In March I was supposed to join the Psychosocial mission of the Boat Refugee Foundation (BRF from now on) on the Island of Lesbos. Not only did the extreme right people terrorize the volunteers, within the same week Covid hit Europe and going was no longer an option.
I had accepted that I was no longer going. Instead I went back to teaching and arranged a job at the daycare center for the summer. During my first day at the daycare, I got an email from BRF, asking if I could join their mission as soon as possible. The camp had reopened and they wanted to start up the mission as quickly as possible again. Unable to quit my job on a whim, I told them I could join in two weeks.
Two weeks later, on the 27th of July I was boarding the plane to Lebos. Uncertain of what I would be doing exactly, what I would see, how the upcoming months would look like.
The first week was spent in Quarantaine. To ensure that the volunteers of the NGO would not bring Covid into the camp, many precautions were taken. The first one being the quarentaine, and this quarantaine was strictly enforced. I was allowed to spend an hour a day outside, either at the beach or hiking, always wearing a mask. My groceries were placed in front of my room, with the volunteers standing 1.5 meters away with their masks on as well. As soon as quarantaine ended, I was brought to the Red house, the main volunteer house of BRF. This is where we had our meeting, where the coördinators worked from, where the pharmacy was and were about 20 volunteers lived. I became one of them, but very quickly realized that this was a bit much for me. I moved to an AirBnb near by, and into the Sea house a few days later. The seahouse is also a BRF house, but only for living and therefore a lot more quiet and peaceful.
I was there to join the Psychosocial mission (PSS), before Covid times, this mission included the school, the library, social rounds, english classes, computer classes, mental health classes and stress relief classes. Due to the lock-down, all the programs had been shut down. Now they slowly had to be rebuilt, starting with the school.
A little background information on the school before continuing. The school of Hope is a Farsi speaking school. Moria had 5000 children, many of these children are not able to gain a proper education and many have never experienced any form of formal education in their lifetime. The school of Hope was unable to provide formal education but aimed to be a safe haven for a few children and teach them some basic knowledge along the way. Unable to provide this safe haven to all the children, or even a large portion of it, the school focuses on the largest population of Camp Moria, the Afgan people who speak Farsi. Due to the Corona rules and regulation inside the camp, only 15 children were allowed inside the classrooms (isoboxes). To optimize the capacity, the children would get 1.5 hours of education. This way, up to 90 children a day had access to education. On the larger scale of things, this number is still peanuts, but it was everything to these children.
The classes are taught by Farsi speaking refugees with a teaching background. Working for BRF and being able to teach again gave them a purpose in their day again, a way to do good, to help others that are in the same missable situation. Additionally, these teachers, way more than I would ever be able to, understood these children, spoke their language, are familiar with the teaching-style that these children are used to and know how to make these children feel seen and listened to again. And though my hands were sometimes itching (is that an english expression?) to introduce other ways of teaching or to teach myself, I can only respect these teachers for all that they did, for the way they were with the kids, for the safety they offered and their hard work. They were some of the most hardworking, motivated and kindhearted people I have met.
And the kids? I don’t think I haver ever seen children as eager to get to school as the children in Moria. The school of Hope was for all children between the age of 6 and 10 year. There was a constant change of students, kids that got to go to the mainland, children that were sent back home, families that moved to the city. Whenever a place would open up, a new child was invited to join the school. These new children were taken from the waiting list. Once every couple of months, people could sign up for the waiting list, usually it was filled with hundreds of names of children who were praying to be accepted to the school. Once they were called to join, they got a notebook, a pencil, an eraser and a pencil sharpener. Everyday they would bring this with them to school where they would follow classes in English, Farsi, Math and Crafts.
And while the teachers were teaching and the children were studying, I was observing, supporting and problem solving. Cause believe it or not, but teaching in a refugee camp brings many problems. For example the one time where the sewer system did not properly work anymore, and before too long our entire school(ground) was flooded with dirty water. But problems are there to be fixed, and most were.
Until the problems became impossible to fix. Just three weeks after the school had reopened, the camp management decided to increase the precautionary measures to keep the camp corona free. One of these measures was to shut down all unnecessary activities, including schooling. From that point on we were no longer allowed to enter the camp, let alone the school. To continue the education we tried to provide the children with homework. The international volunteers, together with the teacher living outside of the camp would prepare these, we would drive to the camp, hand them over to the teacher living inside the camp and they would try to find the 90 kids within the 13.000 people to hand them their homework.
Unfortunately all the measures were not enough to keep covid out….
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