Tag Archives: poverty

This is why you’re not supposed to get into cars with strangers

17 Thursday Dec 2015

Posted by in Politics, Refugees

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Someone does pick me up, a Belgian couple obsessed with street art who have driven down to photograph Banksy. I feel a bit guilty getting into their posh car with the mud caked all up my legs, but they don’t seem to mind. We chat a bit about the artwork, and then, revealing that he didn’t quite get Banksy’s message, the man says, ‘I just don’t understand why they have to come here’.

Oh no.

This is why you’re not supposed to get into cars with strangers.

‘Why don’t they stay in Turkey? Or go to India? Where they are safe?’ I relay some of the stories I’ve heard about how refugees are treated in Turkey, how some have spent years in a camp there, how India hasn’t signed the Refugee Convention so they have no rights, not even recognition as a person before the law. He nods thoughtfully and then goes on to agree that some people need help, but doesn’t understand why a doctor and his family in Kabul or Damascus would leave. I say that I think the Taliban, ISIS and co don’t distinguish between middle class professionals and otherwise. That often in these situations it’s the educated who are most targeted. The woman agrees with me and says that we must help them, though she doesn’t particularly want more in Belgium because the government gives them money and some of them don’t have jobs after ten years.

I really don’t know why the universe is doing this to me when I voluntarily returned to the jungle. Surely it should have been Angelina Jolie or Justin Trudeu who stopped to give me a lift.

‘I just don’t think that’s true’ I say. Every refugee I met is so eager to study and work and expresses disdain at the idea of charity. They were all willing to do anything to start an independent life. Not like so many Europeans I meet who would rather live off their parents than work in a restaurant because they believe they’re above that. And considering so many people here think such labor is beneath them, I’m not sure who else they’d get to serve them if they kick out immigrants.

The guy admits he doesn’t know much about it, and contends that Syria is obviously at war, but questions why people in Afghanistan are coming now. I can hear the resignation in my voice when I talk about the Taliban strengthening since 2014 and relay the stories of how many Afghan’s told me they would rather be shot than sent back. That the war in Afghanistan has stretched well beyond a decade.

The woman, who I had concluded was the smart one, then says that she hasn’t made up her mind yet whether she is ‘pro’ or ‘anti’ refugee, as if it were an issue like raising the VAT. The guy then adds that we shouldn’t help the ‘economic migrants’. I’m having flashbacks to painful moments in South Africa when I accepted rides from people who turned out to be raging racists and then ended up with a choice between being stuck or abandoned alone on a hwy. Thankfully, we are almost in Calais and if I’m thrown out now and have to walk I’ll still probably make my train.

‘You don’t need to be ‘pro’ or ‘anti’ refugee’ I say, ‘…they’re just people’.

This couple is not mean. They express real regret that Le Pen has gathered so much support in France and bemoan the right wing in Belgium. They feel bad that there are people living in the Jungle. And they do think we should do something to help. But the ignorance is astounding. The suggestion of sending people to the rich Gulf States is brought up. I can’t hide my disdain when I say I don’t think it would be fair to send an educated professional woman from Damascus to Saudi Arabia. Or a secular young man from Iraq for that matter. I can hear the condescension in my voice when I point out that all Muslims are not the same, but I just don’t care anymore.

They cheerily drop me off, wish me well and joke about how nice it will be to go back to their warm apartment after seeing the Jungle. Even though all they did was stand at the entrance and photograph Banksy.

banksy_calais__01_2015

Advertisement

‘You explain me, here is not the worst’

15 Tuesday Dec 2015

Posted by in Politics, Refugees

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

photo 3 (1)I’ve had enough of the Jungle and head to the exit. The last man I speak to is an Afghan who runs one of the restaurants on ‘main street’. He’s trying to convince me to come in on my way out, but I have to get back to Calais to catch my train to Paris. ‘You are too smiley to be French’ he teases, and when I say I’m from Australia he begins chattering away excitedly. He knows someone on Manus Island, and he has a lot of questions of the non-rhetorical kind.

