Friday18th

Our thoughts this morning were with the 100s of people, adults and children, who we saw at our car boot first aid clinic who, despite injuries, blisters, feeling unwell could not be persuaded to spend another night on the pavement.  They set off in the late afternoon to walk to Kalloni, the first part of the journey is a punishing 4-5km uphill climb.  Even at this time 32 degrees.  So although we had intended to spend our last day restocking and handing over our first aid kit, we decided instead to load up the car with food and water again to distribute to people walking along this route.

We arrived at the transit camp in Kalloni to discover that there had been an incident and a volunteer had got hurt.  So all the volunteers had been told to leave.   This left a bus driver and his empty bus with no instructions and therefore no option but to reluctantly leave.  We liaised with two men who came forward as spokesmen to try to see if a solution could be found.  

Everybody was sitting down calmly and we gathered that many people were hungry.  After carefully considering the situation we decided to go and buy enough fruit to distribute to everyone.  Crucially Ariana was able to contact a local Greek woman who had spontaneously formed a volunteer group to help refugees.  She responded immediately and without hesitation and contacted the bus company.  She met us at the site.  We know food distribution amongst hungry people can be precarious but it was managed well with great teamwork, with the help of the spokespeople.  

We then "opened" our car boot clinic and treated the numerous blisters, bites, headaches and small injuries.

We left feeling that we had managed to help turn a potentially volatile situation around.