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Like two figure skaters squatting, father and daughter continue to spin on their own axis over the burned remains of their tent. As she turns, Ibrahim N. picks up a dress from the floor. “My wife bought this on the island,” says the man from Laghman, Afghanistan. His daughter Fatima leans into the dress and then shakes his head: too many burn holes.
It is the first time since the fire about two weeks ago that father and daughter enter the burned camp in Moria. They waited nine days in a cardboard box in Lidl’s parking lot, with no water, no toilets, no opportunity to shower or protect themselves from the sun on the fenced concrete road.
“There will be enough food, water, electricity and Wi-Fi in the new camp,” said a statement from the Greek Migration Ministry a few days ago when panic broke out among the more than 12,000 people displaced after the fire, again without access to enough. Basic care for being locked in a warehouse. “All the empty promises,” says Ibrahim.
She packs a charred kettle into a vegetable box to which she has tied a rope and then dragged it to the new camp along the three miles of asphalt road along the coast. The new tent cities are right on a bend by the open sea in a military target practice area that was still in use shortly before the fire. The soil is yellow and sandy.
Viewed from above, the warehouse appears perfectly organized. The UNHCR tents are side by side by the sea, almost like giant white Lego bricks.
However, if you zoom in, you can see hundreds of people standing in front of large tents in the blazing midday sun, see the ocean waves crashing dangerously near the edges of the tent, the tents collapsing in the wind, as well as children sleeping next to the barbed wire and some fallen Dixie Toilets next to the quarantine station leak.
“The ocean waves are high, but we don’t have running water,” says Ibrahim. Since the fire, the family has only been able to wash in the sea. To date, no showers have been installed. Some women report in front of the store entrance that they shower with plastic bottles in stores. Other families raise money to reserve a hotel room for a few hours during leave and to wash the children.
“Right now, everyone in the camp really needs medical attention,” says Giovanna Scaccabarozzi, who works for the aid organization Doctors without Borders. Many families have burned the transparencies in which people keep their asylum documents and health certificates in the fire. This makes it difficult, especially for chronic patients with leukemia or asthma, to obtain medication or receive adequate care at this time; your documents are now ashes. “The mental strain of those seeking protection is immeasurable after escaping the fire, starving in the street and insecurity in the new camp,” says Scaccabarozzi.
During the days on the street, many people drank from the sewer hoses in the access roads around the police cordon because they had to endure hours in the heat without fresh water. Today many suffer from diarrhea and the effects of dehydration. “The police barely allowed humanitarian aid, water and food on days on the street,” says Scaccabarozzi. “It was the first time we had to treat dehydrated children in the emergency clinic. That didn’t even happen in Moria, where people had little access to clean water.” The aid organization demands the immediate evacuation of the people from the new temporary camp, which does not cover basic supplies.
“We have seen so much bad things in Moria in the last few months,” says Mustafa K., who reportedly arrived on the island a year ago and has been waiting for his asylum procedure ever since, “I can’t do this here anymore. Do this. words “. The single Sudanese man has lived in a tent with dozens of other men for more than a week. “They all crowd here,” he says, “and they’re hungry.” Most of all, however, he was surprised by the accommodation of the more than 240 corona patients who tested positive. “When people are sick, they need a mattress to rest and not a prison,” says Mustafa.
The quarantine section right next to the entrance consists of some larger UNHCR tents, which are fenced off with barbed wire and red and white barrier tape. At a press conference last week, a man sits in a wheelchair with his hands up. “Why?” He asks. Bulldozers rush down the street where the photographers are. The man can hardly be understood in the wind.