My heart sinks to my feet and I want to run and hide and vomit. I thought about the possibility of this happening when I left for Athens, but assured myself the numbers were so large the chance of it occurring was miniscule. There are over a million refugees entering Europe this year alone, and only a few thousand that have tried to get to Australia, what are the chances? Yet here I am, literally about to escape the jungle myself when it happens. It’s all very well and good to have long debates about this with volunteers and workers in cafes after a shit day, but I don’t want to stand here and explain my country’s wicked policy to this man who has nothing and knows someone who is directly suffering from it. Why didn’t I say I was a Kiwi. I seriously consider feigning ignorance and just telling him about my neighbour who came from Afghanistan in the 80s and loves Australia and says he’s never had any problems. But I’ve clearly stood there like a mute idiot for too long because he can tell I know what he’s asking about.

IMG_2381Yes, it’s true they can’t leave I say. Yes, it’s true that PNG is not processing their claims even though they’ve been submitted. Yes, it’s true that the Australian government funds the whole thing. Yes, the navy does physically tow them out to sea. Yes, it’s true that people have died, some because they were denied medical care. He tells me his friend said the food was inedible and the guards beat them, then gestures to his restaurant and laughs, ‘at least we make good food!’. Thankfully there are some questions I genuinely don’t have a firm answer to, like if it’s as dirty as the Jungle, or if people have access to better services. Though all reports would suggest the answers to those questions are yes and no, I’m not lying when I say I haven’t seen it. Thank Christ. I’ve been struggling enough with the Jungle in France, I don’t think my soul could handle Australian supported gulags.

The man thanks me earnestly and I’m very confused as to why. ‘You explain me, here is not the worst’ he says. And I realise I’ve given him a gift. The gift that somewhere on a pacific island in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by real jungle, there are people who are treated even more poorly than him. People who are worse off and less human. People who also live in the mud and swamp but are imprisoned. This man, at least, has his agency. He can walk out the door if he wants. What a way to help someone. Maybe I’ll go and find Mimi and tell her about the Somali woman we allowed to be raped, denied immediate emergency health care to, and then flew around the pacific like a ping pong ball so she couldn’t access the courts.

IMG_2407When I get to the exit near the Banksy the mood in the camp has quickly turned and suddenly 7 police vans screech around the corner, riot police pour out and sprint to the other side of the Jungle. There are yells and the police have their batons raised as they run. People shrink into their restaurants and tents and huts and everything goes weirdly quiet. I try and find out what’s going on, but the response I get seems to suggest that this is a relatively regular occurrence; it could be something as simple as an argument that triggers such a reaction.

I can’t wait to get away from this place. A cop stops me and asks if I’ve been taking photos and I lie and say I don’t have a camera. I don’t know why I lie; there are no photos of police on my phone or anything that is controversial. I just don’t want to do what he wants. It’s the only ‘piss off’ I can give them. As I walk onto the freeway to hitch a ride back to Calais I pull down my hoodie even though it’s raining and cold. I’m scared that unless people see my blonde hair and white skin, no one will stop to help me.

A place to call their own

14 Monday Dec 2015

Posted by in Politics, Refugees

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

There are teenage boys everywhere. I’m told a story of 13 and 14 yr old brothers who travelled from Kurdistan. They were with their 21 year old brother who managed to get to England two months ago. Now they have no one and have attached themselves to a male volunteer who doesn’t look much older than 21 himself. A child’s right to education is in the International Bill of Human Rights, the Refugee Convention and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. It’s also French and British national law. But the children here do not go to school.  Instead they sit here every day in the dirt, sometimes kicking a football around, dreaming of England. If they weren’t traumatised and destroyed before they got here, they certainly will be once they leave.

calaisTo counter this, l’auberge des migrants has set up a women’s centre and safe space for kids and their mums to come. Because the teenage boys kept drifting in they also set up a caravan across the road for adolescent males where they can hang out, talk to other guys, and when I see them, breakdance. I meet one British woman called Alice who has started a community centre with her own money and serves 400 hot meals a day. She recently burned through her savings and had to start a crowd funding page. I can’t hide my horror when she tells me she sleeps here. I would not be in this place alone after dark. Every week she allows a Narcotics Anonymous meeting to take place in what is essentially her bedroom. She tells me that opium and heroin are big problems here, and they are trying to give people some support. I guess it’s no surprise that in such a place people turn to drugs, but it’s incredible the amount that is smuggled in here. I’m told that most of it comes from England. More people profiting from refugees misery.

