Greece, Photos from Mytilene

The Harbor
The boat to the right is a ferry that runs each night to Athens, 8 hour overnight.
Once refugees are ‘registered’…
not actually sure what that means, but I know if involves determining whether you are a refugee (with a protected status), or a migrant (with less protections/opportunities).
Anyway, once you are registered, you can buy a ticket on the ferry and go to the mainland.
This is not a lock-down situation. People are free to roam around, and many did. The camps that people stayed in while waiting to register were a few miles away, but people would walk or take a taxi into the city, and meander through the shops the same as I would, excepting that they carried on their persons the limits of their physical possessions.

Chapel

I tried buying a European made blazer. Very sharp looking. Was feeling the vibe, and wanted to put something slick over my Carhartts. But nothing I could find had sleeves long enough. I am not Greek-sized.

Hotel Loriet

The UNHCR (High Commissioner of Refugees) stayed at the Loriet. The actual hotel is behind this old house, which is facing the Aegean Sea. The house serves as the entry foyer, and ornate sitting rooms.
I was dropped off here 10 minutes after arriving, to meet my predecessor and other WASH actors. I was 90 minutes early for the meeting, so I walked in, asked where breakfast was being served, and made myself comfortable.
I pay my taxes. The U.S. funds most of the UN budget. I feel no guilt.
In the end, I had multiple meetings here with UNHCR to coordinate WASH work throughout the island, and plan for the 2016 response. I had no other free meals.

Greece, Photos from Athens

I had no idea when I took this photo how much this premise would be challenged in the coming weeks.
By and large, we are a nation of immigrants. My ancestors left somewhere to get here. Yours very likely did so as well.

United States	% of Pop’n
First Nations	1.6%
Kidnapped	13.2%
Immigrants	85.2%

Platia Monastirokiou (7th century) in the foreground.

Acropolis of Athens (5th century BC) in the background.

 

 

Hadrian’s Library (132 AD)

The steps up to Mars Hill, and Paul’s speech to the crowd from Acts chapter 17.

 

Sunset from Mars Hill

Acropolis at night

Greece, Day 21: When is the Time

I am on the flight from Athens to Paris,
after 5 hours sleep the previous two nights,
and I just wish for quiet.

She asks me if I was in Athens, my neighbor does.
and I want to deflect, to end, to head off….
I know that my honest answer will fail to do so.

"I was in Lesvos",
prompting an immediate and vague understanding of why I was in Greece.

And we talked, reluctantly talked…
of my time in Greece, her adult children in Paris,
"we were so scared... It could have been them."

Acknowledging that the world is seeing the best and the worst of humanity. Acknowledging that no one is quite sure of the answers,
of how to handle the events we face,
events beyond our choosing.

My mind wanders to the mass of young children who came across the waters these past few days.
Toddlers and 6 year-olds who cannot swim,
being led by parents who cannot swim,
what would bring me to this state, this point of risk with my family?
A risk I don’t begin to comprehend, one I have never faced.

I take my first steps of processing what I was a part of,
what I saw.

When in the midst of my work, I am a taskmaster.
A problem solving engineer focused on
providing the background music,
helping with the setting…
around the refugees,
but not often directly engaged with them.
Focusing on the immediate needs rather than the situation.

But now I am here,
seeing the refugees in my mind's eye more clearly than when I was in their midst.

I don't want to think about this.
I am not ready to be an ambassador when I return home.
I have no more answers than you.

Maybe my experience helps me understand better;
maybe it blinds me in return.

I made it through the conversation with the lovely Parisian,
resolved to talk and listen with empathy.

Now is the time for me to be home,
to bring this experience home with me,
to let it be a part of who I am becoming,
as we are all becoming who we will be.

Greece, Day 16: Janitorial Engineer

If you had asked me to predict the top 5 things I would be spending my time on…
no, the top 10 things…
heck, if you had asked me to list my job responsibilities until late into the evening, the point of the day where you get silly, get creative, think outside the box…
even in this moment I would never have predicted that the most critical,
most time-consuming,
most obnoxious part of my days would center on my unplanned role as a Janitorial Engineer.

