July 31st, 2008 3:02 p.m. Patra, Greece at the Port
Rereading the past few weeks entries, I see how much I focused on the "negatives." I know there were many beautiful moments on camp, though, and I'm going to try to focus on those in this writing.
Every morning, a little after seven, Petras, Kataskinosi's leader, with his wild curly salt-and-pepper Greek afro, collection of camp trinkets dangling from his thick neck over his even thicker torso, would ring the cast-iron bell in the center of camp, bellowing cheerfully to everyone in his booming voice that could carry with no megaphone over the tops of the cream-colored, canvased tents, "Kalimera!" On the first morning, a children's chorus returned the call with high-pitched enthusiam--"Kalimera!!!" This was the way each day began on camp. The other internationals and I would groggily pull ourselves from our thin, stuffed mattress and creaky, metal cots, the beds groaning outwardly to match our inner protest at our early morning rising, and head in a half-sleep for the kitchen. After our own quick breakfast of hot cocoa and freshly sliced bread with sweet strawberry jam (not jelly, the Irish women would laughingly point out to me), we would hurriedly wash the 200 cups and dozens of silver pitchers filled with chocolate milk and corn flakes that children tore through each morning.
The kitchen was an interesting experience by itself. There were some teams that worked with efficiency and found ways to turn peeling buckets of potatoes and cutting red onions until we cried like sentimental grandmothers at weddings into a good time. There were others that made each rack a congressional committee hearing debating the best way to wash a plate, stack a rack, dry a spoon, or mop a floor. There are simply some activities that will convince even the most hard-headed supporter of democracy that totalitarian dictatorship could be a better way of organizing society. Luckily, I was on the former kind of team much more often that the latter, and as a result, my belief in teamwork was preserved, and I slipped easily into a familiar role--quietly and quickly doing each minute task for the benefit of the whole. I never minded the work, as I have always found something inherently pleasant in manual labor. Thus, each shift in the kitched passed, a time for us to help make the real work at Kataskinosi happen.
While we tried to spray more leftovers down the sink drains than we splashed into our faces, the Greek volunteers coaxed each of their campers in the Kataskinosi community. The children, some as young as 5, none older than 16, needed this coaxing, as many came with their defenses high, and their distrust obvious. These attitudes were understandeable, for the children aren't just any boys and girls at any summer camp. They are Elefsina's living examples of the lost boys from Never-Never Land, children whose parents have figuratively and in some cases literally abandoned them, the future of Greece told they don't matter by nearly every authority figure they should have been able to trust. Because of countries that turned them into refugees and parents that turned them into virtual orphans, these children are leary of any who might hold out a helping hand. The exception was seen in campers from previous years. They had tasted something different at camp before and came with their arms open, smiles wide, ready to love and be loved for the next 3 weeks. Their exuberance was encouraging, as it hinted at what we could hope to see in the new arrivals by the end of the camp.
The most obvious challenge to these rays of hope was Dmitri--a slight, young boy with a blonde crew cut and quiet frailty that temporarily disguised the anger he carried. Dmitiri would strike out often at anyone, throwing debris into the tents, starting fights with other campers, cursing volunteers in fluent English, "Fuck you, bitch. Go fuck your mother, you asshole."At first, he would only let a few children near him, even less adults. More often, he could be seen by himself at a distance, provoking a nest of bees, kicking a deflated soccer ball as though it were being punished, sulking aimlessly by the basketball court. Slowly, though, and with expert care and the beautiful patience of determined love, the Greek volunteers began to bring Dmitri around, like Theo tickling Dmitri's skinny, little belly, whose subsequent giggles would be surprisingly childish, full of a simple giddiness otherwise rarely seen. There were the other children, too, who would pull Dmitri into their play. One of these moment in particular caught my attention.
When he's not on camp, Dmitri lives in an SOS village with other orphaned and abandoned children, who share one " mother" and room for every six of them. Dmitri isn't without relatives, however. I know, for instance, that he has at least one grandmother. So why doesn't he live with her? Most likely because his grandma isn't the kind to bake cookies and spoil her grandkid rotten. Instead, she's the kind to throw a pot of boiling water on him, leaving rough, sinewy scars all over his neck, torso and arms. Understandeably, Dmitri is self-conscious of the scars; I even overheard one volunteer mention that he was shy to remove his shirt in front of the other children in his tent.
