The graveyard of life jackets, Lesvos, Greece, April 7, 2016. Photography by Julia Bird.
As I sit on my balcony overlooking the beautiful Aegean Sea, the sun is setting and the weather is perfect, the birds are singing in the trees, and all I smell is the sweet aroma of orange blossoms. I see the land of Turkey across the way, I see the four miles of water that separates us, and I wonder to myself how I can be looking at something so beautiful and horrifying in the exact same moment.
Earlier this afternoon I visited what is called the life jacket graveyard, which is a piece of land that the Orthodox church has let refugees use to throw away their life jackets after they arrive on the shores here in Lesvos. These piles have already been cleared out several times. I walked around with my camera, overwhelmed with the scene the lay before my eyes. Each life jacket represented a person, and no picture that I could ever take would capture the vastness of what I was seeing with my eyes and feeling with my heart. Thousands of life jackets, laying in pile after pile, and all you could hear was the haunting sound of silence.
“All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.” Edmund Burke
Infants, children, women, and men… many had made the four mile journey, many are still making the journey, and many never made it at all. An estimated 400 people are laying at the bottom of the sea, but from what I saw today, that number is just an under estimate. How is it that so many people do not survive a four mile boat ride? My teammate ripped open life jacket after life jacket to find them stuffed with material that was not made to float, that would actually make them sink faster, and in that I saw a whole different kind of evil, one that see’s people’s desperation and makes a profit from it without any concern for human life.
Most of these people come from the desert, and the reality is they don’t know how to swim and have probably never even seen a life jacket before. Smugglers sell life jackets anywhere from $150 to $300 per person, and the boat ride here costs $2,000 to $3,000, when you take into account the smuggler fee, bribing the coast guard, and paying off the police on the beach; a yearly wage for them is around $500 dollars. I saw boats made to hold 30 people and was told that they would come with 50 people, which was almost double the capacity. Some boats sank half way across, and others fell overboard on the over crowded boats and drowned. Some made it to the shores and then died of hypothermia. Some have made it only to be sent back.
A few weeks ago there was a photographer who captured a picture of a deceased child who washed up on the shore, and many people questioned what kind of person would take such a photo… the answer is I would, I would because it was a photo that shook the world, it was a photo that woke people up and brought awareness, that made them actually feel something. I walked around wondering if I could photograph anything that would make people feel what I was feeling. The saying here is that there has to be greater sharks on the land to make people desperate enough to risk the sharks in the water.
Articles of clothing lie mixed in with the pile of life jackets.
Those four miles of ocean represent a Syrian Civil War full of religious persecution, where civilian casualties are the target, where they are trying to bomb people into obedience. Those four miles represent 12 million displaced people, and 500,000 who have landed here on the beaches of Lesvos. Those four miles represent 400 people who have died on the sea, and countless numbers who have died before ever making it to a boat. Those four miles represent a persons desperate attempt to keep themselves and their families alive. Those four miles represent simple Greek fisherman who have done the same thing every day their whole lives now pulling bodies out of the water instead of fish, and Greek bus drivers who once carried people now carrying caskets. Those four miles represent an entire island whose 20% of income relying on tourism is taking a financial hit. When I look out at those four miles I see so much more than just the beautiful ocean.
In times like this its hard not to feel anger and maybe even question what you believe, but I also see God, in the midst of all the heart breaking images. For every ounce of pain I feel for the injustice of it all and for these people, He feels it so much more. These refugees are His children, and He hears their cries. While He loves them so much more than we ever could, we can still be those vessels of love. Through Him we can still be a hope in a dark place. I may not see the bigger picture yet, but I know that there is one. There is a reason that He is unfathomable, that His greatness is beyond anything we can even understand.
There may be a lot of evil people in this world, but I also see a lot of good people who restore my faith in humanity. I see people stepping up to love others, to give them food, water, blankets, tents, clothing, medical care, and encouragment. I see people in their feelings of helplessness having to depend on something greater than themselves.
So there I was, one person standing there surrounded by thousands of life jackets, feeling small and insignificant, realizing that is what it looks like to build the kingdom, and if all I was able to do was touch the life of even one person, that was big, and that was significant.
Even in the Graveyard of 500,000 life jackets, a fire has been lit, and it’s spreading, God is not dead, there is still life.
In my trouble I cried to the LORD, And He answered me. Psalm 120:1