photo 2There are several pregnant women. Mimi from Eritrea is 8.5 months along. She lives in one of the huts built by l’auberge des migrants, a small shack where thin wooden boards are nailed together, but better than a flimsy tent. It’s amazing how tidy she keeps it, all shoes are left outside and inside feels very comfortable, kind of like a blanket fort you’d make as a kid. Thanks to l’auberge des migrants there are no longer any women with kids living in tents, they have all been built one of these makeshift cabins that have pitiful looking padlocks on the door. It’s not much, but it’s a space to call their own. Mimi invites us in and offers us tea and food, and tells me how two and a half months ago her husband left and is now in England. She is desperate to get there. I cannot hide the outrage on my face as she tells us they don’t talk on the phone because it is too hard for him to hear about the Jungle. We sit in her tiny room in the dark and the helplessness in her face as she pleads with us to find her a way to Britain is painful. I try and convince her to stay in France and claim asylum here, but she is not interested. Many refugees tell me they fear the French will be unwelcoming and are more likely to be racist than the British. I am not so sure about this. They also worry about how long it will take to learn the language, though considering some have been in the Jungle for a year this seems misguided. Mimi tells me she is expecting to give birth here. On the floor of her shack, unless of course she goes into labour outside in the mud. I open my mouth to reassure her that there’s no way the authorities would let her have a baby here and someone will get her to a hospital, but I stop. I’m not so sure about anything anymore.

I meet two more of Mimi’s friends, also alone and from Eritrea, one of them is also 7.5 months pregnant. I am so surprised by how strongly they are opposed to seeking asylum in France. They treat me with suspicion for even suggesting it and one of them shuts down and just doesn’t want to talk anymore. It’s amazing to me that they have such a rose coloured view of how life will be in England. I don’t get how they can think that having to learn French or go through the asylum process here would be worse than living in this breeding ground of misery. Another thing I’m noticing is that people are less open. In Greece and the Balkans everyone wanted to talk, but in the Jungle residents are so used to journalists coming and asking about their history. At first people were hopeful that telling their stories would result in governments actually doing something, but it has been so long now that they see no point in sharing their pain. They’ve lost all faith that anyone will help.

IMG_2400I say goodbye to Mimi and her friends. Though her little home did offer some shelter from the hideous weather outside, it was beginning to get a bit awkward with me sitting there and no one talking. Almost immediately I regret the decision. There is depression and horror everywhere. Anytime a car pulls up refugees crowd around asking for food or clothes or blankets and are yelled at to keep in line. It resembles cattle being herded. Sometimes the nervousness becomes aggressive, though I don’t see anyone get physical. People are much more desperate here than further south. It’s also a lot colder and no one seems to be looking forward to the future. One man pulls me over and asks where I’m from. He then gets excited and pulls out his phone to tell me his nephew is in Melbourne, and have I met him? And can I help him to get there? I wouldn’t have thought I’d be telling anyone the better option to anything was to stay in the Jungle, but if Manus is anything like this and people are locked in…. Maybe there’s always a worse place, I just wish it wasn’t run by my government.

photo 5There is a huge police presence. Saturday was pretty calm, but I’m told that the cops regularly come in here with tear gas, even using it on women and children. Police brutality seems to be a big problem and adds to everyone’s anxiety; the refugees, workers and volunteers. I know it’s naive to think of police as protectors, but here they are regarded by everyone as the aggressors. Complaints have been made to the local station but are dismissed; one guy tells me he was laughed out when he went in to protest about them using tear gas on children. Around the corner from the jungle are a dozen vans full of riot police, just in case. Just in case of what I’m not sure. Certainly not what police are supposed to do. I hear of three different murders that have taken place, and a few cases of sexual assault, none of which have been thoroughly investigated by the police. Why bother, these people aren’t really human and resources are obviously better spent gassing them into submissive terror.

IMG_2378When I got back into town I was in a bit of a daze. I went and got a hot chocolate to fix everything and the very cheery woman who made me the most amazing one ever asked me if I was ok. But I didn’t want to tell her what was wrong in case she turned out to be a racist Front National loon and I’d be obligated to hate her and couldn’t come back for another chocolat tomorrow. There are posters everywhere of the candidates for the Sunday election, and I am pleased to see that most of the Le Pen ones have been defaced. Calais has a weird feel to it. When you’re in the centre you would have no idea that the Jungle was only 4kms away. There are Christmas decorations and music everywhere, and I wonder how many locals have actually visited the camp and know what it’s really like. When you mention the place to anyone you get a mixture of sympathetic tuts and distasteful expressions. The owner of my hotel was not impressed when I asked him for directions. Certainly people did not on the whole react in a similar manner to what I heard in Greece or the Balkans, though given the sheer scope of the Jungle situation perhaps that’s an unfair comparison.

