Send Angie Back to Greece!

This is my last week with the

This is my last week with the Mobile Info Team for refugees in Greece - الفريق المتنقل لمعلومات اللاجئين ... Hey: let there be no room for any doubt whatsoever! This change is only due to my own will to embrace other field initiatives as I’d planned in the first place, but in truth I’m leaving with my heart bursting, having gained a family I love (just you try to share the whole 24 hours of your days with 12 people, for 4 months, living in the same space, and you will find out that life lasting marriage is child’s play in what concerns relationship intensity), and a project which is absolutely essential in the daily struggle to humanize this limbo.
I’m carrying a lot in my luggage. A whole lot more than 4 months learning and practicing on the legal means framing the destiny of these thousands of people fighting for the right to regain existence. I’m also carrying the experience of stumbling on mattresses and suitcases inside a room for two where four of us slept (we were actually five around middle February), of the 1001 ways to cook aubergine and courgette making magic on a short budget (I swear there are days when I feel sort of green, sort of purple … and perfectly capable of gnu hunting!), of being involved in road accidents (I believe it’s karmic…), of the ecstasy on the weekly bathroom cleaning day (only one who has lived in bunker mode can understand this happiness level), of the emotional bursts that we luckily have in turns (this explains how we keep alive!) – the smiles, the tears, the words, the silences: I carry the experience of sharing.
Damn! I’m broke and the fact steals my sleep, however I am wealthier by the day, inside, in the person I am growing into. And there’s magic in understanding what these statements actually mean outside pretty announcements, all nice and cute on an E-card. It is also about being broke that I want to tell you about.
Asking for help, for money, does not come easy to anyone (or at least that’s the way I see it), and it is not easy at all for me – I had holiday jobs at 13 (yes – 13), I worked partime jobs while at school from the age of 16, I worked fulltime while studying since I was 19, to pay for my university graduation, I worked in my study area from the age of 23, as soon as I left university. I’ve been doing volunteer work in various areas for the last seven years; started back home and moved abroad since 2015. No, I am definitely not a “poor thing”, and no, I am not a saint, just like I’m not some parasite used to living at other people’s expense! I am also not rich, neither have a wealthy family backing me up, which fits 99% of the people I cross paths with along this journey. If the world were to depend only on those befitting these two premises to jump to the front line … well … we’d all be thoroughly fucked! (No, can’t think of a better word to express it).
“Here she comes again with yet another pretty post asking for money so that the hippies can go on vacation!” – it is not out of arrogance that I’ve just stopped replying to this kind of comment, and yet may be it is as I feel that if someone really believes this … well … it is my character that is under judgment on that statement of opinion, and in that connection we haven’t much in common, have we? The hippies, the anarchists, the left-wingers, the jerks, the stateless, the pimps … we’ve been called by all those names and more and asking for help doesn’t come any easier with time, on the contrary, and while in the past I was managing my work budget for my spending, nowadays I am accounting on how much time my given budget will buy me to continue to work, and the anguish lies on the thought of having to stop. In this moment I have a few ideas to discuss in the course of next week, and only after that I can give you an update on my whereabouts, doing what and with whom. At present the only possible forecast is to stay in field until July, as no matter how strongly I came to believe in miracles I still don’t grasp them as a sure thing.
I will not leave this team without first asking you to help them if you can, one more time. This project is very near financial red line as it is not as easy to get big sponsors’ attention when the task results are not as measurable as clothing, feeding, sheltering – at Mobile Info Team we cannot state that we have handed 2000 blankets or 10000 bananas under your patronage, but we can truly say that we have given support to over 550 currently active cases which represent more than 1120 individuals who count on this team to give them answers and aid in the intricate legal processes where they’ve been living in for more than a year. They are not numbers, they are people and each case is managed on a 24 hour availability and the commitment of holding on to it until the moment we hear “I am asylum granted!” or “I am flying next week!”.
I would love to put in words what an emotional roller coaster this is but I just can’t. Nevertheless I still beg you to ask, to speak, to share, to help if possible and with what you can. I leave you information of my personal data and that of the project’s, I ask that if you donate to my account you please do so naming the contact and the destination of your donation – if it is personal, or if it is to the Mobile Info Team, or even if you’d like it to be addressed to another specific use with another team.

