Things refugees have said to me that have really stood out
A Libyan man in Athens told me, “I like Greece because I am alive here.”
A little Syrian boy told me he liked Greece because he told sleep through the night without bombs going off.
A Syrian woman and I had a conversation at the post office where she told me she wasn’t even sure she could get mail to her country.
There is this adorable Somalian boy who runs to school every morning and every time I see him he stops and ecstatically tells me “good morning!!!” and bolts away and his dad is always behind him, running after him with his backpack.
There is a family of refugees that live on the beach and when I was walking down the beach at night I had a long conversation with them about how they finally felt safe and how it was just this enormous weight off their shoulders to finally be in Greece.
There is a Libyan man who I see every dawn feeding the stray dogs with his leftover food and he is the sweetest person ever. He told me he does it because he wants to “spread good fortune while he has it”.
I gave a little boy who sits in front of the market a huge bag of like $25 worth of food and clothes and he actually jumped for joy and now every time I see him he hugs me.
I gave a refugee mother and her daughter a suitcase full of clothing and $20 worth of food in Athens, and everytime I saw the girl she would run up to me and hug me, telling me I was her good friend.
This isn’t something someone said, but it still really sticks out in my mind. in Ierapetra we have a church that used to be a mosque, and as with the church that used to be a mosque in Athens, I notice that whenever I walk past there during salat I see people praying!
Refugees are lovely people who deserve to live and you need to let them in! I have never felt safer than I feel living in a town full of refugees.
