Bundanoon adventurer and philanthropist Huw Kingston last week returned to the Mediterranean to lend a hand at refugee camps and wanted to tell the Illawarra what he saw.
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He said the refugee crises touched him many times during his 14,000 trek in 2014-15 and wanted to do more.
Mid-June he visited two camps on the Greek island of Lesvos, Moria and Kara Tepe, as an ambassador for charity Save the Children.
Together the camps house about 3000 people of the 56,000 currently “stranded” in camps across Greece. While more than 2000 children are alone after becoming “left, lost or separated from their parents”.
“Up until the end of last year people were arriving on boats from Turkey: Syrians, Afghans, Iraqis, Pakistanis and others. After registration they moved on within a day or two.
“Now, with the borders across Europe closed and a deal between EU-Turkey in place since March 20, people arriving in Lesvos stay on Lesvos,” he said.
Mr Kingston said the many beautiful people he met were so grateful to be there, but the same sentiments were often heard: “it is not right that poor people should impose upon poor people”.
“Greece is not of course poor by world standards but it is a country in economic crisis that, purely by geography, was and is at the frontline to receive people fleeing desperate times in their own countries,” said Mr Kingston.
The adventurer was touched by many who told him of the circumstances which led them to be there.
He said at Kara Tepe a “highly educated woman” fled Pakistan with her three-year-old daughter after the Taliban beheaded her husband and brother in the local market.
Her only way out was to head to the coast of Turkey and pay a people-smuggler to get them to Lesvos.
“There are sad sides to the camps,” Mr Kingston said.
“The self-harm, high barbed wire fences, the infiltration of smugglers, boredom, loss of dignity, the conditions (for many, tiny tents on angled stony ground are their only shelter) and much more.”
Mr Kingston wanted to share what he saw so others could empathize what refugees go through to try and find peace in their life.
“'Inshallah' - God willing. I am not a believer in any god but I heard many clinging to hope that their God would see them through. This despite the fact you could argue that their religion is bound up in the current madness. I cannot deny that clinging to hope in God may see them through. It may be the only way to retain hope. I don't know; I've never had to cling to a future,” he said.
Save the Children is just one of many organisations helping in the crisis, if you’d like to donate visit: https://donate.savethechildren.org.au/mediterrannee