Today was a bad day. It is true though, that there are also very good and beautiful days for volunteering, but today was one of the bad ones. With each day more and more refugees are made to live in inhumane conditions in the streets of Thessaloniki; they have to sleep in the parks, abandoned buildings and eat garbage found in the cities garbage bins. The park in front of the Thessaloniki train station is a well known place for the people smugglers, where the refugees wait in hope that they will have enough money to pay for a trip to Macedonia, Serbia and Croatia.

After hearing a lot about this park and this train station, we decided to go there and see for ourselves what is really true. When we arrived to the place that is called a “park”, where the refugees are sleeping, we saw that it was in fact just a big muddy area and we saw people lying in that filth, we saw people who are hungry and who are sifting through garbage in order to find something for their children to eat.

A small girl from Afghanistan came to tell us, in English, the story of what the last few days were for her, her mother and her brothers. They were trying to cross the border but each time they were stopped by the Macedonian police and they were brought back to Greece. Her eight year old brother was beaten by the police. Her mother is traveling with her and other five minor children; they lost their father somewhere on the Afghan-Iraqi border and haven’t heard anything since. She continued to tell us how they don’t have access to the toilets and showers because the employees of the train station are denying them the usage of the toilets. Some of the adults resorted to wearing adult diapers. The situation is difficult to witness.

There was one beautiful sight I witnessed to; it was beautiful to see some of the familiar faces of the tea-making team from the Eco camp. It was great to see someone we knew, to hug and share joy and pain. The guys decided to cross the border because they can’t stay in Greece anymore, their hope is diminishing with each day, and they are exhausted. Since they are no longer part of a relocation program their only hope is to seek asylum in Greece, an idea some have already tried and got even more disappointed.

For months people tried crossing the border, and each time they were beaten and brought back.

There are only independent volunteers that occasionally come and bring food; they are trying to help to as many as they can in every way possible.

While on one side refugees are brought back, on the other side even more are coming in. Regardless of the weather conditions, the refugees are still trying to run from Turkey and come to the Greek island of Lesbos. Just a few months ago everything looked much better, the borders were still open, there was better communication and coordination between the EU countries, and fewer children went missing. But the situation has changed. My friends volunteering at Lesbos tell me that each day there are many boats coming filled with refugees. One boat can take maximum of 12 people, but the smugglers can send even 30 in one boat. Recently signed treaty between EU and Turkey, on March 20th, was focused, in part, in discovering and breaking the smuggler network on the sea. That happened only in part. The impossibility to end the smuggler networks has caused the smugglers to put the refugees in even greater danger. My friends tell me that now they have even seen boats filled with 70 people. Just a few days ago the Emergency Response Centre International said that they found two dead bodies from the sea. That journey from Turkey to Greece by ferry costs only 5 Euros. The refugees are expected to pay anywhere from 500 to 1000 Euros. They managed to run away from the war in Syria, but they didn’t manage to cross the water to Greece.

There are currently rumors going that the smugglers are planning on establishing new routes – one across Romania, and the other across Italy. When we look at the map and see the distance between Turkey and Italy, we can only say God forbid.