We again had a very quiet patrol this morning with nothing more exciting than a few stray meteors blazing across the sky. This seems to be the norm. Maybe one of us is a "Jonah".
After a short sleep Max and Bill went to a coordination meeting in a nearby town called Molyvos with representatives from all the local NGOs and others who are dealing with the refugees. Adam and I stayed in case we were needed to move the boat. We were woken a short time after getting to sleep by the radio. It was the Greek Coastguard telling the Turkish Coastguard that there was a boat of migrants arriving. This was bizarre. It was daylight and very very late for a boat but Adam and I decided that even though we were only two we would go if it was close enough. At that moment my phone rang and it was Bill calling from the meeting to say that the coordinator of Lighthouse Relief had just been informed that two of their people had been involved in a motorbike accident near Korakas and since there was no medical personnel on call would I go. Of course I said yes and asked them if they were aware of the boat. They weren't and apparently as soon as they repeated the information that one had arrived the room of NGOs emptied.
I was picked up by the Lighthouse Relief camp manager and we made our way with a tiny tiny first aid kit and my heart slightly in my mouth as to what I would find and what I could do. When we arrived it quickly became apparent that nothing terrible had happened, there was only one injured and he not too badly. I assessed him and thought that his foot was broken so we brought him to the clinic in Skala where there was now a nurse on duty who agreed with me and he went to hospital.
The others meantime had gone to assist with the boat. We learned afterward that there had been 44 people including two quadriplegic children. I just want to pause at this point. Max said he'd seen a wheelchair in a boat once and crutches a number of times. Bill, who has worked in camps in Athens, said that it was actually not an uncommon sight. Dealing with disability in a war zone is an impossibility. Dealing with it in conditions of abject poverty is also impossible. They risked everything to arrive in the land of plenty and proper healthcare. Juxtaposed to that was the gentleman this morning who rode a moped down a bad gravel track in flip flops and knew that his E111 card would guarantee him (cheap) healthcare anywhere in Europe!! The privilege of place of birth becomes more apparent every day here
In one of Edward St. Aubyn’s novels a character meets Princess Margaret and makes a critical comment about accidents of birth, to which she responds coldly: “There are no accidents in birth”. I think St. Aubyn is pointing out that we are all prone to the convenient, unthinking assumption that we are entitled to what we have been given by lottery of birth. As well as doing something very directly to help those desperate people, you are providing an extremely moving account of the whole situation – I think because you are being factual and reasonable while letting your feelings shine through – which encourages the rest of us to examine those assumptions. Respect, as my son would say.
ReplyDelete