In this humble little courtyard, I am surrounded by tiny royals, Sultan, Amir, Amira - Ruler, Prince, Princess.
I have watched their people fight and struggle, evil looming large and slinking in through deliberately forgotten alleyways, drenched in shadow, where everyone chooses to look away.
But these bright souls shine on, borne away by their parents, their sisters, brothers, neighbors, friends; set off on a frightful journey, destination unknown, path riddled with terrors they couldn't think to imagine before their homes ceased to mean home.
Here, their castles don't stand proudly high, their garments don't shine purple. They tread through mud, learn to speak around fires insufficient against the cold.
And yet they are protected, not by knives or guns, but by the fierce enduring love of the royals loyal guards.
The tenacity of the dragons, fending off the fiercest foes, fighting hard to protect the future leaders not yet grown, to teach them how to live and love and laugh.
The light of this northern star burns bright and true, even in the very heart of darkness. And here in its brilliant persistence will these tiny royals grow into their own, learning to hear with a gentle hand, their tenderness not forgetting the blade woven between those fingers as they cut their teeth on the bigness that surrounds them.
O these tiny royals will grow, and take their rightful places guiding a scarred land, ready to rule with compassion over this broken world. They are our hope, our future, humanity's next step; and they will have learned of both love and horror to extremes.
May this bring them the balance and the wisdom they need to build a better world than the pestilence we have left them.
I've been so excited to share this update with you all for so long; it is especially exciting to be able to give it to you as a high note to end this crazy year on!
The trip to Serbia my dear friend Amy and I went on in October was unlike our usual trips. It was an exploratory mission to find out what the situation was like for refugees and those helping them there, and much of it was spent making connections and scouting out need. We did have baby carriers, of course, but they were held up in customs for the majority of the time we spent there. Carry The Future provided us $800 to spend on 'additional aid' as needed, so, after scouting out the various encampments and aid centers and polling folks for what the greatest needs were, we hit up our favorite big box store for a massive aid run.
This is a chain that we have used in Greece - both as a landmark to find our hotel (haha!) and to purchase aid items at reasonably cheap prices, so it was quite exciting to find one in Serbia, too!
Let me tell ya: remember all those shows where they'd give people shopping carts to fill with as much stuff as they possibly could? That's essentially what we got to do - granted, there was considerably more math involved - but it was every bit as fun as I imagined it would be...and the fact that it was all meeting specific needs to boot?? My amazing travel sister Amy and I were positively giddy...which might be obvious from the pictures.
Probably the only situation in which I would be this happy buying an entire cartload of sanitary napkins.
Amy modeling the confusing hats...they were the same size, shape, and material as the full face balaclavas they had on the next rack, but they had no face holes...
we filled two whole carts with aid!
Two whole carts!!!
Next, it was off to a Serbian version of Costco:
we got soap...
a LOT of soap...
by the time we checked out, we had overfilled yet another cart with much needed supplies.
There was just SO MUCH STUFF!
We were a little excited about how far our aid money was going.
...Ok, a lotta bit excited...
We loaded it all up into our trusty little car...
luckily there was still a little room for us!
Back at the hotel, I loaded Panther Pack up with as much as I could, and then some...
once inside, we spent the majority of our evening prepping little care packages - making sure that everyone who received soap had a way to store and reuse it as well.
We had a limited number of towels, which we included in a batch to be given to mothers with babies.
The next day, we dropped everything off at the various aid stations that had requested them...here is a stack of diapers successfully delivered to Miksaliste's aid distribution storehouse.
And I have to include this one because all of that on the fly math - calculating how much of each thing would give us the biggest bang for our buck, taking the exchange rates into account...it totally paid off. When we did our final calculation to see how close to our budget we were, we were Amazingly On Point!!
Boom.
Not too bad for budgeting through exchange rates.
...But now we had a problem. We had all used up all of our aid money, and had prepped and distributed it all, but it was only a couple days into our trip, and our carriers were still stuck in customs. Not wanting to waste our time there when there was such obvious and urgent need, we decided to strike out on our own and see if we could raise a little bit more to spend while we were there on the ground. Amy created a paypal link where people could donate whatever funds they so chose, and we both shared that link on our own personal facebook pages - and that was it. Overnight, our amazing support networks shared those posts and donated a whopping $900, giving us even more than we had from CTF the first time around. Within 24 hours, that number had risen to over $1,400. We were floored, and so, so SO grateful to our friends and family for rallying to make such an immediate difference. We got right to work!
