broken. It was the coldest September ever in Greece. Nobody would have thought that after the first rain in mid September, the summer weather would not come back. Grey skies and a few storms made everyone cry: "chimonas!"(winter).

Because of the rain and the cold weather everybody in Molyvos thought that the arsonist would stop work. But after a number of small fires a week ago the community was shaken awake by two violent fires which this time were both only stopped a few metres from a house.

The next day the news of the arrest of two teenagers shot like a running fire through the village. Had they finally caught the rascals? The village is good at gossip, especially when serious business is involved that has to be dealt with behind closed doors. The fact is that the boys were soon released. But there are different opinions about whether they were the arsonists. It's said that a number of young people were frustrated, because in the area where most fires occurred, they wanted to build a site for motorcross, for which the municipality did not give permission.

There are also rumours that the family of one of the boys had used its influence to speak to a very important person and cut a deal, so that the boys could go free. Village rules only disappear slowly...

Nobody knows on what grounds the boys were arrested, many say they were caught red handed. Nobody knows for sure if they did it. And nobody knows if Molyvos is now safe from fires. Fact is that for a week now the fire brigade hasn't had to extinguish a sngle fire, although one truck from the fire brigade is still on the watch. Another fact is that a new sad record can be written in the history of Molyvos: around 41 fires in two months.

While they still expect a few tourists from the Netherlands, a lot of Greeks have finished their season. Most shops and restaurants have closed their doors and windows, which is a little odd because they all want a longer season. Also a landscape full of black burnt areas and a coast with a mess of abandoned clothing and rubber boats doesn't look very inviting.

But happily enough these are only small details in the magnificent Lesvorian landscape. September is over and the barometer is now finally announcing beautiful days. Lesvos has become quiet and the nets are rolled out for the upcoming olive harvest. Kalo Chimonas!

Copyright © Smitaki 2008

Welcome to Europe!

The Greek government wants to get rid of its phone company: OTE. For months now they have been in talks with the German company Deutsche Telekom which now owns the majority of OTE shares, the first step for a take over.

The Greeks were already angry because of the privatisation of the pension funds and about low wages, but are even more than mad now. Proof is the spontaneous strikes and demonstrations. Strikes seem to have become a common part of daily life here in Greece, but I must say, at least the Greeks hit the streets or take action to defend their national institutions.

I mean, look at the Netherlands. It's crazy that you trust your money to somebody and suddenly your bank is sold to a bunch of foreign banks! I don't want to go to Fortis, Barclays or the Royal Bank of Scotland. Did anybody ask my opinion? No. The same for my web hosting company that was suddenly bought by a company that I have tried to avoid for the greater part of my life. Does the customer get compensated when he moves? Is he getting something from the changes? No. Only Judas gets away with hundreds, thousands or millions of euros. There goes my money!

For Greece it's just the first big takeover by a foreign company. The money taken by the Judas is probably given in a sealed envelop under the table (Fakelos), as is custom here. In the Netherlands that happens in the open and each time such shameful amounts are published, the Dutch take a deep breath and ask questions in parliament. Then the prime minister shrugs his shoulders because he claims there's nothing he can do, or a minister says that the grab-culture has to be stopped and then our political heroes go back to their daily work, which is like a quarrel between neigbours. Is anybody taking to the streets because they feel cheated? Are there any spontaneous strikes? No. But it's about time. According to the Dutch paper Volkskrant, the difference in wages between senior managers and the workers have tripled in 25 years! Is it any wonder life gets more and more expensive?

In Greece they know this grab-culture in the form of envelopes (fakelos). When you visit a doctor, when you have a child or you have to make a registration with a lawyer, then you take a fakelos to be sure that everything will get done. A fakelos contains an amount with at least two zeros. And of course Greek politicians are not much better than the Dutch. This winter there was a serious investigation into who got thick fakelos from the German company Siemens to ensure they would deliver all electronic supplies for the Olympic Games of Athens in 2004. And there is always some inquiry underway into a minister who has received too much money or who has transgressed his own laws.

Life in Greece these days is much more expensive than in the Netherlands. Even though the people fight against it. Last week truckers were striking, so were the drivers delivering petrol to the filling stations. University lecturers were on strike and some of the Olympic Airways crew. I probably forgot many more. Just as some weeks ago the electricity company went on strike and stopped daily life in nearly all of the country, last week again daily life was disrupted because of fuel shortage and so on.

