Reflections on Humanity #11

My education in the refugee situation was suddenly accelerated a few hours ago. Since arriving in Belgrade Serbia on Tuesday, I have been up to my eyeballs (literally) in donated clothing. There has been such an abundance of clothes donated that a team of six to eight people has been kept busy sorting and organizing it. This has felt like important work, but it has lacked much direct contact with the people seeking refuge. The scene in Belgrade has also been quite serene compared to what I experienced in Vienna because most people arriving from the Greek/Macedonian route are now bypassing Belgrade unless they are waiting to reconnect with separated family members or awaiting money transfer. This means that most of the refuge seekers are Afghanis who have traveled over the mountains from Bulgaria.

At the end of a tiring day of moving and sorting hundreds of bags and boxes of clothing, I suddenly had the opportunity to go to the border with Greg, an Australian volunteer that I met the night before. There have been some reports of a chaotic situation at Presevo, the crossing on the Macedonia border. The information has been very incomplete and unclear which for some reason seems to be a common pattern among the organizations serving people seeking refuge. So, Greg and I loaded his rental car with blankets and warm clothing and made the four hour trip to Presevo.

What we found in Presevo totally astounded me. As of about three days ago, the Serbian authorities began requiring all persons seeking asylum in Europe to register before being granted a 72 hour transit permit allowing them to travel through to Croatia. The border crossing at Presevo is the convergence of multiple migration routes with four to five trains carrying about 3,000 people per day. These people have to walk about 1 km to the border town of Miratovac where volunteers meet them with food, water and transport for the seven km to Presevo. So, around 3,000 people per day arrive in Presevo where they stand in a queue for over a day to get the registration papers. Despite working 24 hours per day, the government workers can only process about 2,000 people per day. A quick bit of arithmetic confirms why the numbers in Presevo are growing.

Downtown Presevo is totally closed by the queue which has reportedly been four people wide and a kilometer long. The street is lined with tents and people shivering in blankets. There are fires burning and trash accumulating. The crowd was becoming increasingly agitated as there was confusion about the process and the need for the registration paper. Some refugees have caught buses north without the required paper and been turned back at police checkpoints. The majority of the people arriving in Presevo are from Syria with over half (estimated) to be families.

There is not enough food in Presevo to feed this number of arrivals in addition to the local residents. The volunteers fear the reaction of the crowd if inadequate food is made available so they are not trying to feed them. This means that a few thousand people are waiting more than a day in the cold without food and adequate water. And the number and wait time is increasing each day. The Red Cross, UNHCR, MSF and a couple of other NGOs are present in Presevo but their presence is limited to the enclosure area where the registration takes place, leaving the care of the people in the queues to volunteers. The professionals from the NGOs also go home at 10 pm leaving all the care to volunteers. There are reportedly 12 volunteers in Presevo and another 40 needed. Almost all of the current volunteers are busy shuttling people from the border to the town of Presevo leaving no one to care for the cold and hungry in the queue. He crowd is becoming increasingly agitated and there is a large contingent of police arriving by bus at each shift change.
With the help of two volunteers, Greg and I distributed all of the blankets and clothes and are now headed back to Belgrade where we hope to recruit and organize volunteers and supplies and money to return to Presevo by tomorrow night.

I cannot begin to describe the heart breaking conditions in Presevo with thousands of people huddled on the ground or pressing the barricades. But even more heart breaking for me was listening to the story of Badwan, the volunteer coordinator. He is an Albanian who arrived in Presevo 15 years ago seeking refuge from the Kosovo war. He was welcomed along with many other Albanians by the largely Albanian community in Presevo. Now these former “refugees” are welcoming this flood of refugees and in the process many of them are experiencing traumatic memories of their own escape. Badwan has been working largely without sleep for several days and he told us that his mother had surgery today for breast cancer and he has not even been able to find the time to visit her.

I honestly don’t know how to respond to the kind of courage and caring that I continually witness here – among the volunteers, the host community and the people fleeing for safety. Everyone has treated me with such courtesy and gratitude and I feel humbled and a bit embarrassed because it is so little in comparison to the need. We as a global community have a flood of vulnerable people in desperate need and our capacity to respond is inadequate to the need. Meanwhile, our governments continue to spend millions of dollars per day dropping bombs that create more displaced people and building fences (literal and figurative) to keep them out.

This is exhausting and heart breaking work yet I feel so grateful to be able to do it. It makes me feel alive and connected to humanity unlike anything I’ve experienced. In the process I am also meeting so many other volunteers from around the world and hearing them also say what a gift it is to be doing this work.

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