‘Do you think they will open the border and let us in?’

12 Saturday Dec 2015

Posted by in Politics, Refugees

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I don’t think I’m going to write very well tonight because I am in a bit of shock. It’s very rare that I’m lost for words, but the Jungle is the worst place I’ve ever been. I thought long and hard before committing to that statement, because it’s a big call- and it seems sensationalist. I thought about Soweto and Kibera townships in South Africa and Kenya, the slums I saw in Cambodia, the poor village where I lived in Tanzania, the dire conditions in some of the camps on Lesbos, the chaos in Presevo, the poverty in Addis Ababa, the desperation in Palestine. But I can’t think of anywhere I’ve seen that is worse for the human spirit than the Jungle in Calais. I can’t think of anywhere else I’ve been that was so on edge and sad and without any joy. It is a home you wouldn’t wish upon your worst enemy. A place devoid of hope.

calais9

And it’s in France. An hour and a half train ride from where I live. A G7 country, one of the richest in the world, one that prides itself on its observance of human rights, it’s amazing health care and social system, one whose motto is liberte, egalite, fraternite. This makes the place seem even more brutal. It’s more shocking to see babies living in tents in the mud when you know that the resources are there to fix the problem, there’s just not the political will. Civil action forced the government to put in some portable toilets and fund the Jules Ferry Centre where women and children are able to sleep and everyone gets at least one hot meal a day. There are showers, but the queue is 4 hours long, and after nightfall men are locked out. This means that several women and children sleep in the Jungle because they don’t want to leave their husbands and fathers.

calais8Unquestionably, one of the reasons this place is so dreadful is the fact that people here are stuck. While 10 000 could pass through Macedonia in a day, everyone was on the move, heading to somewhere better, a new life and brighter horizons.  People were tired and hungry and stressed and dirty and anxious, but they were hopeful, they believed that in a few days or weeks things would be better. In the Jungle, everyone is in a limbo that resembles hell. Each night men still try and jump vehicles to the UK, even though it has become virtually impossible. As long as one person occasionally makes it, people here will not stop trying. The odds are so stacked against them it’s incredible they don’t give up and try to find another path, but the majority of them have friends and family in Britain, communities where they will feel like they belong to something again. So they keep waiting and trying while the months and the years go by and they languish.

calais5And the numbers continue to rise and the sense of misery increases. There are people here from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Somalia, Libya, Palestine, Sudan, Kurdistan, Nigeria and others. Putting that many different languages, cultures, religions and nationalities on top of each other in such a small space, with no infrastructure or resources is bound to be problematic. Violence between and within groups often occurs, there is competition over handouts, and tent cities are segregated. All things considered it’s actually amazing that there aren’t more problems. When you walk down the Jungle’s ‘main street’ there is an abundance of pop up restaurants, such as Cafe Kabul which appears to be the best stocked establishment. There are churches and mosques. There are grocery shops and businesses. There is a book store. One thing that would make a huge difference to everyone is internet access, but organising that seems to be difficult. This seems incredulous to me. If Greece, Macedonia and Serbia can arrange for refugees to charge their phones and go online surely France can.

IMG_2375A few days ago the Daily Mail, Britain’s answer to the Tele, published an article that made it look like refugees were living it up and quite comfortable in this ‘tent city’. I really doubt that any regular reader of the Mail would walk in here. The first thing that struck me about the camp was its sheer size, in space and numbers. At the moment estimates have the population at around 4500, but a few months ago I’m told it was closer to 7000. Tents sprawl in every direction and have sunk into the wet ground. The temperature is not that low, but the rain and the wind cut through my jacket and jumper. There is mud everywhere.  And not just wet dirt, the kind of mud that you sink into and traps your feet and cakes on all the way up to your knees. Disease is rampant.  One volunteer told me that 80% of the population has scabies, and because they don’t have easy access to showers, hygiene standards are appalling.

