After 4 planes and over 24 hr of flight time (including thank you Athens for dumping my bag out in security and losing things) we arrived in Gevelija, Macedonia. We decided to go right to the camp, though it was night and very cold. Nothing can prepare you for the reality of the camps. Children with no hats, no coats, no socks, and shoes with holes. Mothers with crying babies and nothing to warm themselves or their kids. Babies looking dazed and discolored. Parents begging for medicine for their child. Surrounded when we started to hand hot hats and scarfs. The long term volunteers said not to give people things they have, like shoes (but to me, Keds with holes and no socks are not shoes!). Isn’t it human to want something a little better for yourself when you have nothing? When you’ve suffered bombs, crossing the ocean in a floatie with 80 others, perhaps capsizing and being rescued, enduring one camp after another, long walks, 10 hours sitting on a bus waiting to cross a boarder, unfriendly police?
And the food they give is instant soup. So these are people already suffering from PTSD, they are hungry, cold, scared, unsure and frightened of their future.