Knowing this made a simple gesture by the other children even more beautiful. Near the end of the camp, the children got ahold of some washeable markers and began drawing temporary tattoes on anything with a bare patch of skin. The Greek volunteers soon had full-back tattoes of dragons, swords, and crosses (the goth-metal-grunge-punk movement is still alive and well in Athens), while most of the children were covered with colorful doodles. One day, I came across Dmitri, who had his shirt raised up to his neck while another of the more artistic boys sketched on his skin. For one of the first times at Kataskinosi, I saw Dmitri calm--and seemingly happy. I sat down next to him on the bench, talking to some of the other volunteers who were nearby (it was always best to approach Dmitri nonchalantly, in a sort of non-committal, accidental way). A few minutes passed--then I casually reached over, picked up a skinny red marker, and took Dmitri's thin arm into my left hand. I looked up to make sure he was still ok--he was--and then I gently drew a little cartoon heart on his forearm. Just as casually, I set the marker down and returned to the conversation. A few mintues later, I leaned my arm over towards him--he paused, picked up the same marked and sketched his own version just below my elbow.
Dmitri became a point for me to direct loving thoughts. I would momentarily reach out to him, and gently ruffle his little blonde hairs or give him a light pat on the shoulder, thinking as I passed, "You are loved, little buddy. Please know, you are loved." At the beginning of camp, he never spoke a sentence to me that wasn't laced with obscenities, but his silent expressions at the end of Kataskinosi showed that a different boy lived not far beneath that thickly guarded, scarred shell. On the last day of camp, as the children sobbed and hugged and laughed, climbing aboard the busses that shuttle them too quickly from this utopia back to their families, Dmitri quitely climpbed into the van that would return him to the SOS village. I caught a glimpse of him through the open sliding door and impulsively ran over to say goodbye. When I reached the opening, he looked up as if to say, "So what happens now?" I paused and held out both arms, hands open. Briefly, he hesitated, then climbed back out and into them. I folded his fragile little arms around my belly and squeezed hard. Then, just as quietly, he stepped back into the van. I don''t know if he understood what we were all trying to tell him, but as the door slid shut and the van began to pull away, all of the volunteers shouted to him, "Yasso, Dmitri!!!! Yasso!" I hope one day he'll remember that sound and recognize it as love.
There were of course other moments as well. I'll try always to remember the sunset of Hydra, the most beautiful I've ever seen, as well as the view from Poros with the ruins of the temple of Zeus behind us--proof that no man-made monument to any god--in his own image or otherwise--can outlast or outshine the monument of nature to its Creator. Greece pulled me in, bit by bit, with its proud and mysterious history and its natural grace, from the ambitious hilltop acropoli and peaceful monasteries to the friendly caravans of stray dogs and humble white-washed villages. I'll remember Greece as the home of cities that sparkled silver in the sun, with Mediterranean-blue shutters and burnt, desert sun-colored rooftops, the hanging garden terraces with fuschia Oleander blooms and nimble black and white mountain goats that could travel with thoughtless confidence over crags that I itched to climb, glimpsing the mountains and valleys from angles I could only imagine.
There was the midnight hike, the most difficult rest of my life (it could not properly be called a sleep) on a bed of rocks and goat droppings in a cold-to-the-bones wind and midnight-to-morning fog. It was nothing short of mystical, though, to see the mountains and rising sun suddenly appear whenever a break in the thick, low-lying clouds would roll over us. There was the 1st hithhike in Aegina to the sea; the beautiful generosity of the Elefsina woman who shared a handful of hard candy with us; the flourist who gave me a single orange and pink rose, whose petals easily recalled a sunset just before the sun slips below the horizon line; the Athenian men and women who would constantly misdirect us with their well-intentioned instructions to Athens' maze of monuments, metros, and buses; Mr. Vasilis in the kitchen, offering his "hello, baby" as an English translation of his obvious Greek warmth; Spilios with his kindness and sincerity; Dmitri, the Belgian with a magnetic vulnerabilty and a mysterious soul that is clearly beautiful, even from a distance; Niamh (pronounce Neve), with a never-ending supply of Marlboros and Irish idioms and her paradoxically straightforward confidence and self-conscious timidity; and all the rest, too many to name individually but impressive each in their own way. I think almost daily of all of them.
Although so much of the Kataskinosi community remained for me behind a wall--one I couldn't seem to penetrate with my lack of emotional and mental strength after leaving Palestine--I knew I was witnessing something both special and not impossibly unique. Their experiment in loving community and social justice begun by the first George Pirounakis in the 60s, and carried on by future generations that seem to have inherited his gene for hope, compassion, and perserverance, touched me even from a distance and encouraged me to find my way of
being real even
when I feel most vulnerable and likely to retreat. I may not have been the most consistent in my pursuit to do this these past 3 weeks, but I do know I tried and I loved people in my own inner way--even if I can't be sure they were able to witness it, I hope they still received it. I don't know what these next few weeks will offer, but I hope to give a little of what I have received on my trip so far. Love, respect, generosity, compassion--I've seen and received them in abundance these last two months, and I want to begin to return it with awareness and freedom. I hope I can do this now, where whatever I give will likely be received with no hope of return and where I can be optimistic of its future harvest in a land and among people I only fleetingly touch. This is the hope that Kataskinosi gives to its children--and that it gave to me.
