[Greece] Ali and Mara's Story From the Field

Ali is a refugee from Syria. He came to Greece with his wife and three children one and a half years ago. They live in an open accommodation facility (camp) for asylum seekers and refugees near Athens, at Scaramanga. Their baby boy  was born in the camp.

Ali's daughter Mara is eleven years old and has special needs.The child protection organization Terre des hommes in Greece, managed, with the support of Child's Smile, and the orthopedic store, Kifidis, to provide splints to improve little Mara's mobility. But Ali is still very worried about his daughter. With the cash assistance  provided to them they cannot access special physiotherapy support. 'I did construction work in Syria. I was able to help her, but not here. I would very much like to leave the camp, to find a job, to have the necessary treatment for Mara, to be able to do something good for our children. I would like us to be able to go to Germany because I have learned that my daughter can be treated well there with the appropriate physical therapy.'

Before COVID-19 his eldest son (who is 13 years old) went to school and the youngest child went to the kindergarten inside the camp. But Mara does not go to any kind of school.

How is life with COVID-19? 'Before the quarantine, we were able to go out of the camp, to visit Athens, for a little change of scenery, to get some fresh air that was beneficial for the little one. Now, with the continuous extensions of the restrictive measures in the camps, we can not get out, it is difficult. We take care to clean ourselves adequately, we avoid socializing, we do not communicate with our friends, not even with our neighbors in the adjacent containers; we just greet them from a distance. Our only entertainment is a walk here at the Scaramanga camp, with the kids. We look at the sea and hope that one day we will leave here, we will find a new homeland and a new life. I feel that thanks to God, everything will go well. But we do not decide, God will decide. It takes faith.'

Terre des hommes Hellas provides child protection services to the family of Ali and little Mara, as part of its project in nine open accommodation sites in Northern Greece, Thessaly and Attica, in collaboration with DRC Greece and IOM Greece, and with the support of the European Union Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund (DG Home)