After a lot more math...
Exchange rates + ATMS + haggling prices in multiple languages = I'm amazed my brain could process it all!
Armed once again with cash:
Serbian Dinar notes
We headed off on an adventure to find the Chinese market; which we had been tipped off about by various aid workers there...evidently they have the best prices in Belgrade for the types of items we needed to get, and the sellers were open to haggling. Edin gave us a lesson (seriously, wrote out diagrams on a whiteboard and everything) on the best way to haggle down the prices, and off we went. Our GPS - which we named Charles, and spoke with a British accent once finally finding an English language setting - was utterly useless in finding this place, so it took us the better part of a day to find it, but we finally did - using old fashioned maps and landmarks and guesswork - and were not disappointed!
a tiny fraction of the Chinese market...we didn't take a lot of pictures because we were busy searching out and haggling over the best options for our aid purchases.
It went well, overall..I made Amy nervous at first because I kept walking away from potential deals, but after we got a deal on the same hats for literally half the price, she went into power mode and brokered several more awesome deals!
The most amusing part of the whole ordeal was the language barrier. Many of the vendors only spoke Chinese or the local Serbian dialect, and not many (if any) of them spoke English. This provided for a lot of non-verbal communications and speaking via a calculator...and at least one hilarious instance of me recognizing that the vendor was speaking Mandarin, and so I dusted off a bit of Mandarin from the corner of my memory and conducted an entire deal haggling in Chinese, in Serbia, to benefit people from places like Afghanistan and Pakistan, while trying to convert the numbers in my head to US currency. It went quite well, overall...except that I totally blanked on the word for "one hundred", so I ended up asking for "ninety-nine and one" hats...
After a quite successful day at the Chinese market, it was time to head over to the Hungarian border.
But first it was back to city center to pick up some sugar. A LOT of sugar.
Is this an appropriate face for someone about to purchase over 100 kilos of sugar?
A note about all of this Sugar: While on the surface this may seem like an irresponsibly frivolous purchase, it's actually a really important one. Tea is a super big deal to most refugees; tea in many middle eastern cultures brings people together, and can be a comfort in a dehumanizing situation...and to get that 'comfort of home' feeling, it needs to be SWEET. (Like, way too sweet for most Americans) - but obviously sugar is hard to come by when you are living in abandoned buildings or tents...So I consider it a contribution towards aiding the mental well-being of these people who have lived through things no one should ever have to witness. When we had visited Edin at the Daily Center, in addition to our haggling lesson, we got to meet many of the regulars in his establishment, many of whom were giving him a good natured hard time about needing to ration the sugar - a thing that he clearly wished he could address.
By this time, Edin himself had spent an unprecedented amount of time and money to help us get our carriers out of customs, and we found out during our shopping spree that he had successfully obtained our carriers and they were waiting for us at the center.
Overjoyed, we wanted to show give him a small gesture of thanks. So we bought as much sugar as we could fit in our trunk
(along with some hats and other things that had been requested)
And drove over to The Daily Center, where we built a little castle of sugar for him to find on the coffee table.
(we also gave them plenty of other aid from our plunders as well, but they weren't as photogenic as this magnificent tower...plus I love all the pictures on the wall in the background!)
Reunited at long last!
Armed now with our carriers and remaining aid, we took the trek out to the Hungarian border. There, we found another 'flea market' that reputedly had even better prices than the Chinese market in Belgrade...We got as much stuff as we possibly could, and filled our car to bursting.
It was one of those "don't open the door we may never get it shut again" situations.
who needs to see out the back windows anyway?
We would have gotten more, but we simply couldn't fit anything else in our car!!
At North Star, we were able to distribute massive amounts of stuff. Syd was especially happy to get the mylar emergency blankets that I brought from home (and yes, he already knew that they had to be used under people's clothes in order to be effective.)
Also stashed in my panther pack, I had two bags full of handmade hats from a friend here in DC; Laura had broken her ankle and utilized her immobile healing time to make as many hats as she possibly could...so I had the great honor of handing those out as well. The kids loved them. They were the first thing we handed out, and it was so fun to see little heads running about with familiar bright pops of color throughout the rest of our stay!