In Lesvos we were not troubled too much. The Lidl supermarket was empty, there were no herbs or olive soaps in the co-operative shop and here and there there was a shortage of some things. Some people were worried whether they could leave the island, but I never saw them come back, so probably Olympic Airways got them to Athens. And we didn't have any fuel shortage because the island has such a huge stock that we didn't have to queue in order to get fuel, as they did in other parts of the country.

There was quite a different strike on a small island in the Aegean Sea: 121 refugees, aged between 10 and 16 years, went on hunger strike on the island of Leros, which they reached illegal from Turkey. They are housed in a hotel and nearby buildings but the conditions are inhuman.

Leros is part of the South Eastern Dodecanese and has a little over 8,000 inhabitants. Since the beginning of the year some 860 refugees, amongst them a lot of children, have reached the island. In Greece it is reported that more and more child refugees travelling alone are reaching the country. The people of Leros don't know what to do now. They have no expertise with such big numbers of refugees and they have no infrastructure to accommodate them. They will probably have to collect a lot of fakelos, if they want the Greek government to help them with this problem. Pretty soon the summer season starts on Leros, but all the hotel beds are already taken...
http://youtube.com/watch?v=a70Ljqx0vuk

Copyright © Smitaki 2008

A sad outcome

The sky above Lesvos is grey. For about two weeks the sun did its best, but now the weather will change again into rainy and cold conditions. The wind takes it easy during the daytime, but blows during the night. Not a happy situation for the refugees who like to travel during the night across the sea.

Looking at the numbers of refugees that arrived last year on the Eastern Aegean islands of Samos, Chios and Lesvos, makes you sad. About 10,000 people, mainly from Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Libya, Eritrea, Palestine and Iran managed to reach these Greek islands alive. About 100 people drowned or are missing during the journey across the sea. Even then, the 50 people that drowned last month during the start of their trip, in bad weather in the sea near Turkey, aren't included in this number.

On the first of December the new asylum centre on Samos was finally opened. Last year over 4,000 refugees reached this island, which is a lot because there are only 35,000 inhabitants. But Samos, of all the Greek islands, is closest to Turkey. A refugee was proud to tell that he made the sea trip from Turkey to Samos in only 40 minutes. The cost of this short trip, including a place in an inflatable boat, is between 600 and 900 dollars.

The arrival of refugees here on the islands is now in the national and often the international news on a daily basis. Which means that finally there's a reaction from Athens. They will send more police to the islands, specialists in dealing with asylum seekers, and they will make sure that these people are treated correctly.

We didn't see as large a number of refugees arrive as on Samos, but also here on Lesvos you could see that their numbers more than doubled. The nearly daily groups of strangers lounging at the bus stop have become a familiar sight.

The stranded inflatable dinghys have become part of the beach landscape. There are no heaps of seaweed without such a green or yellow dinghy sticking out. If the refugees weren't so afraid of being sent back in these little boats, which is why they slash them on arrival, everybody in Molyvos would now own a little rubber dinghy.

Before Christmas there were campaigns to collect clothes for the refugees. Well, there shouldn't be such a collection, it would be enough if one person would be responsible for gathering all the clothes the refugees leave behind. This person could clean them and bring them to the asylum centre. Nowadays you not only find Greek rubbish everywhere in the countryside, but also refugees clothes in the strangest places. They say that they come empty handed, but they just leave their wet clothes behind. I understand that when they arrive in Europe, they like to change into dry clothes, but I don't understand why they leave behind valuable possessions like good jeans, jackets and backpacks.

Mister George Selimis, a resident of Athens, but originally from Mytilini, had two things: cancer what made him die recently and an extreme love of buying clothes. He bought jackets, t-shirts, shoes and trousers in the most expensive shops, but never wore them. After his death it was decided that his clothes should be donated to the asylum centre in Mytilini. I'm wondering what they'll think when they receive their brand new clothes from the finest shops, something like 150 jackets, 58 pair of shoes and an unknown number of shirts and trousers...

50 years ago Greece was itself a country from which its inhabitants fled to look for a better life elsewhere. Now they have became a country for refugees, a situation they are not really ready for. I don't know if there were people fleeing over the sea during the turn of the year, if so they would have been received by the fireworks of Molyvos. They probably wouldn't have been noticed that night. The New Year was celebrated in full swing at the Bazaar nightclub and the other inhabitants were nearly all deep asleep by one o'clock.