IMG_2380There are fences and barbed wire everywhere. On the train from Paris I felt like shrinking in my seat at the site of how many steel walls cordoned off the Eurotunnel. On the hill next to the camp high fences block the roads so refugees cannot get to the trucks that board the ferry. All I can think of when I see these barriers is Israel and the Occupied West Bank and how horrible a feeling it was to be behind similar walls in Bethlehem. Even though in Calais the fence isn’t technically trapping them, it’s a constant reminder that these people are not really free to move. The increasing number of walls being built on this continent has been touted by many as evidence of Europe’s failure. I think its evidence more of humanity’s failure.

On my way in I chat to an elderly French volunteer who comes to the jungle and knits with the women and children three times a week. She loves the children she tells me, and laughs while recounting how the police have searched her many times and only ever found wool and knitting needles. She is horrified that conditions like this exist in France, and when I ask about the election tomorrow she is distraught at the idea of Le Pen, but admits she couldn’t bring herself to vote for Sarcozy now that the socialists have pulled out. She then hangs her head in shame while telling me it was the left who allowed the Jungle to descend into its current state and she has lost all faith with the government.
IMG_2376We come across a group of men from Iraq who are leaving the camp as we go in and she embraces them and asks about their families. They call her Mama and one tells her he has just been granted asylum and is going to Lot. She cannot contain her joy that his family will be somewhere safe and hugs him fiercely. When the men find out I’m Australian they all want to know about the island detention centres, and if it’s true that there people are not even allowed to walk out of ‘their jungles’ . Amazingly, I’d never made this direct comparison. I shudder to think what a jungle would look like where people are not allowed to leave. These guys may have nowhere to go, but at least they are not locked in.

I meet a Sudanese guy as I sludge through the mud. He tells me how he fled Sudan in September and has been in the Jungle for three months. He travelled through Egypt and Libya, took a boat to Sicily and then came through Italy and France. His English is soft and polite and near perfect. He has a wife and two children in a province near Darfur and he is hoping to bring them to the UK ‘once he gets there’. He has tried every night for 10 weeks and been caught, beaten and sent back over and over. ‘Do you think it will get easier?’ he asks me hopefully, ‘Do you think that maybe they will open the border and let us in?’
I’m asked this question at least a dozen times through the course of the day by people who are hoping I will tell them what they want to hear. After what some of them have been through it’s incredible to me that they have any belief left at all. The man looks devastated when I tell him I only think the UK is going to get harder and harder to get into, and I feel as though I’ve personally let him down. But despite his crestfallen face he still shakes my hand and thanks me earnestly before walking off with his friends.

That kill that and that kill that and they kill me

13 Friday Nov 2015

Posted by in All, Politics, Refugees, Travel

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

IMG_2291Last night under the cloak of my Medecine du Monde contingent I visited the Idomeni camp on the Greek-FYROM border. It’s purely a transit camp, and on any given day 10 000 people pass through. The camp is confronting in its sadness and its normalcy. The doctors tent has a waiting room that short of a few copies of Women’s Weekly could be the same as any other medical centre. People sit in line to see the medic, parents try to calm their crying kids and control the naughty ones, and everyone looks bored and restless. Outside there is a group of teenage boys seeing who can clear a railing the most easily by leap frogging. One doesn’t make it and is teased mercilessly. People are trying to connect to the wifi and find somewhere to charge their phones. Other than the overarching sense of waiting and expectation, other than the dirt and the tents and the smell, this could be anywhere. Every now and then a volunteer yells out ‘Farsi and English!’ or ‘Urdu!’ and without fail someone puts up their hand and comes forward to translate.

IMG_2294The only thing that really makes this scene different is the sense of anxiety and nervousness about when it will be their turn to cross. Groups arrive in large buses and are given a ticket, and when their number is called they are allowed to walk into FYROM. The timing depends on the authorities at the other side letting them through. Every 5 mins someone asks me what number they are up to, people are frantic they will miss their turn and be stuck. The really bizarre thing is that there’s no check or control on the numbers, and yet nobody pushes in. Everyone is waiting their turn. The refugees are anxious and frustrated, but incredibly polite; every time I tell them that I don’t know and they just have to wait they thank me profusely.

