Forgotten wandering souls
SOLIDARITY NOW
[For more photos from the Cherso refugee camp, please visit my other website, “MIHALIS PHOTOS”, the link of which is on the side menu on the left]
Cherso refugee camp, Kilkis
A truly transformational experience. How come I ended up there? I just did what my beliefs dictated me to do – go and help in any way possible and be a positive force in this humanitarian crisis.
Human dignity is a rare commodity at places like this one. You are brutally stripped of it. It simply doesn’t matter at all what your status at your previous society/life was. A lawyer, a civil servant, an engineer, it simply doesn’t matter. Circumstances force you to bring back to the surface your primitive instincts, fighting to provide for your family’s and your self’s basic needs. This is what human is forced end up being –well into the 21st century. A reverse process in human evolution for which the responsibility is collective. It was a shocking and depressing realization of how humanity allows this, along with the suffering, to happen to its very own. I was witnessing for the first time two different states of human existence on the path along which humanity moves. One more advanced than the other. Humanity should be moving onwards along this path as a whole and with the whole moving onwards at the same pace. Preventing thus the emergence of humans and subhumans. Yet, there it was, unfolding in front of me.
I saw souls wondering inside mental prisons, looking for a purpose, desperately in need for something to cling on and not slip down the abyss of insanity. In desperate need of a future, utterly helpless and utterly surrendered to their fate whatever that might be.
Many were very willing in assisting us in our work in the camp. Why they did it? I wondered that myself many times. Maybe it was just that they wanted to be in good terms with us so that we favour them later or when we give food and clothes supplies. Or it could simply be because they needed to do something, have a purpose and do something constructive in that godforsaken place. Or simply because they felt the need to be a positive force in this negative environment and just help their kin. I can only speculate.
And why do people volunteer?
To fill an emotional void and make themselves feel better?
To give some meaning to their life?
Because they have nothing better to do?
Is it a purely altruistic act? Without expecting anything back? If so why then some of them got upset and mad when the refugees were ungrateful towards them?
I don’t know. But what I do know is that there were some really amazing people, doing some amazing work without seeking praise or recognition of any kind.
I hope through these photographs to contribute in a positive way and do my part in raising awareness. These are my experiences, nothing more nothing less, which are partly expressed through these photographs of mine.
In situations like the ones unfolding at the Cherso camp, you get to see all the human traits raw, both good and bad, because people’s behavior is unfiltered.Despite though of all of its faults and weaknesses, its self-destructive behaviour and all the hardships having to go through, that might seem insurmountable at times, humanity is resilient, managing to survive against all odds and move on and create beautiful and amazing things. That’s exactly what the overwhelming majority of the people I met at Cherso, refugees and volunteers, represent – many of whom are depicted in these photographs.
“No man is an iland, intire of it selfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Mannor of thy friends or of thine owne were; any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee….” John Donne