• Ângela Marques
IBAN: PT50 0033 0000 4532 3111 4850 5
Millenium BCP
• Stichting Mushkila Kabira
IBAN: NL76 INGB 0007 3490 21
BIC: INGBNL2A

(Read more about MIT work in the link, through the eyes of our beloved Rambling Ruth: http://www.ramblingruth.com/blog/volunteering-refugees-greece-mobile-inf... )

January to April - What about it?

Beloved all,

I am sorry for the lack of constant update during the last 3 months of work (hard work!), but have been mostly underwater struggling to give the extra mile every single day!

As some of you must know, from my Facebook posts, I am now at home, back in Portugal, for 3 weeks, being spoiled by family and close friends - broke and exhausted, but super happy and quite secure of the choices that brought me so far. I will be back in Greece on the 27th and stay for 3 more months, for now, as the budget can't buy me more time, but have faith I will, somehow, manage to go back, again, before the fall until the end of the year - never, ever, stop believing, right?

I have no paper work on the expenses, sorry, am not an organized NGO myself, as you know, but would like to let you a quick summary of how half of your donations were spent, so far:

Total donations: 2100€
Total spent from January to April - 1200€
Total that I donate to emergency winter response from other projects:
Serbia (230€), Chios (90€), Lesbos (110€), Athens (100€) and Thessaloniki and North (120€) : 650€
Total personal expenses - Food, travel expenses, internet and phone communications, hygiene, medicines: 550€ - monthly average: 185€

Now, about what I have been doing, as you may be wondering... despite being in contact with people all over Greece, Jordan and Serbia, I ended up staying based in Thessaloniki, working with the Mobile Info Team – please check our Facebook page as we are still working on the website, despite being a project as old as old Idomeni camp :)
(https://www.facebook.com/mobileinfoteam/) - For now I intend to stay with this project as long as possible, but I won’t compromise with a “forever” (whatever that means on the ground, since we never know how next month will be like), as I do want to grow further and pursuit more, let’s see where the road and the need take me.

With Mobile Info Team I am working in providing asylum seekers information concerning the legal options of the asylum, relocation or family reunification process and pursue up-to-date information about individual cases that feel the need to ask for help to keep the track on what is happening during the long wait. By informing the people and helping them to understand where to go for what information or support (bridging with services or lawyers anytime the need shows) we aim to empower them towards the uncertain that their life become since they left their homes and most of all since the borders closed last year and left them trapped in Greece, in a slow wait for a future on hold.

My week has 7 working days and one day off – Monday to Saturday. We start daily with a morning meeting, at 9h30, where we update about the last day camp/accommodation visit, expose relevant points, doubts, news and do the planning of the day, at 10h everyone is up to it’s on case working or other tasks that may be assigned. Lunch happens in front of the desk, or running to the next info session, dinner has no time set, most of the nights some of us are still working after 10h PM. Seems boring to you? Well, we have no time to feel bored here, this is about people’s lives after all.

I have cried of frustration facing cases that looked like dead ends, with families being teared apart by the system, I have laugh between cheers facing friends getting their asylum granted in Greece, I have shared the anxiety of waiting for a flight after a relocation or family reunification positive decision arrives. This is not a work of daily victories, we don’t get a lot of good days, we barely have good news to give, but in the end of the day we go to bed knowing human dignity is also made of this. People need to eat, people need shelter, people need clothes: yes, they most certainly do! But as we provide them their basic needs we shall not forget that what makes us who we are is our capacity to know our options, to know our way forward, to understand both – this is what we try to provide with our work, this is why I joined this project, and I couldn’t be doing it without your help.

Thank you!

Please don’t hesitated to send me any question you may have, any comment, any suggestion, anything you feel the need to.
Please keep supporting my work helping me to stay on the ground as long as possible: consider donating, if you can. Tell a friend that you think would help, if you can. Give me heads up of new possibilities, if you can.

My gratitude is beyond words, I hope you know that.

Love,
A.