August 17 Day 7

Aug 17 Saturday

Day 7

Second night at Moria

The night shift was rather calm.  People went to bed earlier than the previous night, mostly.

John and I discussed the morality of wasting food.  We did not have any good solutions.  They order a certain number of food items/meals.  But if everyone does not show up or they do not take certain items (boiled eggs, tomato) then there are leftovers.  You can’t open the line for seconds unless there would be enough for everyone.  So, the food is put in trash bags and placed in or near dumpsters.  There are some who say put it beside the dumpsters in case someone wants it.  (The food is inside plastic packaging inside a plastic bag.)  Others say that can cause fights.  The main reason appears to be that the catering company wants to sell more food rather than having people eat leftovers.

From midnight until around 2:30 I have been sitting at gate C.  This is where the single ladies are housed.  The purpose of guarding is not to keep them in (they come and go as they please and for some they please to come and go all night long.) but rather our guarding is to keep people out who do not belong there.

Some of the ladies speak English and they want to talk.  Most of the English is not very advanced so the conversation does not go very far beyond where are you from and how long have you been here.  The answers are: Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Cameroon.  They have been here from a few weeks to months or even over a year.

The night shift was, thankfully, uneventful.  Part of our job was to take delivery of the water and food that is delivered for breakfast.  That is about 600 bottles of water – 1.5 liters, and the same number of breakfast packages.  It has about 450 calories.  Mostly sugar.

The New Arrivals are fed from this office.  The rest of the camp gets the same food but from a different location.

After we finished our shift about 8:00 Kim took us back to the hotel.  John and I made our way to the Loud Sisters for apple strudel and coffee.

At 11:00 we all went to the Olive Wood Store and workshop.  The lady who owns and runs the place is a wonderful Greek grandmother who’s love language is giving and feeding.  You walk in and she starts giving you things like iced tea.  Want a coffee, no problem she calls the Loud Sisters and one of them hops on a motor cycle and delivers the coffee.  Cookies?  No problem.  Then she got from the Loud Sisters a box of honey bombs (ohh la la they were great).  A cake dough nut hole with cinnamon sugar on the outside and when you bite down the middle is filled with honey. 

Kim warned us that as soon as we had made decisions about what to buy we should check out because it would take 10 minutes or more to check out as she would take each item and ask if it was a gift and then wrap it carefully put it in a bag and put a piece of candy on the outside.  I did not have the heart to tell her that most of my things (that I chose partly for their small size) would be unwrapped before going in my suitcase.

Then the fun began.  The wood shop was down stairs and each visitor was able to watch as a master wood worker turned on a lathe a beautiful item.  The ladies all got an olive wood disk necklace.  I got a little olive wood vase the size to be a tooth pick holder or a cotton swab holder.

If you would like to see him make this little toothpick holder 

watch this 6 minute video.  https://youtu.be/eC7J-FxmqLw

We then drove a little way to a town where there are the ruins of a Roman Bath.  

The hot spring that supplied the water to bathe the centurions is still springing forth water.  Now they have a pipe that runs it around the building and directs the flow into a gutter.  

Next to it is a deteriorating hotel that closed in 1982.  It was the home to Europe’s rich and famous when they came to holiday on the island of Lesvos. 

You can just see the remaining glitz in the marble floors protruding from the dirt and rubble.  

A burned out piano remains in one room.   

Some of our folks made their way up the grand stair case but I looked at the ceiling (the floor for those on the second floor) and decided that discretion was the better part of valor.  No one fell through.

We had lunch at another seaside restaurant that was gorgeous.  There was a fancy smancy sailing ship docked alongside the restaurant. Mom, Dad and 13ish year old daughter were living on the ship.  We think it was flagged from the Netherlands.  

The lunch was very good.  In these seaside restaurants that serve fish the owners invite you back to the kitchen to look at and select the fish.  Somehow, I got designated to be the fish picker outer.  We had some fish that was red with a really ugly face, some fish that was cut like a tuna or shark across the backbone.  But it was said to be neither tuna or shark.  Kim picked out a cuttlefish to be fried.  It tasted like calamari which tastes like octopus.  It was good. 

August 16 Day 6 Night Shift

Aug 16 Friday

Day 6

The Night Shift at Moria

John and I were the EuroRelief staff/volunteers who were here from midnight to 7:30. There are a half dozen police officers who are stationed near the housing for the minor boys and single women. 

New York is said to be the city that never sleeps but Moria will give NY a run for their money.  We had an area where we are supposed to walk every hour or so and as you walk around there are always people walking or sitting or playing cards.  John and I took turns sitting in the New Arrivals building (where all the supplies are held for the new arrivals – clothes and sleeping bags etc.) while the other person is sitting out in front of section C where the single women are located.  Our job there is to make sure no one who does not live in section C enters section C.  The ladies have to show their ID card that has section C stamped on it.  They go in and out a lot until around 2:30 AM.  Some of them were frequent enough that I did not need to see their card.  Others I had to check.  Most were not bothered by this checking.  Some forgot their cards in their rooms.  I told them they would have to sleep outside the gate on the sidewalk.  They often produced their cards or someone vouched for them.  It breaks the tedium.

One lady wanted to know if I would put her in my suitcase when I returned to America.  I told her I only brought a carry on, very small bag.  She laughed and said she could squeeze in.  I did not say this to her but, no she would not come close to fitting.

Our other duties on the night shift are to straighten and clean the office/warehouse area we occupied.  To my chagrin we also had to carry out the garbage.  The new arrivals receive their meals here in the new arrivals area.  So as of today, there are 597 new arrivals that have not been assigned a place to sleep so they generally sleep in the large circus tent area on sleeping bags.  Some will sleep outside on the edges of the streets. But all 597 come here to get food 3 times a day.  The EU and the Greek government contract with catering company to provide food.  The problem is that the food is often a Greek style diet that these new folks are not used to or familiar with.  For example, they often provide this piece of bread that is hard and crusty – think a giant crouton.  The Greeks crumble it up and put it on things or in things.  The immigrants just ignore it and so there are lots of it that is not taken.  They often have hard boiled eggs.  One per person.  Some people do not take it and rather than offer a second egg to SOME people which might cause resentment or worse a fight for those not getting a second egg then EuroRelief will trash the leftovers.  It breaks my heart to throw out lots of good food.  But more will come tomorrow.

We are here when the water bottles for breakfast is delivered.  Then the breakfast food comes as well as milk and coffee containers about the size of an old-fashioned milk can (from the dairy). These are stacked in the very small office and ready to hand out.

After our shift Kim picked us up and returned us to our hotel.  John and I walked to get coffee and pastry and sit by the sea.  Back at the hotel it was our weekly room cleaning time so we waited in the courtyard while the cleaning lady did that. 

Lunch was at Skiniko where up until then I had partaken of only their coffee. 

After lunch John and I both slept from 3:00 to 11:00 ready for our next shift.