So the New Year here had a quiet start. I wish the world a peaceful year, so that not too many people wish to leave their homes and families in order to look for a better life... Kali Chronia!

Copyright © Smitaki 2008

Flee for your life

The Greek weather has been awful these last few days: storms, rain, thunderstorms and some earthquakes (although these aren't caused by the weather). In the 5 years we've lived here we've never seen such a wet and stormy autumn. It's like the January and February days when the sea produces angry white foamed waves. That's why we often say these days: today it's no refugee weather.

Although I do ask myself if there aren't bold people smugglers, who even though the foam is flying around your head, they just put the refugees in the rubber boats, cut the bottom and shout: "Flee for your life, to Greece!".

Because even after a stormy night it's common to see refugees sitting at the bus stop or near the Olive Press in Molyvos. Then you ask yourself what journey they must have been through. The same question that the English film director Michael Winterbottom has been asking himself.

A few years ago Winterbottom was struck by the news that some 58 Chinese were found in a container on a boat. They had suffocated to death by trying to reach England illegally. After an investigation amongst refugees in England, however, Winterbottom chose to film the escape route from Pakistan to England. This film 'In This World' was awarded the Golden Bear at the 2003 film festival in Berlin.

For the main characters Winterbottom found in Pakistan two boys from Afghanistan: Jamal, a refugee and Enayat, a son of Afghan parents. With a small film crew and a light camera they followed the escape route from Pakistan, through Iraq, Turkey, Italy to France, from where the way finally led to England.

The boys were at the mercy of several people traffickers. They travelled in small pick-ups, by bus, they crossed snowy borders on foot, they travelled in a container by ship and Jamal travelled by train and for his last journey he found a hiding place between the wheels of a truck.

The film gives a heart-rending idea of what the refugees that arrive in Lesvos must have been through. And then still Lesvos is not the promised land. First they have to go to Athens and from there the journey takes them further into western Europe. That's if they're not caught. When you see how many of them get caught here on Lesvos, because they entered Greece illegally, how many of them know to slip through the grasp of the police?

In 'In This World' the escape route went from Istanbul straight to Italy. But for a few years now the escape route also goes more and more over the northern mainland of Greece or through the Greek islands. Greece now complains a lot about the increased number of refugees that come from Turkey. They accuse Turkey of not fighting the people traffickers. On the other hand it's Turkey that accuses the Greek coastguard of sending refugees back to Turkey by making their boats unfit to go further. International refugee organizations say that Greece mistreats the refugees and the German magazine Der Spiegel even accused Greek coastguards of torturing refugees.

Well, I'm wondering if all these accusations about Greece are true. It's common knowledge that it's the smugglers who cut the rubber boats in order that the refugees go as quickly as possible to the Greek coast (and some of them drown). And for myself I do believe that the Turkish smugglers are not fought against much. How else can you explain the huge number of refugees that arrive on Lesvos? (Or do I now sound like a real Greek?). Anyhow, I see the refugees nearly every day, marching by on their way to Molyvos, to Athens, to a land of milk and honey. Afghans, Pakistanis, Iraqis, with just a plastic bag in their hands, trying as much as possible to be invisible on the now completely empty Eftalou Boulevard.

In the summer they were also easy to spot. Although they did their utmost to be looking at their Sunday best, in the heat it was easy to spot them, with their long trousers and the plastic bag in their hand, amongst all the international tourists who were cruising along by the sea.

It's a fact that the asylum centre on Samos, which was hot news a few months ago, was too small. But how can you know that in a few months time the number of refugees will triple? If today on Lesvos a boat with 275 refugees were to arrive, like happened in the Peloponessos last weekend (the Turkish boat was on its way to Italy when it ran into problems due to the bad weather), they certainly won't know how to handle so many people.

Anyhow it's sad that such a migration of nations takes place so close to us. You feel powerless, what can you do? If you watch the film 'In This World' you understand that the refugee business has become very big business, because especially in Greece the numbers of refugees is rocketing. And big business means that the cargo isn't always treated well. But even if you arrested all the people traffickers, the refugees would still keep on coming. They will keep on finding illegal transportation, they will keep on asking for help in order to reach the rich western countries.

In Molyvos they're not often bothered by the police too much, because there are simply not that many police here in the North of the island. The refugees walk, take the bus or a taxi to Mytilini and from there they try to get a ticket for a boat or a plane to Athens. These refugees show how leaky the European frontiers are. How else can you explain that you see more and more of these refugees on planes to Amsterdam?

