Arrival

I’m on day five in Greece and almost too much has happened to process.  

I wrote “Arrival” for the heading of this piece and as I did, I thought about how there really was no “arrival” period at all.  I stepped off the plane onto Lesvos at 6:30 am Monday morning after a 24 hour journey with little sleep and sighed with relief.  Hah! Silly me, thinking my day could only be easier from there.

The coordinator for refugee camp volunteers picked me up and drove me to town for a quick coffee.  There is Greece.  And like she said in the movie, “There’s always time for a coffee!”  Then it was on to find a new phone, a hotel room, and off to volunteer registration at Kara Tepe.

We whisked through a camp tour where I quickly forgot how to get anywhere in the maze like setup and then I met the other volunteers, whose names my sleep deprived brain never registered.  Now to work.  Work that day happened to be English class with any refugees who wanted to come and practice.  Lots of young men wanted to practice.  I watched them practice introducing themselves in English.  As we talked, I learned a little more about them.

English would not be their second language.  It would be about their third or fourth.  One man had fled from Syria and come to Turkey.  He waited there a year before he had enough money to pay the smugglers to put him on a boat to Greece.  He had learned Turkish during that time.  At the camp, his neighbors were from Afghanistan and he learned Farsi talking with them.  Now he was learning English.  He hopes to get asylum in Holland.  He thinks he has family there.  I asked him how to say “Hello, how are you?” in Arabic. He told me. He shook his head and laughed at how badly I botched his language, then we tried again.  By comparison, his English pronunciation was amazing.

As I left English to head to the front gate, I realized I had no idea where I was.  Great.  Lost in a refugee camp on my first day.  I thought I might get lost in downtown Mytilene, but I am clearly more talented than I gave myself credit for.  As I wandered around, I saw a view of the Mediterranean and the faint outline of Turkey, where all these people had crossed over and hundreds had drowned on the way and never made it this far.  I walked past their container homes.  Some people sat outside their doors on the ground.  I knew the temperature inside was 115 degrees.  Outside wasn’t much better, but I saw lots of beds under trees.  It was too hot to sleep inside.  I passed women in hijabs carrying water jugs home.  At the water taps, I saw two Congolese women in tank tops also getting water.  I stared briefly at the contrast and wondered how hard it was for two completely different cultures to live side by side.  All the women smiled at me as I passed by.  Children ran everywhere.  I saw a woman cooking over a fire outside her container house.  Her firewood was paper she had taken from the volunteers’ announcement board.  I saw several Arabic men laying on the ground playing cards.  They did not look up as I walked by.  I saw my coordinator.  He told me I was not supposed to be walking around alone and I was in a restricted area.  Lovely.  Got lost and broke the rules on my first day.

We found the gate and I hailed a taxi to my hotel room.  I walked into my room at 7:00 p.m., burst into tears, fell onto my bed and wondered what I thought I was doing here.  You tell God you will go, you will do what He is asking and then you realize the enormity of the task.  What do I understand about having to leave home forever? About having to depend on others for every single thing?  Of how it feels to not know where I will be in 3 months?  Not even which country I will be in.  I cried myself to sleep.

Jet lag woke me up at 2:00 am.  I remembered how overwhelmed the day was and resumed crying immediately.  I opened my suitcase, still crying, found my Bible and sat on my bed and held it.  A Kodak moment you don’t actually want to see.  I turned on praise and worship music and asked God to please come closer.  Matt Maher’s “I Need You” played and I turned it into a plea for the next five minutes.  I begged Him not to leave me alone. I read Scripture and laid back down.

Every morning, I put on my volunteer ID and walked through the gate at Kara Tepe.  I passed out food and tried to control the mass of hands reaching out for “just one more” for the fifth time; I taught English to Afghani women and we laughed as I learned words in Farsi; during reading hour, a five year old with the brightest blue eyes curled his body into mine on our bean bag chair as I read him a Pokemon adventure neither he nor I understood a word of; during ladies night, I watched the women, in the safety of closed doors and windows, strip off their hijabs and coverings to dance their hearts out for two hours; I sweated in the 90 degree heat as we laid electric cable to put electricity in their homes; I prayed when a Congolese orphaned child spit on me in frustration and anger.  Every night I went home wondering how God is going to use me to reach these people.

And now it is Friday. The first week has finished.  I don’t know how God plans on using me here.  But one night, when I was feeling very alone, I heard piano music from the apartment across the street.  Someone was playing a Christian song.  I had not met one single other Christian all week long.  I went to the balcony and stood outside until the song was over.  I has asked God not to leave me alone and He was answering me.  I am not in no man’s land, like I thought.  This is God’s land and He IS here and He knows what He is doing.  I needed the reminder.  I’m ready now. 

Father, show me your people.