Lampetia

In June 2017, Debora and Meret set out for Thessaloniki again on a summer mission, with the idea of the Lampetia project in mind.

The situation for refugees in Northern Greece has improved only slightly since the beginning of the year. After the large-scale relocation of many families from camps that were not equipped for the wet cold of winter and the dry heat of summer, many people now live in apartment blocks outside the city centres. Despite their usually more comfortable living situation, the refugees are largely cut off from the outside world, as the infrastructure for a pleasant life is simply not available.
Public transport, which would provide connections to surrounding towns, is not affordable for most people. In addition to their immobility and terrible boredom, during the summer months there is also a sweltering heat that is almost unbearable outside. So the families are isolated in their small one-room apartments and are virtually stuck with their children.
We wanted to counteract this with the Lampetia project. With the idea of putting together a diverse leisure programme for young and old, we contacted the Tamam Community Centre in the village of Sindos near Thessaloniki and started planning. After the volunteers working on site shared their experiences with the refugee population in Sindos, we decided to present our idea directly to the residents. Specifically, we wanted to invite the families to go to the beach every day for a swim and to spend time there. At first, we were concerned that this idea might be too simple and that we would be met with a lack of understanding.
But as we quickly realised after our first round in a block of flats, the idea actually inspired all the residents and our weekly schedules were immediately filled. So our fears were unfounded and we realised that the simplicity of our idea was exactly what made it so valuable and successful.
So we spent the following two months taking several families to a nearby beach every day in our bus. This gave the families the opportunity to spend a quiet afternoon together and enjoy the cool breeze of the Aegean Sea. We were able to take the children off the parents' hands for a few hours and play with them in the water, which most of them used as an opportunity to go swimming or smoke a water pipe themselves.
At the end of the excursion, the parents were always satisfied and the children exhausted from splashing around. We took the families back to their homes around sunset and it was with heavy hearts that we said goodbye to them. Some families invited us to dinner to thank us for the wonderful day. We gratefully accepted these invitations a few times, but other times we had to decline because we too were so tired of the sun and the sea that we had to go home to pick up new families the next day.
We look back on an eventful and wonderful time in which we got to know the families who were involuntarily stuck in Greece and shared in their fates. And we learned that a day at the seaside with families from here and there brings too much joy and smiling faces.
We thank all our supporters who made this programme possible for us. We rely on your support to continue planning such projects.