One of Laura's hats spotted warming a small head from afar!
Amy hanging out with our tiny friend Sultan, and his new red hat from Laura!
Back in Beograd, we spent our last full day distributing the last of our aid stores. By giving up our free day, we were even able to distribute all of our baby carriers, despite the hold up! We held several training sessions with core volunteers from each of the groups we had worked with (and left them with small supplies of carriers), so that we could rest assured that they would be able to properly fit not only our carriers, but any they receive in the future, too!
Amy demonstrating that the wearer should be able to kiss the top of baby's head in a proper fit to a volunteer at Miksaliste
Box of carriers delivered to Miksaliste!
Amy, Baby-wearing Guru, leading a training session at Refugee Aid (Serbia)
At the close of that final day, we were faced with a bit of a conundrum. We still had a decent chunk of aid money left, but no time, and frankly not a whole lot of obivously unmet needs that were within our means to address in that moment. After much discussion and deliberation, we found a fabulous way to spend it all in a meaningful way while still on the ground in Serbia, therefore doing some serious good while fulfilling the terms we'd laid forth when we approached our friends for help.
For many of the refugees, having access to a computer is the only way to communicate with their families. A few aid centers offer wifi, but only the asylum center had publicly available computers - and that is the place that is like a sardine can...getting a chance to use a computer there is not guaranteed. Knowing that having a way to contact family members is crucial to the wellbeing of these displaced people - and knowing that Edin had laptop computers on his wishlist for the center, and also taking into account how much of himself he poured into this place, what a difference it made to the people he served, and how far above and beyond he had gone to assist us in addition to all that, we decided to put our remaining aid money towards getting him a laptop for the center.
Amy had to leave early the next morning, but I had a later flight and was able to put my morning to good use. After consulting with the AMAZING woman who worked at the hotel and helped us out -enthusiastically - many times, I found a place where I could get not just one, but TWO brand-spankin' new (which means that they came with a several year warranty, and should anything happen to them, he can take them in to get fixed) computers!!
(OK fine, we were short $50 just on the tax...which was simply too close not to go for, especially because we'd be left with a surplus otherwise...so I got two anyway. Amy and I each agreed to pay an extra $25 to cover it. WORTH IT.)
The AMAZING woman at the hotel helped to make it a nice surprise; she put them in the hotel safe and we sent a message to Edin to find her. We left this note along with it:
(we threw in the sugar packets we had been collecting the whole week.)
Of course there were many, MANY simply wonderful people that we met along the way, and so many fabulous organizations committed to doing whatever it takes to help refugees on their journeys, but I genuinely cannot overstate the amount of work Edin put into helping us during that week. He expended so much energy, time, and money on assisting us, we wouldn't have been surprised if he decided it was too much work to be associated with us anymore; so we felt a strong desire to show him how much we appreciated his work, and that we are willing to help his org as much as he helped ours...
But he didn't distance himself from us, instead he continues to work closely with us as a liaison within the Serbian refugee community, and was instrumental in us getting a count - and subsequent request to aid - the number of families in the camps in need of carriers. In January, our teams will be bringing 500 baby carriers to families in need in Serbia!
So, to sum up, I am proud to share with you the official numbers from this single trip; Amy and I - with the help of all of our wonderful friends and families - were able to provide:
While we were at North Star, the wonderful gentleman from Morocco showed us pictures on his phone of people burning everything and anything for warmth - Children volunteering their toys to be burned for warmth, people setting their blankets aflame...a devastating reality, for sure, made even worse by waking up the very next day to this news. I have no doubt that this happened because of that desperate practice. Heartbreaking.
I never really thought about or pictured myself going to Serbia, but when the opportunity presented itself to me a few weeks back, I jumped on it. I stuffed as many fresh-from-the-box carriers into our distribution bags as I could (without exceeding the weight limit), loaded my Panther Pack up with my necessities, and off we went.
oh my bags are packed, I'm ready to go...
Panther Pack is my trusty travel companion...
