Camp experience shows we are one world with many borders

Refugee is a word on everyone’s lips at the moment. Some people associate negative connotations with this word, while others see the plight of refugees as a call to action. Few people in the western world, however, see refugees as people that are like themselves, teachers, bus drivers, doctors living in houses coming home for dinner and then one day their life, their sense of normality is turned upside down by war and political unrest. They are left destitute, the lives they had built and maintained no longer exist, and the only thing that they are concerned about is getting their families to safety. This “safety” is often a tent in an overcrowded refugee camp located on “no man’s land” in a country that does not want them and sees them primarily as a problem. Here they are essentially left to fend for themselves, provided little food, and dependent on medical assistance from under-resourced not-for-profits. Meanwhile they wait…. and wait ... for a country to allow them entry and just maybe an eventual opportunity to again enjoy the rights and dignity of citizenship.

I was given the opportunity to volunteer in one such refugee camp in Lesvos, an island off the coast of Greece about 15 kilometers from Turkey, the location determined not by happenstance, but by cold hard facts. According to the UN, Turkey currently hosts at least 3.6 million refugees. Lesvos serves as a beacon to these refugees because it is close enough for refugees to reach via rubber dinghy. The price per dinghy seat a mere 1,500 euros (About $2,000 CAD), which is paid to a smuggler with no guarantee of arriving alive. One of the refugees advised me that they were able to obtain a discount when they advised they “could drive.”

Many dinghies end up at the bottom of the ocean, or washed up on the shore along with a heartbreaking collage of personal belongings, but without the brave souls that occupied the vessel’s pricey seats. However, thousands of these refugees have survived this journey, and arrived not to freedom, but to a life of quasi-incarceration in the camp. Specifically, Camp Moria, whilst in the camp the refugee is to apply for asylum to different countries, but they only have four chances to receive asylum, if denied they are sent back to wherever they came from.

While at the camp I volunteered my services as a medical doctor, and this is what I did: I worked with an organization named Kitrinos, which means yellow in Greek, being the colour of the ambulances. The organization had a makeshift medical clinic in the camp where I worked with other volunteering doctors, nurses and translators.

Kitrino’s volunteers staffed the clinic’s night shifts, and also ran a scabies clinic. The latter was born out of necessity due to an outbreak of the human itch mite (Sarcoptes scabiei var. hominis), which burrows into the upper layer of the skin where it lives and lays its eggs.

Being from, and having completed my medical training in South Africa, I can say that the camp’s facilities were reminiscent of the under-resourced medical facilities where I completed my community service in the township of Khayelitsha, near Cape Town. The medications, instruments and supplies were all from donations, but having become accustomed over the last seven years to working in Alberta, there was a lot missing. Despite this we just made do, as I had in Khayelitsha.

The doctors who volunteered were not permitted to transfer patients to the Greek hospital without the approval of Greek officials. This resulted in what I perceived as a medical decision, giving way to economic concerns. There were instances where the hospitals resisted the admission of surgical cases, even when it was a matter of life and death. The resistance was rooted in the fact that the refugees could not pay. Despite the political barriers we continued our work.

I experienced a lot in South Africa: AIDS and tuberculosis were rampant, and gunshot and stab wounds were commonplace.

However, even this background left me unprepared for the sense of despair and hopelessness that pervaded the camp. We provided basic treatment, but we were powerless to make them well, as they were constantly faced with the realism that avenues to the normalcy they once enjoyed were limited.

Most saw no way out of this situation, and it was hard to blame them. Many of the refugees came from countries with great medical and dental coverage, they had beautiful homes and jobs. They lost everything and now even if they were fortunate enough to be given asylum, they will be confronted with the prospect of starting over. In other words, even the luckiest among them, will be forced to start from the bottom in countries where their degrees are not recognised, they cannot speak the language and where they will realistically face prejudices due to their ethnicity, religion and their new socioeconomic condition. In South Africa, what they had was all they knew, and many could still envision something more. Whereas with the refugees all they knew had been ripped away, and from this point they faced the potential of years of camp life, moderated only by some hope of asylum, which offers only an opportunity to start from the bottom. Or, as many had or were nearing their final opportunity for asylum, they face the prospect of being returned to the country they had escaped from, where they had nothing left at best, or at worse where they faced the real probability of death.

All I could do was help them with their rash, their cold, or other ailment in that given moment. I could talk to them about their anxieties, their worries about their families back home, but I could not relieve them of their true burdens. I could not give them asylum, and even money would have done little to better their circumstance, but with translation, I could at least listen, and this seemed to do more than anything else in my power. Even if it was just a momentary relief that I provided, I remain hopeful that I was able to do some good.

The patients in the camp helped me to see where many of my refugee patients came from and helped me appreciate the battles they fought just to get to Canada. They helped me see news articles as being about the very real plights of millions, and not just as some distant problem that does not affect me.

I hope the experience has made me both a more empathetic doctor and a person in general. In some small way maybe, this article might offer a bit of the same to those that read this, and even more to those that give it some genuine thought.