Nea Kavala & Eko: A Place of Strength and Resiliance

Kourtni Jefson
Jun 3, 2016
4 min read

As Americans we have privileges that a lot of people around the world do not. We have a passport that gets us into any country, access to clean water, a roof over our heads, and generally, we live in a safe environment. While visiting refugee camps near the Greek Macedonian border, my eyes were opened to how quickly those things can be stripped away from you. The refugee camps are full of people just like us. People who once had their own homes, professions, and a normal life-again, just like us. Although their ideologies, political structure, and customs may have been different than ours in America, their lives were still as normal as any of ours. I realized this while meeting several families and their children.

These people are not looking to use their conditions in Syria and Iraq as an excuse to move away and find a better life elsewhere. For these people, home is home whether it be Syria, Iraq, or any other place. The refugees came to Greece because they were truly afraid of the life they were living at home. Imagine if America was in the same situation. Leaving your home, your friends, family members, and job behind to spend every dime you had on a two month (or longer) journey to a safer place only to lose family members or live in a tent for months at time is a hard decision to make, but the people in these camps had to make those decisions and do those things. These people had to leave their homes because of the continual fear they had day in and day out. The last thing these people want to do is stay in a refugee camp forever, ultimately these people want to make it back home.

Imagine your kids hiding in fear every time an airplane flew overhead. Imagine your house being destroyed by bombs. Imagine your city and homes being raided and taken over by Daesh (ISIS). For many of these refugees, this was their reality. Imagine seeing children walking through the camp with a limp because they still had fragments of shrapnel from bombs in their legs. Imagine your child being born in a refugee camp far from home. These are children under the age of 10 who have already experienced more destruction than some Americans experience in a lifetime. These are the children who still, every time they see an airplane hold up their hands and shoot at it because airplanes brought destruction. Yet, at the same time, these same children have so much joy and so much life within them. They have experienced a lifetime of destruction, yet they are not defined by their struggle. I envy their strength and resilience.

These people are some of the most incredible people I have ever met. An Iraqi man and his family from Raqqa whom I interviewed for one of my packages on the refugee crisis invited me into their tent after my interview. Of course, I agreed. I took off my shoes at the opening and stepped into their 10x15 foot tent, their whole world for the past few months. In those moments I really got to know him and his family. Immediately, the man who has virtually nothing was tidying up his playing cards on the ground, moving cushions (his family’s beds), and pushing pillows my way to make me, of all people, feel comfortable. I’m nothing special but he and his family treated me as if I was important. The man and his wife immediately offered me, my professor, and colleague each a juice box. These people have so little and yet they were offering us, who have so much, close to all that they had.

The generosity, humanity, and joy for life these people have, made me think about my reality if I were in their shoes. I do not think I could be as loving and full of life and these men, women, and children. As I walked through the camp and passed each tent one by one, I never failed to get a hello and a smile. It would be so easy for these people to be so angry about the situation they were put in, but instead these people make the best of every moment given to them. The people who have lost their lives, family members, and friends are just like us. They are people and they should be treated like people. They did not choose the hand they were dealt in life.

As I arrived back to my four-star hotel room at the end of the day, took off my dirty clothes and hopped into the shower to wash off the dirt and grime I had all over me from the one day I spent in the camp, I could not help but think of those I had met. The people who no longer have the privilege of a hot shower, meals at their will, a bed raised above the floor, and a room with actual walls. The journey to the refugee camp not only opened my eyes to how blessed I am to be an American, but also to how much more I need to appreciate the little things; the simple things in life. The experience I had in these camps only solidified my passion for journalism-my passion to ultimately tell the stories of those whose stories would otherwise be left untold.