A refugee camp, especially if you’ve never been to one, probably sounds like hell on earth: crammed with unwashed, desperate people living in flimsy, flapping tents, surrounded by insufficient, filthy toilets, human waste, mounds of stinking rubbish, rats and snakes, while forced to wait in long rowdy queues for barely edible food packages. The whole […]
Self-build for refugees, a sobering tale of desperate innovation
I’m in touch with a young man in prison: he has been living in the refugee camp on the Isle of Samos (see photo). He took part, in fact led, some of the recent demonstrations by camp residents against the appalling conditions in the camp. At the same time, he lost his second appeal for […]
Shreds of human sense: refugees and us on the Greek isle of Samos
I love my family, but most of the best Christmases I’ve ever spent have been without them, usually overseas, doing something I never expected to be doing. You get my drift. Right now I’m working with Samos Volunteers, on the island of Samos, that lies close to the coast of Turkey. Which explains the number […]
Why Samos is still the real story of 2018
After a funky few months based in Cambridge (for those who’ve never been it’s very middle England, full of bicycles and wealthy looking students) I am off on my travels again: this time to Samos, an Aegean island in southern Greece, separated from Turkey by the mile-wide strait of Mycale. The local population of Samos […]
