I went to Lesvos prepared to cry.
I’d read the news, seen the pictures, heard the stories. I imagined the perilous, sometimes fatal sea crossing from Turkey to Greece and the collective mourning of thousands of families passing through chaotic refugee camps.
I expected my heart to be shattered. I expected to be broken by what I would experience, broken in a way I’d never been on the World Race, broken to a depth that would cause me to question the goodness of my God.
By all rights, Lesvos should be a place of despair and mourning. The refugees passing through have lost everything — their homes, livelihoods, belongings, friends, even family. They have arrived in Europe, but they are still many weeks of hard travel away from Germany, the land many hope will be their final destination. They journey in search of a better future, but as more and more borders are closed, that future is uncertain at best.
That’s the big picture. But even laying all that aside, these refugees have just come out of what was for most of them the most traumatic experience of their lives. They’ve just spent hours standing aboard an overcrowded, barely seaworthy boat, wearing life jackets unfit to save them from drowning, sailing on dark and dangerous waters in the middle of the night with no direction, terrified that the Turkish coast guard would spot them and turn them back. Many of the passengers truly believed they would die before they reached Lesvos.
Some do.
Even arriving on Lesvos is no guarantee of safety and security. Sickness is prevalent, and during the winter cold, refugees often disembark with hypothermia and frostbite.
And yet…
And yet the greatest emotion I feel, the attitude I find reflected on almost every face I see, the atmosphere that pervades every inch of the island, is hope.
* * *
I stood on the beach at Skala watching as a rubber boat flanked by a rescue boat and packed with refugees wearing orange life jackets drew near to shore. A crew of volunteers stepped into the water as it approached, surrounding it and guiding it to land. Waving their hands at passengers, they calmed the crowd as they laid out a small, wooden bridge.
One by one, the refugees stepped out of the boat and onto dry ground, where medics wrapped them in emergency blankets and administered first aid if necessary. Chaos was conspicuously absent; the refugees’ entrance into Europe was rapid, orderly, and peaceful.
In the food tent, I strained tea leaves out of the tea I drew from the boiling vat, then poured the tea, sweeter than candy, into a tray of styrofoam cups. It was snowing, night was falling, the roads were closing, the busses weren’t running, and refugees were still arriving, cold and wet. But as I looked around at my fellow volunteers, I saw only smiling, cheerful faces, and when I carried the tray into the main tent, the refugees met me with grateful thanks and sighs of relief.
I piled bags of blankets on the table in the distribution tent to be handed to families of refugees as they were registered — a new boat had just arrived. Two families were the first to enter the tent, immediately followed by a tall young man. He grinned broadly as he approached. “I speak English!” he said. “Not well; I am sorry. But I am here to help my people! I am here to help my people.”
He proceeded to translate for every family in the room. Though he himself was traveling alone, he maintained his joy and desire to serve even as he was directed out of the tent when his own registration was finished. His only disappointment was that he couldn’t stay in the distribution tent to continue to translate for his fellow Syrians.
A trio of teenage boys stepped into the distribution tent. “Are you together? Family?” a volunteer asked. They shook their heads. “Friends!” they cried, leaning on each other and laughing. “Best friends!”
We walked down the hill into town to Friends, our favorite gyro joint. I waved to the man behind the counter as we entered, and he smiled back — we’d been here almost every day, and he knew us well. We raved about the tzatziki sauce as we ate. At the end of the meal, when we asked for the recipe, he opened the fridge to pull out the cucumbers, yogurt, parsley, garlic, lemon juice, salt, and pepper, showing us what we’d need to make it ourselves. We crowded around the counter, laughing and joking with him. “Efcharisto! Thank you!” we said as we left.
I poured hot water over a tea bag in a small styrofoam cup, then stirred in seven heaping teaspoons of sugar — the first two rounds of tea and coffee I’d made had been sent back because I’d only put in three or four teaspoons. I handed the cup to an Afghani woman sitting on the couch in the community center.
She and her children, as well as several other families, would spend the afternoon there, waiting for the 8:00 ferry to take them to Athens. She spoke no English, but she thanked me with a smile as she took the tea. Sipping it slowly, she closed her eyes and leaned back, relaxing on a couch in a permanent building, not a temporary shelter, for perhaps the first time in weeks.
I sat down on the floor of the community center to play with the children. There was little for them to do besides color, and five hours in, they were losing interest. I picked up a coloring book to join them. Transportation Vehicles, read the title. I flipped it open to a picture of a plane. “Neeoooow!” I said, spreading my arms. They looked up and laughed. I turned the page: police car. “Wee-oo, wee-oo!” I said, and they grinned.
I continued through the book, making noises for each vehicle, as they watched me with rapt attention and mimicked my sounds and hand motions. Some of the children were coughing loudly, clearly getting sick; others had visible scrapes and bruises on their faces and arms. But all of them smiled, laughed, ran, and played, and their parents, watching with weary eyes, slowly smiled, too.
A wooden boat drew near to shore at Skala, and I watched as volunteers wearing wetsuits surrounded it to pull it in. “One, two, three!” they counted, then heaved in unison. But this boat was deeper than the flat rubber boats, and it became grounded thigh-deep in the water — too far out for the little, wooden bridge to reach.
Realizing the boat was as close to shore as it would come, one of the refugees stepped up on its edge, preparing to jump out and wade to the beach. “No! Wait!” cried the volunteers, holding up their hands to stop him. Two men got into position on either side of him, then slid their arms under his knees and around his shoulders. Stepping away from the boat, they carried him over the water. Other volunteers lifted children onto their backs or formed similar seats with their hands to hold adults. One by one, not even their shoes brushing the water, every refugee was carried safely to dry land.
* * *
I expected to leave Lesvos at the end of my two weeks with a broken heart. Certainly there were moments when I felt the weight of the crisis, moments when I looked out over a room full of weary, worn faces and dirty, wet clothes and could think of nothing but the suffering of war, the trauma of the crossing, and the uncertainty of the future.
Yet somehow, the shattering I expected never came. Two weeks later, as I sit on a plane bound for Athens, I cannot think of Lesvos with sadness. It seems incredible, impossible to believe — but that’s not what I found there.
The volunteers on Lesvos have witnessed true miracles in the last few months. They’ve found fresh pants and socks to distribute when the clothes tent was confirmed empty. They’ve prayed over food and seen it multiply to feed hundreds more than it should, with full trays left over. They’ve even witnessed a baby who died during the crossing be brought back to life.
But to me, perhaps the greatest miracle is the inescapable, undeniable spirit of HOPE that saturates every corner of Lesvos.
By all rights, this should be a place of desolation, full of despair and mourning. But it’s not. The loss, mourning, pain, fear, and worry are very real. Yet God has transformed this land from a place of desolation to a place of hope, a place teeming with His love, presence, goodness, and care for a people in desperate need.
And so I leave Lesvos not shattered, but filled with hope.
Hope, because hundreds of loving volunteers from around the world are all coming together to literally wade into the crisis and carry their brothers and sisters from war-torn lands to safety.
Hope, because hundreds of caring locals are continuing happily and generously to welcome refugees to their shores regardless of the great personal cost.
Hope, because thousands of refugees are smiling, laughing, and rejoicing, despite the things they’ve been through and the things to come.
Hope, because my God has not abandoned a single one of these precious people. He has entered into a circumstance full of death and despair, and with gentleness, kindness, compassion, understanding, and love, He is bringing forth life.
*header photo by Mark Gottlieb