IMG_2301UNHCR is trying desperately to make sure groups stick together. A problem has been families becoming separated and it is easy to see why. The camp is dark and there are hundreds of people everywhere. People are curled up in corners and fall asleep in the dirt. I chat to a logistics officer from MSF, Antonis, who is very proud with how much his English has improved in the past month since he started working at the camp. Like all of Greece he has family in Melbourne and is excited that I’m Australian. He tells me how his grandparents were refugees and we have to help these people. The kindness in his voice when he responds to the same questions over and over again shows much more patience then I could muster. I think of the video footage of Australian staff at detention centres that was leaked and I cringe. Maybe part of our problem is that we’ve always just had it so good people really believe hardship is not being able to afford a second car. Australians can say things like send them back and ‘stop the boats’ while Antonis can say ‘we know what they have seen’.

Fatima and Ahmoud are a young Kurdish couple who left Syria a month ago. When I ask if they were afraid of the government or ISIS or the rebels Ahmoud waves his hand dismissively and says ‘that kill that and that kill that and they kill me’. So many threats exist that discussing who is responsible has become irrelevant. They have a two month old baby, and for this reason Ahmoud paid 2300 pp to travel to Greece in a new boat. He responds to many of my questions with ‘because I have a baby’, and tells me he saved money for two years and sold his house and all their jewellery to afford the ticket. They spent 20 days in Turkey where they were harassed by the police and the army. Ahmoud tells me that he didn’t sleep for almost three weeks because he had to stay awake and guard their family to make sure his wife and daughter were safe. Eventually a smuggler picked them up from Istanbul and they drove for 9 hours in the dark to Izmir. Crying, terrified, they were put on the boat for Greece. They are heading to Sweden where Ahmoud’s older brother is. His hopes for the future are simple, he wants his daughter to be able to go to school, and he wants to have a life.

I ask them about their wedding and Ahmoud tells me that they couldn’t have a real party because of the war. He seems incredibly protective of Fatima and doesn’t let go of her the whole time we talk. He grows bashful as he explains he wanted to marry her when they first met, but it took him two years to work up the courage. Fatima doesn’t speak any English, but seems to understand this as she looks at me and rolls her eyes. Ahmoud was a chef in a French restaurant in Syria, but he is nervous about finding a job in Europe because he cannot work with pork and is worried this will stop someone from hiring him. I ask if they want to have more kids and he says yes, but only one, he is firm that two is enough. I ask if they would ever go back to Syria and his face contorts into a pained expression. He says that he wants his daughter to see his home, ‘but right now it is too empty’.

Being white the refugees think I am working there and assume that I know what is going on. One man comes up and asks for my help connecting to the wifi. He is trying to reach his family in Afghanistan to tell them that he has arrived safely with his son. This is like the blind leading the blind and all I manage to do is run his battery down while trying to find the setting on his phone. A little girl has no socks or shoes and here I am slightly more helpful in finding something for her feet. People are consistently asking for blankets and tonight for some reason there aren’t any, but they are offered extra warm clothing before they cross over. One woman from Nigeria asks me for a carton, she has three babies with her and doesn’t want to put them on the cold floor.

The scene is incredibly multicultural. I meet people from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Eritrea. My new friend Antonis tells me that yesterday they had a group from the Dominican Republic pass through. I walk with one group to the border and it is the strangest feeling. I’ve crossed many borders on foot, but this crossing, in the dark and with authorities herding everyone through like cattle, feels like something out of an apocalypse film.

photo 2

Crossing on the FYROM side of the border

Despite suggestions that I disguise myself as a refugee and sneak across the border illegally I choose not to do that, although an interesting idea I’m not quite keen on spending a night in a Macedonian jail. So this morning I went to the official crossing and then travelled back to the unofficial one on the FYROM side. My Greek taxi driver and the hotel owner were quite concerned that I did not have a visa. I assured them that I am Australian and this is no problem. They asked me if I checked and I lie and tell them of course I have, only a stupid idiot who has never travelled before wouldn’t check if they needed a visa to go into a new country. Luckily I turned out to be right, but for a few seconds I had a slight fear of being turned back to where I came from. It’s not a nice feeling even if in my situation it only would have been a minor inconvenience.