Imagine you’re a Syrian for a moment.
you make your journey through Turkey,
pay your money to a fly-by-night boat sales company,
land in a strange land, full of an even stranger assortment of Westerners, half hippy, half evangelical, half professional disaster-chasers,
get pulled out of the water,
grab a change of clothes,
get a banana, water bottle, and HEB (high-energy-bar),
and finally sit down for a moment to relax,
to breath in the safe air,
an incomplete trip to be sure, but one that has crossed a critical juncture,
and you close your tired eyes, relax, and breath.

Until your bladder interrupts. Or even worse, your colon.

You get up, take your bag of belongings with you,
and find the loo.
What is that!?!
How does it work?
Do I climb up on it?
Surely they don’t expect me to put my arse on it!?!

I don’t actually have video evidence to corroborate what is occurring behind closed doors, but I believe it involves something along the lines of this:

Which is not as easy at it looks,
as found out through the various broken parts and pieces damaged on our watch (well, not ‘watch’).

I’m not even going to mention the introduction of toilet paper, which, let me tell you, isn’t as intuitive as you may assume.

And given that our toilets are trailer-park quality plastic (literally a single wide of toilets), it doesn’t take much to break them.

Imagine if you had a giant box of cereal with a give-away plastic toy inside, except that the toy was a CPT (cheap plastic toilet).
You love cereal, so you eat lots of it.
You keep collecting these CPTs until they fill a corner of your house, 12 of them,
and finally your mom nags you to get rid of them,
because, seriously, why would you need 12 CPTs in the first place? Three, maybe four at the most.

So you donate your CPT collection to an Assembly Camp that has 1,000 plus different people each day run through the property,
people who have never seen a western toilet,
who have GOT TO GO, but don’t know how…

It is not difficult to predict how things turn out for the CPTs.
They are quickly reduced from the pride of one serious cereal-eating fool,
to a series of daily repairs,
daily phone calls from a dozen volunteers to the one person they know who loves toilets: their Uncle Alan.

So here I am, me and my WASH team, fixing what we can, ignoring what we can get away with, trying to keep the trailer park of CPT’s functioning, which turns out to be a full-time job for a Helluva Janitorial Engineer.

And as I write this, a newly-arrived refugee is opening a Western-world toilet stall door for the first time to find an elevated toilet. They will pause, decide if they really need to go, and be forced by the natural functions of their body to make do, climb aboard, and take aim.

Don’t worry, we’ll be there tomorrow morning to fix it.

Greece, Day 13: Bend Until I Break

Your willingness to adapt to your surroundings, and
be adaptable to the continual changes you face
is and always will be of value in life.

This is particularly true when you are placed in moments of
increased needs,
limited resources, and
an all-encompassing lack of time.

You plan,
you plan the day,
you plan the day the night before,
and again that morning,
and again when you receive the unplanned text,
and again when you answer the critical yet unwelcome phone call,
and again when you find yourself short,
short on cash,
or drivers,
or vehicles,
or the wisdom to intelligently act,
or patience.

You begin to wonder what the purpose of all of this planning,
of your failed attempts to comprehend the tasks before you,
knowing that the simple becomes ridiculously complex,
that which should take but a moment finds a way to take a day.
like tying your shoes with gloves on.

And for one who prides himself on efficiency and decisiveness,
regardless of my stubborn unwillingness to go down, get tired, be outworked or outmatched,
I can be bent until I break.

These few days have been unusually hard. I have faced one too many challenges, and somewhere along the way lost
my patience,
my flexibility,
my adaptability.

And in the fog, I countered this with
frustration,
pride,
self-importance, and
judgments toward others.

I get a lot of accolades for this work. People compliment and pat my back. It can puff me up and cause me to lose the reason I am here, the connection between who God made me to be and how that is borne out in my work.