As a whole, the people of Serbia have a great sense of humor - as well as a great sense of the malleability of the law, always in their favor, not yours - but they will laugh about it with you anyhow. They quite cheerfully and strangely pleasantly quarantined all of our carriers for most of the week that we were there. It was an annoying week long extravaganza to get them out; which mostly involved learning the quite complicated bureaucratic 'process' - and its subsequent...shall we say, personal flexibility.
This is the sight that greeted us when we arrived...
We have no idea who the guy in yellow is, he just hopped into the photo with us, because - why not?!
They are not so far removed from the experience of war themselves, which I think leads to greater empathy towards today's refugees; even if they refrain from voicing that opinion without being plied with a few drinks first. Prior to that, they keep their faces surprisingly neutral when the subject is broached...They have a lingering sense that being too vocal isn't a good idea.
That surprise evaporates, though, when you drive through Belgrade and see the ruins of buildings still left untouched from their not-too-distant conflict, and the young adults will softly talk about remembering what it was like to be bombed as children.
They want to help, but they don't want to find themselves in that situation again.
at a random stoplight as we drove around town
Juxtaposition: foreground is clearly a new construction in progress, and the other side of the street is a shell of what once was
That said, there are many, many people working to feed, clothe, and help the many refugees who have turned up on their land, some legally, some not - the government runs camps where they are given food and modest shelter, and for those not lucky enough to have space there (or who are afraid to go to the camps for one reason or another) there are volunteers working in public parks to provide food and the few items they are able...Such as Info Park (run by an absolutely lovely man named Gordon, who was instrumental to our quick acclimation to the conditions there), who provides a hot lunch every day along with anything else within their power, and Refugee Aid, who provides dinner daily and warm clothes when they can
View from the Refugee Aid offices, if you look very closely you can see that - behind the trees, is the massive line of people waiting for lunch.
Volunteers with Refugee Aid after our baby carrier training session
They were excellent students!
They practiced by fitting carriers onto each other. Informative AND fun!!
Many people are living in what are referred to as 'squats'...but I don't know if these conditions even qualify as that. People are sleeping in makeshift shelters cobbled together out of trash heaps surrounded by broken glass, in fields (soon to be a construction site for a mega-tower), abandoned buildings full of spare parts and detritus, and parking garages. They build fires for warmth using anything they can - trash, furniture, anything - both outdoors and in. There are no toilets - not even a porta-potty, and human excrement can be found scattered throughout the area. The sole water source is a pipe in the middle of a field, which - given the nature of lack of basic sanitation - is just waiting to become a breeding ground for spreading hepatitis and cholera...but even if that doesn't come to pass, winter IS coming, and the cold will make it impossible to bathe there and may freeze the water entirely.
Those crouching figures in the distance were people washing themselves at the water pipe.
More visitors to the watering hole
Evidently this was another empty warehouse that housed hundred of souls, but was demolished the week before we arrived.
An outdoor squat. it was mostly empty because everyone was queued up in the park, waiting for lunch.
Someone had been sleeping here when we arrived; once she got up I snapped this photo of the encampment.
A closer shot of the makeshift homestead above; you can see the remnants of the fire that was the sole source of warmth.
Another shot of the same squat; all that blue stuff scattered around was broken glass. People still sleep here at night.
You may see some still-standing pieces of broken pipes here; some refugees had engineered a way to bring water into individual spaces within the squat; but "they" (I was unclear about whether it was the government/military or the landowner) bulldozed everything.
The squat doubles as/is adjacent to this active parking lot. another squat we got to know - which I didn't photograph as it was so full and active and I wanted to respect their privacy - was in an active parking garage in a busy part of town.
this warehouse -an indoor squat - was home to some 600 souls every night. There were more people hanging around in this area, as indoor space is a commodity worth hanging on to.
This spot is also a hot commodity, since despite being outdoors, it at least has an overhang.
bedding used by refugees in the squat. You can also see the blanket stuffed in the door crack to keep the inside insulated.
People gathered around some embers right there on the covered area.
As you come around the corner into the courtyard, you are greeted by this site...many people have begun to use that trench as a makeshift latrine.
This is the sight as you enter the indoor squat, the one where 600 people spend every night. Yes, those are campfires you see in the background, indoors. There were enough holes in the roof for the smoke to mostly vent out.
Abandoned furniture which is slowly being used as fuel for the fires. We were told that its especially sad because those are designer chairs and would have been worth quite a bit of money if they were in good condition...money that could go a long way toward improving conditions...