The border between Greece and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia

The border between Greece and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia

At the train station in Gevgelja there are buses and taxis everywhere. The refugees cross and those without lots of children take a taxi while large families wait for a train. Drivers don’t charge for young children, but this means they are reluctant to take more than one in a car load. And the police will fine them if they are caught with too many people. I manage to walk past the first line of security without being noticed and cross the tracks trying to look as not-blonde and fair as possible, but have to turn around. My choice to do things officially turned out to be a wise one because almost immediately I was racially profiled by the police and had my passport checked. Macedonia has been doing everything to stop people accessing the camps and they are not impressed with my presence. Without official accreditation, which I don’t have, or official permission from the police, which I couldn’t get, you are not supposed to be there. I explain that I am just trying to get a taxi and want to go to Serbia and they calm down once they see my passport is stamped. But my place is clear, ‘these buses are not for you, here is Syrian people, normal peoples bus is over there’.

It’s all Greek to Me

22 Wednesday Aug 2012

Posted by in All, Economics, Politics, Travel

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , , , ,

IMG_0565Stepping off the plane onto the tarmac at Thira Airport on the idyllic landscape of Santorini, one would be forgiven for doubting the seriousness of Greece’s current economic situation. Indeed, here the people smile, the streets are full of tourists with well lined pockets, hotels are bustling, and the price of a sandwich is exuberant even by European standards. However, the tropical paradise remains one of the few places still boasting robust commerce in this economically flailing nation. The fact that you are more likely to hear English in a variety of accents over the native tongue, is sign enough that the islands are not an accurate indication of what is going on in the country at large.

A few hours ferry ride to Athens paints an entirely different picture altogether. In a city that boasts the birth of democracy and a plethora of archaeological testaments to mankind’s wisdom, it is clear that the Greek capital is struggling to keep its head above water. Shops and businesses all over Athens have closed as a result of the crisis. Buildings remain derelict and empty, if not filled with squatters who live amongst a stench that can only be described as putrid. Unemployment is at an all time high, and Greek youth have little hope of employment within their borders after graduating from University.

So far the crisis in Greece has managed to destroy the economy and annihilate a government, as well as threaten the future of the Euro and potentially the European Union. But alongside these economic outcomes, Greece has seen an increase in youth unemployment (now at approximately 50%), crime and suicide rates. While much has been written and published about the Greek economy and the failure of politicians to find a solution, the human side of this crisis too often seems to be forgotten. When a country’s economy has failed, there are inevitably people behind it suffering grossly. This is a quick look at the plight of the Greek individual behind the statistics.

Greek youth are generally well informed, educated and worldly. More than twenty percent of the population in Greece is under 35 and financial difficulties are presenting huge problems for young people. An average of more than 1000 people have lost their jobs every week since 2009. Greeks are known for a willingness to converse with anyone and help people out wherever they can, but increases in suicides, attempted suicides, the use of anti-depressant medication and the need for psychiatric care are causing great concern in a country not used to such issues. For a country that had one of the lowest suicide rates in the world, experts estimate that Greece’s suicide rates have doubled in the past two years.

In the wake of the ongoing financial crisis, public fears over vandalism and violent crime appear to have risen dramatically, often in conjunction with increased concerns over illegal immigration and drug abuse. One government report estimated that drug use in Athens jumped from 7,400 in 2008 to 12,000 in 2009, coinciding with the first wave of the global financial crisis. Murders in Greece have more than doubled since 2006, with the annual figure rising from 83 to 175 in 2010.

On an average 40C day in summer, the streets of Athens are filled with homeless youth. One young man who looks like he hasn’t eaten in weeks lies on a doorstep, his head tilted back and mouth wide open while flies buzz around him in the scorching heat. The scene is more reminiscent of a malnourished beggar in an Ethiopian town than a busy street in this once thriving metropolis. Awakened from his drug induced comatose state, the young man looks at an offered bottle of water as though it is a foreign substance, mutters incoherently and collapses again. Not long after, a slightly healthier looking man grabs the water left at the beggar’s side and strolls away. This is what it has come to, one unfortunate man stealing from an even less fortunate soul; because in the struggle to survive there is no room for a code of ethics.

When the author attempted to find help, two local business people smiled sadly, shrugged and lamented that it was now a common occurrence in Athens. People die on the street because they are hungry, because they have nowhere else to go, and no one to help them. A girl working in a nearby cafe promises to keep an eye on him and call for help if he gets worse, but worse is hard to contemplate. The authorities it seems have larger problems to deal with then a young man at death’s door on a sidewalk.