The starving children in Moria and Konstantino’s shining smile

By: Ronbir Mohammad

Konstantinos is a bearded man. His kind of beard is called “a mixture of mung beans and rice” in Kurdish. I’ve never seen his smile be absent for more than two minutes; all of his actions start and end with a friendly smile. A few weeks ago he appeared on Lesbos with his moustache, his universal heart and a huge pot in which he cooked food.With an enormous ladle he stirred the soups, in parks that homeless people had made into their homes, in neighborhoods where people lived whose income and livelihood was swallowed by the European economical dictatorship. He said: ”I want to feed the refugees.”

Our team assisted ”Food for All”, as he called this work, in the distribution of food among refugees. Circulating his magical ladle, he took the spices in his palms and added to the food. Many refugees wanted to participate and he included everyone. With his charisma and compassionate gestures he was able to convince everyone to stay in the queue. ”Everyone is going to eat” he called out. When the food finished and not everyone had got a portion he said that he would prepare more food. The people dispersed, and the saucepan was again filled with water, ingredients and spices. Konstantinos prepared food as if he was dancing.

The camp for none-syrians is called Moria. It is four kilometers from Kara Tepe were the Syrians are kept. Moria is a barbed-wired closed first reception centre funded mostly by EU. People are held inside the facility for some days and then they get the permission to leave the facility and the island. Right now there are at least 5000 people outside the closed reception center. They are waiting to enter the facility in order to get their papers. Those people do not have access to water and food. Many people can not afford buying bottled water and food from the village of Moria which is ten minutes away by walking.

Konstantinos had already been cooking there for the people but with some difficulties such as organising the queues and other logistics. He wanted to distribute food by going from tent to tent. Our team and some other volunteers went to Pikpa, the community run refugee camp in Mytilene, where food was prepared both for the people who live at Pikpa and also for people in Moria. Around 1500 packets of food were put into big boxes. We had our concerns about the way they wanted to distribute food in Moria. We knew how difficult it would be. But the volunteers were busy with the distribution of clothes and many other things, there was no time for a meeting. We went to Moria. I was the only one from CPT who was with them, my team mate was welcoming a third member just arriving.

Moria reception centre is on a height which can be reached by a tiny way from the main road. We stopped the cars in the beginning of the tiny road. As soon as we got off the cars some people showed up and wanted to get food. The majority of them were young men but also many women and children. We told the people that they would go back to their tents and we would come. “We do not have any tents” some of them said. “We are on the top of the hill, the food is not going to reach us, we have small children who are starving” some others said. In the beginning, we could distribute some food to people in their small tents. The number of people surrounding us increased more and more. We realized that it was impossible to go from tent to tent. We told the desperate crowd to sit down so that we would be able to give them food. They sat down. But as soon as we took out a packet hundreds of hands wanted to get it. We were not able to distribute food like that. People were too hungry and too desperate. Konstantinos was waving with his hands and shouting and clapping compassionately on the shoulders of the starving refugees but neither he nor we could do anything to manage the crowd.

Picture from Moria by demotix.com

We tried to organise queues. A line for men and a line for women. It worked for a little while but then we were surrounded by people who did not want to stay in the queue because they were too hungry. Soon, there was not even space to move our hands. We decided to stop the distribution. “I have three kids” said a woman who was carrying a baby. “They have not eaten for two days now, please give us food”

I saw my mom’s face in her face, I saw myself carried by her. I was ashamed because of our failure. I was angry about all the thousands of people at Moria who are totally abandoned by EU, NGOs and the greek government.

It was very hard to withdraw from the starving people with the food inside our cars. We were around five hundred meters from Moria when we stopped the caravan. Some refugees came after us and said that we should leave the food with them so that they could distribute it by themselves. We gave them all of the food and we saw them returning to the people with it.

We went back, disappointed and shocked, feeling that we had forsaken the refugees. But we were a tiny group of volunteers who tried to help. In fact, those who are forsaking them are the EU and the big NGOs who do not do enough to prevent people from suffering of hunger and thirst. Moreover, if the Greek authorities had taken responsibility in order to ease the procedure, the situation would not have been as disastrous as it is.

Back at Pikpa a party is going on. I and Konstantinos are sitting far away from everyone. He gives me a long Winston. We light our cigarets and fill our lungs with their poisonous smoke in order to disperse the dark smoke in our souls that our disability to help our starving sisters and brothers have created. “Next time I shall cook there so that they come and help me and feel included” says Konstantinos and lets his mustache-decorated lips shine in a smile.