Makeshift wall built inside the warehouse squat
Books. massive quantities of torn, dirty books; their pages mostly used for kindling and not reading.
We said hi to this group of gentlemen warming up by the fire.
For these folks we said hello to, being here at this time of day meant that they would not be eating. My understanding is that there's a culture forming in these makeshift shelters that relies on friendship to make sure everyone has enough; if you defy the group, you would be kicked out of the warehouse and forced to sleep outside on your own. We encountered this when there was an altercation a few days later...but otherwise the system seemed pretty sound in its operation. I think they were taking turns skipping meals in order to hold onto spots in the warehouse for shelter.
Various machine parts and what I think were some old tapes in the squat.
These piles of rugs serve as beds and blankets during the cold nights in the warehouse squat.
more makeshift structures in the warehouse, though these ones looked like they had been knocked down and pillaged.
Another group of refugees gathered around a campfire in the warehouse squat.
Thankfully, there are centers working as hard as they can to reach this under-served population, such as Miksaliste, where multiple NGOs have come together under a single roof to provide warming rooms, childcare services, modest meals, a place to receive non-food items like toothbrushes, hats, soap...and a few classes and charging stations, a shower...Actually the showers had just been installed the day we got there, but they had no soap yet so they hadn't opened them. So, armed with our aid money, we went out and purchased several boxes of soap and ziplock bags so that they could keep and reuse it easily and made 500 care packages (along with tons of diapers, towels, hats, gloves, sanitary pads...you get the picture) which they were able to distribute right away. It was pretty awesome to come back a few days later to find this, fully operational:
Everyone feels more human after a good scrub.
The line for aid wraps around several times inside before ultimately leaking out the door and down the stairs.
A sign found on the door between the warming room and aid distribution building at Miksaliste
This awesome guy was huge and made those Bjorns look teeeensy!
Bjorns are super tricky the first time you encounter one; most of our trainees got as far as donning the straps before giving us a quizzical look and admitting defeat. This was after we had taken pity on this brave volunteer and pointed out how to connect the pieces. After that she did Great!!
And then there are places like The Daily Center for Refugees, where the goal is to let them feel human and enjoy a little time not worrying about being a refugee...a place to play games, watch movies, play music and dance, and perhaps even contact their families on one of the laptops they have.
Language class offering at the daily center
Folks just hangin' out, like you would at a friend's house back home...
A sign on the door of the Daily Center
Fun times at the Daily Center
I love this clip because it is so delightfully...mundane. It's just people hanging out...as it should be:
Edin, the founder of The Daily Center, was our local sponsor outside groups cannot operate within Serbia without a registered Serbian non-profit as a partner. Edin proved to be a more than capable partner and a fierce advocate who we felt grateful to have met. He and his partner Anita also took us on a walking tour of some popular spots in Belgrade. During our explorations that week, we found a lot of amazing street art and interesting architecture which made the local history and culture feel quite rich and full.
Refugee Foundation and Carry The Future: unstoppable team for the greater good! Now about the customs issues...
color changing fountain along the promenade
Meet me under the horses tail...er, nose...
Whale!
more random street art
beautiful detailing caught my eye despite the rain.
person eating broccoli? giant eating a tree?
fountain designed to be a functional way to fetch water
...I'm gonna go with Panda eating a lollipop...
these faces watch passers by as they come and go from the park
There is also a place called the Asylum Center, which provides assistance to those attempting to figure out their legal status and work to be relocated or accepted here...the downstairs area is always PACKED with men and boys trying to use their phones or computers. We're talking sardine level squishing in there, any movement is surprisingly difficult.They also had a 'women's room' upstairs, which we never got to see, (they are -rightfully - super protective of that space) so we visited here multiple times too. They put us in touch with a fierce, awesome lady who turned out to be a very important contact.
there isn't much of a sign; so this guy and his air conditioners were our signifiers that this was indeed the right place.
Asylum seekers catching a breath of fresh air outside.
an important resource for all volunteers to have some working knowledge of
Farther from Belgrade, North Star operates a tea house and charging station with free wifi; and other aid organizations come in to distribute things like fresh vegetables and warm clothes. We left our quaint little home-away-from-home hotel, and drove through the countryside to the Hungarian border to distribute aid along side the amazing volunteers there. Most of North Star's volunteers are refugees themselves, who find purpose in being able to work to help their community.
our room
Where else are you going to take a hairdryer to your laundry?? When you're on the road, you gotta do what ya gotta do...
