Workers from the Greek Army and the Danish Refugee Council are setting up a stage for this evening. The camp houses 100 people from Syria, Palestine and Iraq in a former Mercedes-Benz showroom, on a hill overlooking the port city of Volos. It is just noon, and unbearably hot. There is less than a week left in Ramadan, and most of the camp is still asleep. A few children wander across the tarmac. Apparently they have been rehearsing songs to perform at tonight’s Iftar. There will be a potluck, and later, dancing. No one has come to the clinic yet.
The heat continues. A very pregnant young woman, arrived just a few days ago, faints in the office while talking to a lawyer. I am an emergency physician again for a minute. Her hands are swollen and she has a headache, and we pack her off in an ambulance. Tomorrow we are back at the Koutsocheros camp, temporary home to 1,000 refugees, mostly Syrian. From the road it looks like a sci-fi colony, with rows of white containers and solar panels lined up on the Thessaly plain.
Someone has put the kids’ artwork on the outside walls of the old showroom. Blue and white balloons have appeared as well as two women wearing UNHCR vests. Most people are outside now. The kids are running and jumping on the stage with the balloons, and you can smell the cooking pots for tonight’s dinner. My own daughter, five years old, found a stage set up in the village we are staying in. Every night until they took it down, she stomped up and down on it while we looked on, eating our own dinner.
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