We drove up at 4:30 for our shift until midnight on my fourth night working at the transit site. People and trash were everywhere. We could not even pull our car into the parking lot to get us any where near the front entrance. Immediately I felt the weight of the situation my team was walking into.
Fires were sprouting up everywhere. Literal and figurative ones.
Inside was over capacity, but outside the fence the refugees kept coming. Just when I thought we would have a reprieve and I would start to wrap my head around what to do with the size of the crowd, another two full vans would pull up.
People in their metallic emergency blankets would tumble out, handing me their children and bags as they gained their feet under them, and then we would be told another couple boats had come ashore. Another 100 people at least.
The mob mentality was starting to take form. As we started to reach capacity, we were told the last bus had come. It was 9:30 PM and we were expecting them to run until at least 11:00. There were hundreds crammed in line outside the fence and they were getting restless. We would let 5 people in and the crowd would surge forward like we had let in 50. Children were slammed against the fence screaming, pregnant women were crushed as they held a second child in their arms weeping, and men were yelling out their frustrations escalating the crowd further.
I was told to get inside the fence.
I have never felt more overwhelmed or helpless in my life.
The dividing fence between the families and single travelers was trampled. When we told the crowd we were not taking any more people in for the night and they would not gain access to a bus tonight and have to sleep outside, chaos ensued.
I had a women tell me through a tear streaked face she wished she was back in Syria. “It is so much better back home, much much better in Syria. I just want to go home.” She had been traveling for weeks and wanted to go back, she wanted a place again to call home.
I don’t know what their lives were, but it made me realize not everyone was fleeing because they were in poverty or escaping to a better life. Everyone was fleeing because of a war torn country, and class status does not give immunity to a war. Some people left behind successful and well to do lives. They left behind designer clothes and nicer cars than I will probably ever hope to own. Others fled an unfinished university education or a promise that they were always guaranteed one. They left because they did not have a choice; it was quite literally a life or death decision.
The comfort of home was lost to them. Most of them, their homes had been raided or burned down or bombed. Nearly 12 million Syrians have been forced from their homes by the fighting and over half of them are children under the age of 10.
I met Ricardo, another volunteer, who told me his story of how when he was two he had been a refugee in El Salvador and had experienced so much in his life. He brought a lot of light into my life on such a dark night. He showed me how to take it one person or one family at a time because it is all we can do when circumstances escalate like they did. Just focus on the individual. So we took clothes to a soaking wet family of 6 outside of the fence and discreetly helped them change. I told Ricardo thank you and he didn’t even understand why I was thanking him. But it was exactly what I needed, to be shown I can help even when I feel helpless, and these people are individuals, not a faceless mob, and to love them as such.
When we left the site at midnight, I still felt like we were leaving so much undone behind us though.
Photo: AnnaKate Auten
The next night, my fifth night, was the same 3:45-midnight shift. However, we arrived to a much different atmosphere. Not as many people were coming through as the night before and the parking lot leading up to the line out front of the gate was not as chaotic.
Yet, with each new van pulling into the parking lot came a new sense of anxiety and fear of being overwhelmed like the previous night. So I began to pray peace. I walked around the parking lot trying to pray for other things too, but the Lord kept giving me the word peace. So I prayed peace.
Lord, peace over this lot, peace at the front gate, peace in the other volunteers here, peace in the clothing tent, peace with the kitchen and tea making, peace in the arriving refugees, peace on the water, peace as the line gets longer, peace in our translators as they speak, Lord, peace in my own heart.
And peace He gave during that night at the transit site.
“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.”
John 14:27
The chaos will come and the mobs will form, but I have faith in the Creator to be sovereign over it all even when it does not make sense. And so much of this does not make sense. So in the mean time, I will pray peace and understanding in my moments of feeling overwhelmed or anxious. Because I know His promises, prayer becomes my greatest weapon.
