Today I had the experience of a lifetime. I was one of the few privileged (from the Global LEAD group) to witness the “fourth world” of Greece. While our team was helping Praksis organize their donated medicine, their social worker and doctor, Maria and Yanis, took a group of us to the streets of Ammonia. Though I have heard many stories from my mother, being a social worker, I had never fully pictured or felt what actually goes on in these places. On the streets, we witnessed prostitutes (the only people here in heels) standing on street corners during broad day light, saw used bloody heroin needles on the ground, unconscious women in doorways, and drug-addicts walking around with their next dose hanging out of their pants. We then entered a café where only men were allowed. They were mostly Somalian in this particular café, and the women serving them seemed unhappy and terrified. We had to assure them we had no connection to the police to even have a conversation with them. Most of the men could not understand English with the exception of a young man around the age of 20. Maria and Yanis began telling him about Praksis and asking him to translate the information to the rest. They then asked him if we could go up to the apartments to talk to more people. He had to ask multiple people for permission first and made sure their Albanian money collector was not around before he said yes.
As we walked up the stairs, the smell changed to a rotten food and dirt aroma, and the air thickened. There were roaches climbing up the walls, and the electricity was broken. When we went into the first room, I began to feel sick to my stomach. There were ten men standing on top of several thin foam mattresses connected, and they all had holey sheets. There was no room for walking. There was a closet as a bathroom, and one stove and sink in the corner. The few clothes that they had were hanging up along the wall, so they did not take up more room. We apologized for disturbing their privacy, and they acted as if that word was not in their vocabulary. Maria and Yanis handed them all packets of information in Arabic to inform them of where they could get free food, free doctors, free medicine etc. They all acted as if they had never heard of it before though they only lived a few blocks away from Praksis’ main headquarters. We asked them what else they needed help with, and they just said money. We told them all we could do is offer them the right information and resources to get it, but they then weren’t as interested.
We then proceeded to a room of all women. There were two adults and three children in a very tiny space. The woman only spoke Arabic, so we used our new guide to translate. She told us her problem that she had lost both her babies’ birth certificates and did not know what to do. Maria, emotionless, informed her that she needed to bring someone who spoke Greek with her back to the hospital to get another. We asked if any of the men would go with her, and none of them seemed willing because they are terrified of leaving their apartments. If the police ask them for a pink card, they go straight to jail for seven days since they don’t have any. The other woman asked if there was a doctor to look at her sick child. Yanis began to give her information on where she could go to take them, but she still was only looking for instant gratification and seemed displeased. It was nice to see the babies smiling and still know there was some hope in the air.
As we were leaving the streets, I noticed that they used roads to separate the blacks from the whites, no one would look me in the eyes, and everyone was more scared of me than vise versa. There was a big sign that some Greek people had put up that said “Stop drug addiction, Stop Prostitution, Make them leave”. It was interesting to see the immigrants perspective of the Greek people as the bad guys. The police have the view that if they do not see it, it is not happening. They choose not to go into these areas unless they receive enough complaints to make them go there. And if they go there, they usually raid apartments, close them down, and arrest at least 100 immigrants and refuges. Usually they do not have enough room in jails to arrest them all, so they can’t always go.
I chose my life in three words to be “Money Isn’t Happiness” because learning about the way people live here, nothing is materialistic. It makes my appreciation for clothes and things significantly less. I have forever changed.
Emily Oppenheim
No comments:
Post a Comment