by Anthi Pazianou
MYTILENE, Greece, Aug. 30 (Xinhua) -- Ramazan, a 31-year-old refugee from Pakistan, has been waiting for five months in the camp of Moria on the Greek island of Lesvos for his asylum request to be examined.
He did not expect to find a welcoming space for refugees, yet found not only language and creative education, but also legal and social aid from locals at the Mosaik Support Center.
During its six weeks of existence, 400 refugees and immigrants hosted in Lesvos camps have been registered in the center located in Mytilene, the capital of Lesvos. The center provides support beyond basic amenities, providing the refugees with access to legal and psychological aid, the opportunity to work creatively, education, and steps towards integration.
Volunteers from the organizations "Lesvos Solidarity" and "Borderline Europe" run the center, funded by personal donations from all over Europe. The center also provides bus tickets, financed by Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), so that the refugees can be transferred by the local buses from their camp to the center and back.
Since the implementation of the EU-Turkey deal, Lesvos has ceased to be a place of registration and transit for refugees bound for northern Europe, and has been transformed into a limbic space of indefinite waiting for asylum requests to be processed. The number of people trapped on the island stands at around 5,000, leading to frustrations among refugees.
In June, volunteers started the project of renovating the center's premises, a listed building in downtown Mytiline dating back to 1868. There is a waiting list for the courses, so that the Mosaic doesn't become overcrowded.
"We do not want people in queues and we do not want to bother the neighborhood," the volunteers say.
A German volunteer from "Borderline Europe", Julian Koeberer, told Xinhua that by offering language lessons to refugees and locals, "we encourage the inclusion of the local society and discourage segregation within the refugee population itself."
The center also employs members from both the refugee and local communities as translators, legal advisors, language teachers, etc.
In an attempt to create frameworks through which refugees give back to the local community rather than feeling passive and dependent upon others' aid, the center also introduced activities led by refugees themselves, such as Arabic and Farsi lessons for locals and cooking classes, to promote mutual cultural exchange and support, said Efi Latsoudi from "Lesvos Solidarity".
One such ongoing activity is an recycling workshop, which gives refugees the opportunity to earn their own money by transforming discarded life vests into reusable items such as backpacks to be sold throughout Europe.
Yiorgos Tyrikos, a local resident and an activist in "Agkalia" organization thinks that there is a great albeit facile gap between refugees and locals.
"It is the language barrier, a superficial one that needs to be bridged," he noted.
Tyrikos also said that mutual language lessons between refugees and locals give them the opportunity to understand each other, to come closer and to finally see that "otherness" is not a monstrous entity but a way, through difference, to better understand oneself.
After the lesson, "Agkalia" offers dinner, as food in Moria camp is poor and sometimes refugees need to wait for hours to get it.
According to Tyrikos, the Mosaik is not only about learning, "it is also about getting in touch with people, about asking why you are here and about communicating the experience."
"We learn their stories, stories of persecution, of poverty, of war and of the need to move on to safer places. And we talk about them, we write about them," said Tyrikos.
