About Greece: What the Bag Lady learned this time

I've been home for six days. I try to allow myself a little time to reflect before I write the final post in a travel experience. Here's what I learned:

1. I don't pay attention to where I'm going if someone else is driving. I have been to the village of Dilesi five times in the last two years, for a total of about ten weeks. But on the day I drove to the team house from the community center, I got lost. There are no street signs, and I could not find the right turn to the street leading to our house. I turned around and came back the other way. I still couldn't find it. I had to drive about five miles up the road, toward the camp at Oinofyta, and turn the car around, to find a street that looked familiar.

See, when I'm just the passenger I don't pay attention to landmarks. Now I know the street going to the team house is right after the butcher shop, and the street coming from the team house is right before the butcher shop. It was really kind of scary to be so lost. I wondered if I was losing it.

2. I love an excuse to eat fresh bread and feta cheese. When I travel I don't maintain my Weight Watchers discipline. It's a nice break. I think the perfect lunch in Greece is bread and cheese and fresh fruit. Really fresh fruit, bought from the produce stand across the street from the bakery and the coffee place. Like grapes and peaches. So good!

3. I am not a seafood fan, but I have learned to love fried calamari. Especially when I'm eating it at a little table ten feet from the Aegean Sea. And I have identified my perfect Greek salad: fresh tomatoes, cucumbers, oil, olives, and feta. No peppers, no onions. I think I had a Greek salad more than half a dozen times in my two weeks there - usually with a skewer or two of chicken.

4. In my neighborhood at home, dogs are required to be leashed when they're on the street. Not so in Dilesi. Dogs run singly or in packs, and some of them chase cars or people. One of the Do Your Part volunteers, Sara, went for a run one morning. She was approached and harassed by three dogs, one of which bit her. She found out later that people do run for exercise, but they're mostly tourists, because the residents know better. I also heard that if you're going to run, you should carry rocks and throw them toward the dogs. Quite a wild way to get exercise, I'd say.

5. On this trip my work was much easier. Do Your Part is in a community center five miles from the camp, and residents come in our van to the community center. Whether they're coming for food distribution, or clothes for babies, or to see the medical team, or just for some respite time, there are rarely more than 20 people visiting.

When we worked inside the Oinofyta camp last year, it was among several hundred residents. Outside the container we used as an office there were often people waiting to see the camp manager. Maybe they needed to make a copy of their ID card, or maybe they wanted a cooking pot as large as their neighbor since they had more people in their family than their neighbor did. If we had administrative things to attend to - like the accounting, in my case - we had very little uninterrupted time.

6. The camp residents this time were mostly Kurds from Syria. The language was a challenge because they speak Kurdish and we had only a couple of people who could translate for us. Last year, nearly everyone was Afghan, and there were a number of residents who could translate from Farsi. Sometimes body language just isn't enough. There were a few times I had to shake my head and shrug my shoulders; I didn't have any idea what was being said to me.

7. If you hold a baby for half an hour while their mother is choosing baby clothes, your arms get tired. At least mine did. Still, it was a lovely, lovely experience.

8. The Greek friends you made last year give you a hug when they see you: the Pakistani guy, the pharmacist, the restaurant owner. Sometimes they say, "Hello. Did you bring your husband with you?" Art says that's because Greek is a patriarchal culture, but I'm pretty sure it's because he's a nice guy. And one of your Greek friends calls a friend who drives a taxi, who calls another friend who drives a taxi, to pick me up at 3:30 a.m. for an hour-long trip to the airport. And checks to make sure the taxi arrives. Maria, you rock!

9. If you take the train to Athens to visit your friend Nasar, and he tells you to "Get off at Larisa Station", and the end of the line says "Athens", and you get off. And Nasar is not there, and you don't have any internet service to find him, and you wonder if you should just get on the next train and go home. But then he shows up, and you have a great afternoon. And the meal Nasar serves you was prepared by a friend of his in his camp, and the friend used to be the chef for the President of Afghanistan. And you meet that friend and another friend, and you feel honored that Nasar has asked you to spend time with him.

Nasar and me

I was asked to go to Greece this time so I could see what Do Your Part is doing now. I saw that we are still serving the refugee population, still caring, still doing our part, with a little help from our friends.

Or a lot.