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 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 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,

Greece, Day 1: Moving Closer to Pigeon Forge

I am 17 years old, a senior in high school, venturing with a group of church friends to a youth conference in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee for a proper dose of Bible teaching, slushy skiing, and flirting. Which of these most sincerely motivated our attendance, I am not sure we know ourselves.
It is the last night there, the night where the musicians play "Just as I am" until every kid within 3 counties is pouring their hearts out to God and country and their nearest friend, I am there, praying, listening, and being called by God for His service.

Embedded in my cautious appraisal of this situation is a sincere heart and clear memory of God asking me to do for Him what he asked. What exactly that was, I couldn't say. A vision, hazy yet certain.

One year later, I declare “Civil Engineering”.
Four years later, I venture beyond our borders to discover the world I will one day save.
Two years later, I am a father, a future daddy of four, and completely out of control of my own destiny. I seek, pray, and search for opportunities to go with God somewhere, anywhere, to do something, anything.
And He is quiet. He certainly seems quiet.
Often I think of that night in Pigeon Forge, battling between one of the most real moments of my life, and the tumult of not doing what I am made to do, be what I want to be.
I love my wife.
I love my kids.
I struggle to prove that my longing for the breath of God in the grittier portions of His creation does not represent my feelings for her and the kids,
that I am not running away from them or the crazy-love life we have.
Many years later, the door begins to open.
A chance decision to escape for a weekend, see a friend, sit in the back of a conference and mind my own business, and I am asked to come to a desperate place with insurmountable challenges and use the most unlikely skills to help design a residential subdivision through the middle of a property so desperately unsuitable that the entire overpopulated community had avoided it for two hundred years of city sprawl.
4 months later, and I am there again, gaining clarity, sitting on the roof of an unfinished hospital on Ash Wednesday, the soot of Jesus' sacrifice marking my forehead, staring over a sea of desolation,
praying
and journaling
and listening.
And He continues His conversation.
He picks up where He left off 16 years before.
The beginnings of clarity.
One month later I am accidentally honest with a near stranger and find myself on a ledge, facing a decision, fear in my gullet.
Do I follow His voice? How do I know? How can I be sure?
And she walks to me, my faithful wife, while I am weeding and planting and generally wasting time in the garden. She walks up to me: "be the person I married."
And I do.
We do; she and I and God and a little bit of clarity, in a decision that brings me closer to Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.
Four years later, the journey to Pigeon Forge takes me the island of Lesvos, Aegean Sea.