Talk at Henley College on the 25th November at 12:10pm

Being a volunteer in Lesbos - refugees' gateway to Europe.

My stories, their stories and how you can help.

Open to visitors. Please register at reception.

To: Students from St Dominic's International School | From: A very proud person

Dear students from St Dominic's International school,

You may not know much about me, so I thought about writing you all a letter and introduce myself.

My name is Sara and I'm a portuguese girl who moved abroad when I was 18. I have had the chance to meet many incredible countries, but most importantly, beautiful people around the world.

I became very sad about the news on TV regarding refugees arriving to Europe and because I had some free time, decided to go and help. I became even more sad when I saw the amount of children (and adults) who didn't know what would happen to their life in the near future and if they would have anyone to play with when they arrived to their new country. 

Miss Robidas contacted me to see what we could do together and I thought: there must be a way that we could show these children that there are many friends in Portugal and all over Europe that want to play with them. We came up with the idea of asking you all to write letters to the refugee children, but what you did went beyond my expectations!

Revista Visao

Today I'm happy and inexplicably proud. Are people allowed to be proud of themselves? Or is it considered show-off? A couple weeks ago I was interviewed by my favourite portuguese magazine. I didn't know what to expect from it but today at 7am I get tagged on a post from my cousin, who works at a newsagent and was stacking the shelves with the new arrivals. It was me on the cover. The tagline reads "Portuguese people that are changing the world". It makes proud not because I am on the cover of the magazine but because someone is actually comparing me with people whom I admire and do work that inspires me everyday! I'm... I'm... speechless.

 

Debriefing part 1

NOTE: I'm sorry if none of this makes sense. It's an attempt to analyse what's been on my mind for the last few weeks. It's messy and confusing. As it should be.

Sitting at the airport between England and Greece is hardly the ideal moment and place to analyse the last few days. But things are racing though my mind and it's hard to stop it from happening.

I realise now, that my days were nothing but normal. I mean... They were normal in that context, but looking back... It was so messed up. I don't think it's normal to spend my days making posters for missing people and stick them around towns. It's not normal to rescue people off boats and hugging them as we all cry. It's not normal for me to say no to people that want warm clothes. It's not normal for children to tell me they are hungry and I can't do anything about it. But here... All of this happens daily. IT IS THE NORM.

Day 30

It's been three hours since I started writing this post and it's still blank.

It's painful to think about the events that happened today. Excuse me as I stick to short sentences claiming the facts. It's impossible to analyse it all. I can't even begin to try. 

We had the day off from Moria so we headed up north to the ace where boats usually arrive. It's 50km north of Mytilini. 

We arrive and go to a local coffee shop to and relax outside sitting at the table doing some casual talk. Then we see someone running towards the beach. We follow through. 

Days 28 and 29

A huuuuuuge THANK YOU to Mariana Soeiro, her mum and friend, who donated some money so we could buy bread to be distributed around the queues of people that are waiting for registration. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Day 26 and 27

For many and various reasons, it's getting very hard to make these posts.

How can I write "today was a good day", when only a few kilometers away 10 children drowned? 

I think I should go back to stick to facts. 

Today I spent the day sorting out different things: I went to distribute some bread to the people waiting at the queue for registration. While there I realised that 99% of the people didn't know how the new system works.

There's tickets issued with numbers and you need to wait until your number shows up on the white board before you can join the queue. For example, if the board says "numbers 1 to 1000" and you have number 300: you can join the queue.

If you have number 1200, you can't. 

It's a hard system to understand if you have no sign explaining it and the police only speaks Greek and a bit of English.