But in a bit of brilliant irony, God humbles me from my heights, lets me fail in my person while succeeding in my actions, such that people may be served by God through me, while I am left beating my chest in supplication for requested forgiveness. Wicked smart.

A bruised reed he will not break,
and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out,
till he has brought justice through to victory.
In his name the nations will put their hope.

Greece, Day 8: The Big Picture

Hey folks,

An update, to give a bit of insight on the work, and to let you know I am safe and well.

I don’t really want to touch on what happened last week. I am more in the dark about it than you are. I’ve heard a small bit, made the mistake of opening Facebook for a moment, and then decided to live in my shell for the time being.

Big Picture:

People leave Turkey by boat. The boats are whitewater rafts style, with an outboard motor. They are one way trips, not reused.

               Stage 1:

Based upon currents, there are 3-4 main landing spots / beaches that they land.

At each of these locations, there’s about 1,000 random volunteers helping. Some of it is great help, some of it is a bit over the top. Folks with good intentions grabbing perfectly capable people out of a boat through the water and to shore. There’s an interesting dynamic here. It’s the most exciting picture-perfect moment to validate you coming, something to write home about, but sometimes causes more problems than solutions. Not being cynical; it’s just interesting to see.

These landing sites are not official UNHCR (High Council for Refugees, fancy name for the folks that are in charge) camps. They are staffed by whoever shows up any given day.

               Stage 2:

Then there are other volunteers picking the people up at the beaches and taking to Stage 2, the ‘transit sites’.

These are 1-6 hour stops to get a change of clothes, maybe a bit of food, a chance to collect your breath, a medical tent, etc.

Samaritan’s Purse (SP), along with some other aid partners, manages two of these sites, with probably 1,000 – 2,000 people per day coming through, although it varies widely. Today was very calm, and the camps were able to clean up a good bit. Who knows why, what is going on across the water, that causes the pace to vary so widely.

My role here is to make sure we have adequate and clean water and sanitation facilities. Toilets, sinks, etc. All of these have/are/will be built. The transit sites are in random/unplanned locations, so they didn’t have facilities to handle the refugees.

I have 2-3 Greek staff to help manage Contractors or to fix problems onsite.

Also, I have a staff of 10 ppl who work shifts to keep the sites clean. Tough job.

               Stage 3:

After a few hours at Stage 2, the refugees are loaded onto ‘greyhound’ type buses and shipped to two overnight camps. One camp is for Syrian families, and the other camp is for everyone else (Syrian males, and all other nationalities). The refugees register with the UN there and become actual legal ‘refugees’, and are then take an 8-hour overnight ferry to Athens.

I don’t know what happens after then. And I don’t have the brain capacity to care at this point.

My Work:

Two nights ago I received an email from UNHCR WASH (water sanitation hygiene) leader asking us to expand from our two stage 2 transit sites to the two stage 3 overnight camps.

Yesterday I naively entered a weekly meeting lead by UNHCR, and they cornered us, asking us once again.

So, I drove the 90 minutes to the other side of the island, and ventured through 4,000 future-refugees looking at toilets, showers, and a complete lack of sinks. Pretty eye opening.

Ended the day with a 9pm meeting once again with UNHCR and a handshake agreement to do what needs to be done.

I’m heading back in the morning to ‘Chair’ the WASH meeting for the island, which somehow I was hoodwinked into leading. And then spend the afternoon at the camp making sketches, trying to find the water supply to determine capacity,

Blah blah blah…

All that being said, I am moving into Scopes / Bids / Contracts and Construction Management to repair and construct latrines, sinks, showers, etc.

The work we are about to do is a pretty big challenge, but a super opportunity.

Closing:

I don’t have much in the way of pictures. I don’t feel comfortable taking photos of the people. It seems a bit off for me. Maybe I will take a few, just to remember.

I am as safe as one could be on a small island in a village where everyone walks, eating large amounts of feta, tomatoes, and calamari. And fresh bread.

I appreciate everyone’s concerns and prayers and support. I love being here, but miss some of you (well, maybe only one of you).

Cheers,