GUARDIAN REFUGEE APPEAL: ‘We can’t bear to tell them what lies ahead,’ say volunteers helping those desperate enough to cross to Greece in a dinghy • Help refugees by donating to our 2015 appeal Mohammed’s crossing from Turkey to Lesbos took two hours because the motor on the dinghy stopped. “But there were only 40 of us on the boat, other people had much more. Thank God the smuggler wasn’t trying to kill anybody.” He is standing with his sons, Ahmed, 16, and Mahmood, 20, opposite Skala beach where the dinghy came in. The other 14 members of his family sit nearby. He is composed, not jubilant, and minded to see the best in everything – in the smugglers who charged him $900 per adult and half that per child, to the patch of shore he’s arrived at, with a few lean-tos for people to change behind while they wait for a bus. It smells so strongly of vomit and oranges that it becomes impossible to distinguish between them. It has bottled water, biscuits, volunteers and sacks of alarming, second-hand clothes. People who dress with care and panache arrive, soaking, and have to change into Hannah Montana socks and neon trainers. Continue reading...
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