Mytilini - and the puzzle of voluntourism

 

Grant and I were oddly surprised to see each other at Athens airport and went to the airport hotel as we had to get up at 3am to fly to Lesbos. We had an ouzo and then a good dinner in the restaurant where which had two other customers and a pianist who sang plaintive Sinatra songs.  I felt like an advertisement for a retirement fund. And why not? I thought to myself.  I’ll be a cat going round doing good in Lesbos tomorrow – delivering little koalas in home knitted scarves to refugee children at the very least.

Little did I know that by the end of the day my pleasurable complacency would be shaken to the core.

We arrived at Mytilini airport at 6am.  It smelled aromatic and the sea lapped darkly at the edge of the airport but it looked very cold to be rescued from.

 We had a small blue rental car and set off for our AirB&B flat and quickly learnt to decode Greek script into something we could pronounce.  Nevertheless it took us ages and a couple of mimed encounters to find our place.   We got there and our host’s sister waved to us from the street clearly in deep distress. “A terrible thing has happened.” She and her husband, Christos, gesticulated as though to indicate an earthquake.   In fact there had been a break in over night and both our flat and theirs had been turned upside down in that brutish way that hunting thieves have. Cupboards open, vases sideways on the floor.   Our hosts had been asleep in their beds whilst it had all gone on.  “How did they get in?” we asked.  And then we understood the gravity of what had happened to this couple who were rapidly becoming our friends.  The keys had been in the doors as was the way in Mytilini.   Always a peaceful island where people trusted each other.  Their world had changed overnight.

Our little basement flat looked like the more serious crime scene because the thieves had scrounged breakfast there and spilled tomato sauce by the sofa and in the kitchen. They’d burnt a bit of bread on the stove’s electric hotplate in their haste and hunger.

 Mitzi and Christos expected us to refuse to stay but of course it was OK with us and, despite the oddity of having to unpack avoiding the evidential hot spots of tomato sauce and empty cans for the police we grew to like the place –old and quirky with a bin for used toilet paper so as not to challenge the plumbing too much.

Once she knew I wanted to offer my services to the refugee camps Mitzi rook me to one of the two on the edge of town – the open one called Kara Tepe, as Moria., the other one, is now a closed detention centre.  On arriving I was given a severe lecture in English by a Dutchman about how this camp was like a family and everyone was treated with respect. I realized he probably did that a lot to inappropriate people of good will.  It seemed scripted. He then handed me on to two women who were nicer and said five days was not enough to do anyone any good.  She offered me to two banana distributors who wore special banana badges but they too turned me down, “voluntourist” that I clearly was.  I totally understood and was in fact glad to be unnecessary.  They told me to take my koalas and doll to a place run by Caritas called the Silver Bay Hotel where vulnerable women and children had been placed.

Grant and I set out for this Caritas run resort and a sea rescue bus was parked out front.  I went inside with my plastic bag and a little boy ran up to me before I had managed to find any official person.  He pointed immediately to the doll in the bag.  I tried to give him a more suitable koala but he mutely insisted on the doll so I yielded her up and he scarpered with her. Gradually more kids turned up – well dressed but drawn and wild looking and each insisted on picking their own koala out of the bag.  It was nice to let them choose. I gave one to a little girl but her mother laughed and put it back choosing another with a pink scarf and showed how it matched her clothes.  I went to the playground where there were more kids and they took on the rest, one boy grabbing two.  “My babies” he said with glee as he stuffed them in his pockets and crowed at getting two.

When I got back to the car a strange little boy was in there sitting with a quiet Grant and systematically exploring his pockets all the while making a strange hissing sound.  He wanted to see everything –even the Lonely Planet guide.  He emanated longing and need.

We left, shaken by this tiny sample of the refugee crisis, children alive but so hurt by what they had been through.  As we left I saw a tiny girl cuddling my dolly  I think her clothes had gone. For a second I felt like an irresponsible mother letting her child go and then I pulled myself together.  She was now a refugee dolly with an uncertain future, but oh how much harder for her new little mother.

When we got back to the flat the police had been and the tomato sauce was wiped up.  We popped in on Mitzi.  “I feel terrible” she said.  Laconically Christos added “my old life is finished.  This is the first day of my new life.  You are my first friends” A break in is always a violation and a trauma but it took until the evening to understand just how bad this incident was for them.

We were invited upstairs for pizza and almost didn’t go as we’d been up since 3am and had sort of let down our hair with an ouzo or two and I’d tossed my bra aside – liberated and exhausted.  But we went because we liked them.  Two other friends were there and gradually we got talking about everything they had been through in Mytilini the previous year.  Tents absolutely everwhere even on the footpaths.  No sanitation so everywhere smelt of urine and faeces.  The fear of cholera and typhoid. How they tried to help offering showers and food.  But then at least the people were in transit. Now the doors to Europe are closed and although the refugees had their camps they were angry and running out of money.  I asked how they felt about the refugees now and in chorus Mitzi and Maria her friend said “Mixed feelings”.  Reluctantly Mitzi considered the possibility that the thieves had been refugees .  The things they took (and didn’t take) seemed to suggest it – food, money, mobile phone – nothing else.  It must have seemed an awful betrayal. 

We got to talking about us and I ruefully said I was not needed now.  I was a “voluntourist”.  They roared with laughter and it was clear that the concept was familiar.

 “Things are much more organized now” said Christos.

But there are no easy answers for Mytilini, already reeling from the financial crisis and a sub prime mortgage blowout that have left the hillsides speckled with huge half finished buildings.

The last irony of the day was we, not being trusting Mytilineans had locked our door but unfortunately left the key inside.  Christos had to muster a housebreaking kit to try and let us in.  Fortunately just before breaking a window Mitzi produced a forgotten spare key so we were able to fall into bed and a sleep full of dreams of complicated suffering and useless good will.