After the film was made Jamal, one of the main characters in 'In This World', went back to Pakistan. But not for long. Soon he went back on the route he once travelled as a movie star, although this time he did it as a real refugee, to reach England in a few months and there ask for asylum.

The world is adrift and there's nothing we can do to stop the refugees. Big families are raising a lot of money to put the life of one of their members in danger, in order to give them a better future. Lesvos, or any other Greek island will be just a stopover on their long and dangerous journey. That doesn't mean that there are no immigrants on the island. Lesvos, like the rest of Greece, has a large number of legal and illegal Albanians, Rumanians, Russians and Bulgarians. They come in through the North of Greece, which is quite a different journey and quite a different story.

Copyright © Smitaki 2007

Some of those days...

Do you sometimes have some of those days that seem shorter than you need? I have them all the time in Greece. It's like life is sneakily eating hours from the day. Not only in winter. Also in summer hours pass without you noticing them.

In the winter this feeling is stronger. But then the days are also much shorter. When you get up at seven it starts to get light and from 4 o'clock in the afternoon the light starts fading. At five it is pitch dark. The Greeks, having their siesta in the afternoon, go to sleep in daylight and wake up in the dark. Then they have a coffee, as if it is morning and at about 10 PM they sit down to a light dinner.

I love to have a siesta on a summer afternoon, but in the winter I think it is a waste of the daylight hours. And even though there are 10 hours of daylight on a winters day in Greece, I still have the feeling that they are much shorter than in Holland.

Take last Saturday. At 7 we woke up because the dogs were barking frenziedly. We thought: donkeys in the garden, so I turned over to continue my sweet dreams. Jan got out of bed and half an hour later I heard him having a conversation. Still sleepy, I wondered if he had started having conversations with dogs and donkeys. I got up and found him all agitated. He had caught two refugees on our land, roaming the houses, looking for something to eat.

Jan showed them where the road to the village was, but they did not want to go there. They did some circuits of our land and then disappeared into the undergrowth behind us. I thought it better to call a neighbour, who called the police. One of the refugees came back, but still didn't want to take the road to Molyvos. He said he had a sick friend up there, pointing to the bushes behind our house. So what should we do? The neighbour was there in 10 minutes. The refugees disappeared into thin air. They didn't even show up when Jan went looking for them, carrying a pack of toast, so that at least they would have something to eat.

It was a beautiful warm and sunny morning. No wind. On the sea some fishing boats floated that close to the coast that it seemed they were sailing the fields. Perfect rest, but there was still this unsettling feeling about those refugees. After about an hour and a half the police finally dropped in. They had to come from Kalloni, because during the night there are no police in Molyvos and the police station only opens at half past 8. So when there is a real emergency, you'd better call your neighbours.

The two policemen listened patiently to our story. They looked at the mountains rising behind our house, shrugged as if to say: 'what can we do?', thanked us politely and left.

So we decided to to a little walk in order to see if the refugees were still somewhere at the back of our house. We could not find them. Coming back there was a man who just got off his motorbike and ran into the undergrowth. He didn't answer when we shouted to ask who he was, he was in too much of a hurry. He didn't even look when one of the refugees re-appeared, carrying some shopping probably bought in the village. I told the refugee boy to sit down and wait, until the man we supposed to be a policeman, came back.

The poor boy was very frightened, asking if it was a bad cop and if he would go to prison now. We assured him that it was a good cop and that he would probably go to a refugee centre. But he did not trust the policeman running after his two friends, who successfully managed to hide themselves. When the policeman returned empty handed, he looked at the boy, ordered him to go and get his friends and to be at the bus station at 1 o'clock. The man jumped on his bike and left, leaving us perplexed.

At 1 o'clock we drove to Molyvos to see if the boys followed these orders. They were not there and coming home we found all three of them on the road in front of our house. We offered them a ride to the bus stop and wished them good luck. What else could we do?

By then it was 2 o'clock in the afternoon, too late to drive to the Hot Springs of Lisvori, which is what we intended to do. We had a light lunch and went collecting wood. And suddenly it was dark, evening, with the fire to be lit and in a few hours we were in bed again.