Me looking like I just shattered the glass floor...don't worry it was a decorative choice, and I was looking at the front desk below me.
We saw a lot of this.
...And this.
We finally made it to the Hungarian border, where we could see the unofficial encampment and the gates but couldn't get access.
We finally found North Star's tea house & charging station, run largely out of this RV. They have even built a little storage area behind it to house aid that they receive and can hand out as needed by request.
Tarp over the charging / wifi access area. A Gentleman from Morroco comes every day to make tea for folks, which he hands out through the RV window.
Sydney, the man behind it all...seriously, this dude rocks. He's been working with refugees for over a year now.
So, a quick note about this amazing guy: His name is Syd. We made him look ridiculously tall in this photo, but that is fitting for what a huge difference he is making in people's lives. He looked vaguely familiar to me but I couldn't place why until we got to talking about our histories...Long story short, it was a classic "Small World!" situation: He acted as my translator way back in Greece, at the Eko gas station as I was scouting out potential CTF worksites/contacts last march. He just happened to be there at the same brief moment that I was, and got pulled in to help translate when my monolinguism got in the way of effective communication-I never even caught his name. And here we were, running into each other in another tiny place, in the middle of nowhere between two countries that were not where we had met. Awesome. He's super nice and a badass for running this all.
Amy, my INCREDIBLE WONDERFUL travel sister, best partner in this work that I could ever ask for, distributing aid we had purchased and driven out to the border with.
Mei dai wrap distributed to this beautiful mom and daughter, who were such good models they agreed to let us take pictures of the fit to use in future volunteer trainings.
Amy and I with Leon, with Refugee Relief - another aid group we had the honor of working with there.
Amy & I with some incredible north star volunteers, this is the gentleman who makes tea every day and the hard working young lady has taken over management of the stock in the makeshift storage unit, among other things.
fitting a carrier for this cutie
We trained our trusty translator to be able to fit carriers on her own!
happy kid
workin'
I can only write about this from a somewhat removed state right now, because the conditions there were so harsh, the need people had to talk, to tell us their stories...to play, to hug, - anything - was immense, and it is easier to keep the distanced view that keeps your mind tied up in the red tape the government puts out to monitor aid, and keeps you focused on numbers rather than faces or stories...but once you walk through a parking garage and see people's meager belongings wrapped in blankets and shoved into cracks of bulletin boards so they wont' be thrown out, once you see the endless line of shivering people waiting hours and hours for a meal they might not get; once you see the place that they call home that looks more like a fort built in a toxic junkyard; once you give people gloves, a hat, thermal leggings, socks...and their eyes light up and sparkle, and you see those hats suddenly bopping around on a smiling face and they shake your hand and hug you even if you don't share a common tongue...once you've fit a toddler into a carrier only to have her walk over to you and demand to be picked up, and you carry her around until your arms hurt but her parents don't mind because they need a break and she needs play and human interaction beyond their embrace...once you see these things returning home becomes nearly impossible. Envisioning that dad whose wife was killed by ISIL, forcing him to flee with his three young children into an uncertain future, that mom whose husband was killed by the same enemy and is now on the run with her babies, lonely and afraid, all those kids who clung to you and smiled and stole your glasses just like your own babies did once upon a time...the incredibly warm, kind man who volunteers full time despite being a refugee himself, the 18 year old girl who works tirelessly to help this new community they have found and had to grow up too fast...those are the faces you see, the giggles and laughs and hugs and tears you remember when you hear about the falling temperature, the endless war, the lack of food and warmth.
When you see the pictures of children burning their own toys for warmth while their parents burn their blankets and keepsakes from home, that sticks with you in the form of faces of people you have connected with, who you may never see again but who you think about every single day. You wonder if those kids survived the fire that destroyed their camp. You send warm thoughts to the man who has lost everything but his spirit. You think of the teenage girls dealing with the craziness of adolescence without any of the usual comforts. You hope that that baby has a home in time to grab hold of the world and change it for the better, as only the next generation can.
