In all the stories about injustice and lack, sorrow and helplessness, there’s also the one about the wondrous nature of this island.
Here on this island—still a strange one—cynicism and the gloom that seems to have settled over the world like a grey veil haven’t taken hold. There have been more than enough reasons for that to happen, but still, no.
I see it with my Greek shopkeeper friends: they carry each other’s things when it’s busy, chat and smoke on the terrace when it’s not, and gossip about everyone (now also about me—whatever I do, someone has seen it and shared it). Meanwhile, Litza and George are being comforted in their endless grief over the death of their daughter.
The hairdresser yesterday, whose card machine didn’t work, said, “Oh, just bring it another time.”
And the Greek restaurant guy—who looks like a pirate and serves me the fish he chooses every Monday—had the same card issue and, with a big laugh, said, “Ah, just forget it.” Mind you, I was his only customer.
Then there are the people from the Greek organization Sini Parxi, who bring together people from the camp and Greeks in a former ouzerie, providing breakfast, food packages, and evenings of poetry in twenty languages.
That atmosphere of Welcome! Whoever you are, whatever you are. That’s this island too.
I fear I’ll often be staring out the window at Haella, longing for this simple, cheerful exuberance and the we live today and make something beautiful of it spirit.
The kind of thing you also find in places once soaked in deep sorrow. When you know how broken it can all be, grab life by the claws, the scruff, or whatever you can—because tomorrow it could be over.
We all fumble our way through—so we might as well fumble together.
On this island, we see the outgrowth of immense, indigestible injustice.
We see people who, with all their heart and soul, want to do something about it.
And on this island, those who dare and want to can learn to slow down, take their time, be kind, and live in the here and now.
And so I take two things with me.
First, an even stronger sense of mission: to tell the whole world that what happens here, on Samos, and in so many other places, is unacceptable—we must do everything we can to support those who are working to change it.
And second: that it’s up to us to find, create, and be the places where kindness and trust are the beginning and the end.
Simple, yet essential.
Lovingly fumbling our way through together, so the world becomes just a little more bearable.
We are not doomed. It’s not hopeless or over.
As long as we do something.
However small.
However shaky at times.
Still—something.