The next morning our landlady came to tell us that we were to collect the olives that morning. There are not that many olive trees on our land, but we always get a good quality oil which we can never finish in a whole year. So on Sunday morning we collected olives (Greek mornings mostly end at 2 PM). We finished with a marvelous lunch in the sun and after that we took a short walk in order to give the ouzo a chance to go down. We had to hurry back before it got dark!

Sunday night I got news that my Monday morning would be no exception. Something had happened to our house in Amsterdam, so that the whole next morning I was on the phone and writing and sending emails. Then it was time for our lunch appointment at Tsonia: a beautiful ride, a walk over the warm beach and a super lunch. It was dark when we got home.

People often ask us what our daily life is like here in Greece. Well, this is about what we do... And wonder where all of those 24 hours a day should normally have have gone to.

Copyright © Smitaki 2006

Fly

You turn your back on the island for 10 days and you find it back in a totally different season. When we left Lesvos it was marvellous warm autumn weather, when we came back it looked like winter. It could have been worse, if we'd come back a day earlier and lived on the neighbouring island of Limnos. There they had the first layer of snow, while Mytilini only saw a few snowflakes.

So we missed the two days of heavy rain and storms and the early cold spell, because after a nights sleep the temperature was rising and after two nights, the island became like we left it, except that a lot of plants had finished their season, because of a frosty night.

It really feels good to be back on the island, after all the bustle of Holland. That low country is not only full of people, those people are also so incredibly busy. And even though the country seems very well organized, they cannot solve their traffic problems, nor their fully booked agendas.

We fled that busy life, although we are not refugees. Those are coming more and more to the island. Before we left the island, Angelos (the owner of the still open Anatoli restaurant) and his wife Petra, were woken in the middle of the night by some men who were thoroughly soaked by the sea and came to ask for help. One of the refugees, from Pakistan or Afghanistan, nearly didn't make the trip over the stormy sea that night.

Angelos tried to revive the man by rubbing his whole body with alcohol (ouzo). He made tea and something to eat for all of them and got them into dry clothes. He only called the police and a doctor after he'd sorted them out. The refugees told Angelos that they each had to pay €2,000 for the dangerous trip over the sea from Turkey to Lesvos. At the Greek maritime border they were put in a rubber dingy, with the bottom slashed open, so they had to try and reach the Greek coast as quickly as possible.

Now that the tourists have gone, these groups of people attract a lot of attention on the roads. Nearly every day you see groups of refugees walking towards Molyvos and Mandamados. Some are 'helped' - this in inverted commas, because people make a good business out of refugees - with boat tickets or plane tickets. Some of them may pay their way by smuggling drugs, or they are just plain drug smugglers. Last year a group of refugees was arrested because they were wearing shoes with suspiciously large soles. There was heroin hidden in them. It is also rumoured that some refugees might be terrorists. So it is maybe not only asylum seekers these days.

The security checks at the airports are very strict these days. Especially regarding luggage. But you cannot say the same for passport control. In October, when the passengers (amongst them Jan) for a flight from Athens to Amsterdam were waiting to board, a group of men tried to force entry onto to the plane after they were found to have false passports. Armed police had to get them off the ramp. Last Sunday, when we saw the plane from Athens arriving at Amsterdam Airport, there was also a police team waiting for the plane, in order to arrest a group of passengers that were travelling with false passports.

It makes you wonder how these people get so far into the airport or planes and also wonder how many people get through without being stopped. I'm not saying that all these people intend to do harm, but times have changed, as has the composition of the groups of refugees.

On Lesvos no boats arrive with hundreds of refugees like on the Spanish island of Tenerife. Here they come by dozens in little leaky dinghys. Some refugees get a lift to a nearby town where they are picked up by the police and taken to a refugee centre. Taxi drivers are not allowed to drive them anywhere, but in Molyvos they just get the bus to Mytilini. And then there are the dramatic stories of those who do not make it to the island. These stories do not always appear in the papers.

Last week a storm cleaned the beaches. All the rubber dinghys that are the silent witnesses of the arrivals of the refugees are gone (although, following this, the beaches are filled up again with new ones). In the winter, not too many refugees will dare to cross the sea, although the most desperate do not care how cold or stormy the sea will be.

I know what dramas are hidden by the waves, but I'm still glad to be back to my view of the blue Aegean. You may think that Lesvos is a small forgotten island, but a new history of the world is being written here as well. Refugees or not, I can stare out over the sea where for centuries Gods, Greek heroes, pirates and refugees travelled and found the way to a new life.

Copyright © Julie Smit 2006