Day 8

The good news of the day is that we have sorted out our accommodation for the next 4 weeks. All the hotels in Lesvos are either booked or too expensive. All the organisations are staying at the hotels and it really is impossible to find a room available. Through a series of events that happen last week, I was put in contact with the local scouts. They offered to help  and found a guy that is the Cubs leader an also a university student in Mytilini that has a free room in his house from next Sunday (in 8 days). We met him today and we are so thankful for his help! Thank you Manolis!! 

In return he asks us to help him on Sundays with the scouts group because he is a single leader for all the kids. Deal! 

Because of this we missed our lift to the camp in the morning again. We were told the high commissioner for the Refugee agency from the UN was coming to Lesvos. We tried to find the conference he was helping because this guy is someone I really look up to and I would have loved to meet him. He's Portuguese and called Antonio Guterres. I aspire to one day work with/for him. Oh well... We weren't lucky with the search so we headed to the port. It was very different from the day before and I really think it had to do with this guy's visit. It was very clean, all the bins were empty, there weren't many people and the waiting room at the port where toilets and seats are provided, was open!! Over the whole week I've been here I never saw this open for refugees to go in. 

Nevertheless we took our bubbles and stayed or a while. 

As the sun went down a van came to deliver food. We had seen it before. It's a group of volunteers (no organisation) that cook and bring it to the port. The queue was huge. People came from all sides. 

We have a feeling that there's no boat tonight and all these people will have to sleep out. On top of that there's bad weather approaching.

To finish with some positive news though, we. We were walking around looking for the UN guy we found some information points for the refugees. 

As I wrote before, there's many people trying to take advantage of the refugees and overcharging for trips, food and items that should be free. The people of Mytilini were outraged by this and decided to make these posters stating the average price of common items. It even says that the price of the taxi trip is 3.50€ (some taxi drivers charged 20 PER PERSON!!!!). Such a good way to make people feel welcomed! Well done Mytilini!