An Allred's Adventure

This statue is right at the port of Mytilini, basically she is Lady Liberty of Lesvos. Lesvos has always been an island that refugees come for, the first boat of Afghani refugees landed here 20 years ago. But it has only grown to this degree of crisis in the past 4 years.  These are the boats that refugees travel here in. I took this picture one morning before we took the ferry to Turkey. A boat of refugees had just landed and they were waiting on the blue bus to the left of this boat to be taken to Moria camp. I was shocked to actually see a boat and refugees right after they had gotten out of the water. Today 8 boats arrived in Lesvos, carrying 329 people. That many boats haven't come in one day since 2015, when the crisis was at its worst. The camp has over 10,000 people now, over 3 times its official capacity. I met a woman from Turkey a few weeks ago at a meeting that I attend every week. This meeting is for our main partner, Synaparxi, which is made up...

The barbed-wire fence surrounding the vulnerable protected zones/sections decorated with flowers.  I've been here in Lesvos, Greece for 11 weeks now, and I haven't left much time for reflection. The busy schedule and 14 hour work days easily occupy my mind and not much brainpower is left behind for reflection and contemplation. But this next series of blogposts will be my reflections on the time I have spent, some reflections retrospective, some real time, and some more oriented towards life outside and after Greece. And by Greece I mean everything from living here in Mitilini, Lesvos, to working in Moria, to the refugee crisis in general, to politics, including personal, national, and international opinions. Sometimes these posts will be my thoughts, and sometimes they will just be my observations that I haven't quite processed or formed an opinion about yet. First reflection: There are two sides to everything here, paradoxes if you will. Beauty and ugly. Happy and...

A few days ago, a group came into the Moria Refugee Camp's protected zone, specifically to the sections of unaccompanied minor boys, to teach about dental hygiene. We were told to prepare for a dentist to come in who was going to help all of the boys. We were expecting dental check ups and cleanings, and considering the fact that there are only 4 or 5 dentists working in the entire refugee camp of over 7,000 people, dental care is a big gap and the boys were extremely lucky to receive this special care. However, when the dental group came in, they gathered a few of the boys together, pulled out a large dental study model (aka huge dentures) and showed the boys how to brush their teeth. As I was leaving the camp that day, one of our refugee interns, Mohammad from Iraq, chuckled and said "I don't know why they are wasting their time. All of these boys know how to brush their teeth. Most of them are Muslim. We wash our selves 5 times a day, and they think we don't k...