Inspired by Mittens, Garbage & Name Tags on a Greek Island

by Cathryn Colucci (United States of America)

I didn't expect to find Greece

I was asked many times “You have money and time to go anywhere, so why are you spending your vacation going to work in a refugee camp in Greece?” Well, let me tell you. To clarify I wasn’t actually working in a refugee camp, I was volunteering with one of over 400 NGO’s located on the Aegean islands that are inundated with refugees. My work was to include tasks such as unpacking and sorting donated clothing, distributing clothing to refugees, picking up garbage, and playing with children in the camp. As you can probably imagine sorting clothes for eight hours can be pretty tedious and the phrase “what were they thinking” (negligees and oven mitts) crossed my mind a few times. But the boredom was forgotten when I unpacked hand knitted mittens with a note, written in both English and Arabic, saying “May you and your baby enjoy these mittens peacefully in your new country”. And at the end of one long day, in the bottom of the box I was unpacking, I found package of chocolates labeled “For The Volunteers”. Yippee! Chocolate Happy Hour! My first visit to the camp was for games with the children. We played Hokey Pokey and Simon Says and sang songs. My assignment was to give each child a name tag which consisted of writing their name on a piece of masking tape. The kids were crazy excited to get these name tags. I found the whole situation charmingly humorous as most of the children have Arabic names with which I wasn’t familiar and don’t know how to spell. So I would write down some letters and put a little heart or rainbow or smiley and they would be thrilled! They kept coming back to get more, just like collecting stickers. They were so excited to be given anything and receive a smile and a little attention. And even though most knew no English, many knew, “thank you, my friend”. Another day I went to pick up garbage around the camp. We got suited up in waterproof jackets and pants, rubber boots and gloves with liners. It was like we were going to a hazmat site. I would soon discover why this was necessary. It had rained hard the day before and the entire camp, which is on a hill, was a big mud slide. My goal was to stay upright. While working at the camp many refugees came and asked for bags and wanted to help. Primarily we were picking up empty water bottles but also rotting remains of their meals, diapers, bottles of urine and bags of feces and even a dead rodent or two. If you think this was an awful, horrendous, depressing experience, you would be right. But it was also incredibly fulfilling and inspiring to see how resourceful, ingenious, determined and friendly these refugees were. They had built brick ovens into the ground and were baking and selling bread, they were working as an intergenerational community attempting to build new structures out of limited supplies, they had crafted ovens from cans, flashlights from water bottles, and blankets from life old preservers. They had set up small businesses selling trinkets, falafel, and bread, there was a barber. And even though they had nothing, they invited us into their tents for tea, for bread or lunch and thanked us for our work. Another day I was lucky to assist the teaching team when they took refugee students on a field trip to a local museum. My favorite conversation was with a group of young Somalian men. When they learned I was American they got unbelievably excited and asked me if I knew Ilhan Omar. I did not. They were very irritated with me, whipped out their cell phones and showed me she is a Somali immigrant who was elected to the US Congress. They were so very proud of her. Women have so few rights in their country, she was a true inspiration to them. And the refugees I met were a true inspiration to me. There is more, so much more, but now you know why I spent my vacation volunteering with refugees in Greece.