Tag: Travel for meaning
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Uncertainty and Empty Oceans
Once a week I let go and get away. I escape to the relative normality of a cafe overlooking the ocean and I let the weight of the world fall on me. Sometimes there are tears, sometimes despondence. Usually I manage to get some work done in there too. Todays emotion of the moment is…
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Some Mornings
I know the contours of these mountain ranges like the lines of my palms. Turkey mesmerises me as I gaze into it’s coastlines each morning watching for boats, the faintest white flash somewhere between here and there. Mobile phones beaming light out to the unknown shores, their light reaching us up on our cliff-top lookout as…
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Overnighting at the Olive Grove, Moria.
As certain migrants were refused entrance, they began to give up hope. Despondent shells of humans began to sleep in the mud under the olive trees dotted down the slopes outside Moria.
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A Rainy Sunday in Panagiouda
Gulls swoop and dive, riding the currents of the stormy air, oblivious to the tumultuous conditions south down the shore line. Weather conditions have been dire overnight and the ferry to Athens never left. For a change of circumstance I am feeling cosy and well rested, having to put myself first after picking up a nasty…
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The Evolution of an Island
Like a small child, I eagerly gather around the storytellers of Lesvos. The old-timers who were here before the media circus arrived. Helpers who roamed the island a year ago, but you could be forgiven for thinking I’m talking in decades. Things move quickly, this is not the same crisis it was a week ago,…
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Meeting refugee boats on the South coast of Lesvos
I watched the sun rise over the Turkish Izmir coast this morning. The mountain ranges cast watercolour silhouettes across the sky, the mandarin sun crept up through the horizon. It had been a quiet first night on the night shift, watching for tiny boats out on the horizon. We met in the deserted town square at…
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Evelyn Cafe, a Story of Knitting in Solidarity
Stepping into this cozy little local cafe, it’s only the tittering and laughter emanating down through the stairway that gives the party away. For almost a month now, Mytilini resident Evelyn has been hosting knitting evenings in the upstairs dining room of her self-named cafe. Local Greeks flock to Evelyn Cafe every Sunday evening to…
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The Donation Warehouse and my First Day Volunteering
Today I held the tiniest little jumper I have ever seen. That’s when it hit me: this mountain (and I mean serious mountain) of donated clothes piled up in a hilltop warehouse was all destined to be worn by real people. Wet, cold, exhausted and often sick people. People who risk their lives to seek…
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Arriving into Mytilene, Lesvos
After a long, sleepless, overnight ferry, I have arrived into the port of Mytilene, windswept and dark-eyed but with unyielding enthusiasm. I will be based for at least the next few days. I will spend my first few days on the ground working at a warehouse and assisting to sort donations before heading out to volunteer…
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Stepping Into Lesvos – The Journey Begins
I have been transitioning between two polarities this weekend, via a few days to settle and re-balance myself in London. From a safe bubble-like space of meditation, structure, schedules and safety-nets to a completely different world – one where I will be responsible for my own time management, schedules, finances as well as providing (rather…
