Charlotte Bellis: Inside the refugee camp

Kiwi TV reporter Charlotte Bellis has been volunteering in refugee camps in Greece. Today she reveals the colourful lives surviving in a monotone world, and a refugee writes about his plight.

The glare is obnoxious, compounding the Greek sun beating down on the 2971 refugees inside Camp Moria's walls. The gravel turns your feet white with dust. The sun reflects off the millions of tiny stones and the hundreds of white shipping containers these refugees call home.

I walk past layers of barbed wire fencing, past Greek military and police personnel smoking their Marlboro cigarettes at the gates.

I show my New Zealand passport. No questions and I carry on.

It's just 50m to the entrance of Section A - home to families, unaccompanied minors and single women. They are separated, so for the next 6 hours I will move between the groups teaching music, migrating between different sections of what is, essentially, a prison.

Moria is a monotone, temporary world. The only thing of colour is the skin of the people who inhabit this place. Algerians, Syrians, Afghans, Iraqis and Congolese flooding here over the Aegean Sea in increasing numbers.

Different ethnicities and religions are segregated to avoid clashes. Families are separated from adult males who are separated from unaccompanied minors.

These people survive in the monotone world, but their memories are vivid and bubbling with fear and heartbreak, passion and hope.

Here, fact is stranger than fiction and Hollywood would be hard pressed to find more compelling tales.

If emotions were colour these people have dragged themselves the gamut of the rainbow and found a pot of gravel at its end.

Lesbos is one of the closest islands to Turkey, making it the frontier between the EU and chaos.

This island has been the epicentre of the humanitarian crisis since 2015 when 660,000 people crossed the Aegean Sea to Greece. This was the first European port of entry for half of those people.

The island of just 80,000 inhabitants became overwhelmed trying to help up to 1000 people a day landing on their shores, most with just a little cash and a cellphone to their name.

For many refugees, Camp Moria on the Greek island of Lesbos has been home for more than 18 months. Photo / AP

The United Nations and the Greek Government moved in and set up temporary camps. The two biggest are known as Moria and Kara Tepe. They are rough and ready - a collection of shipping containers, gravel and chain-linked fencing (with barbed wire on top).

Fast forward two years and many refugees have received asylum elsewhere and the flow has slowed.

Now instead of 1000 arrivals daily it's down to 100. I have covered the crisis as a journalist in London for Al Jazeera English and the BBC. I have talked to them as they prepared to leave Syria, but I wanted to come to Greece to meet these people face-to-face.

These days it's a waiting game. For many refugees, Moria or Kara Tepe has been home for more than 18 months. They can't go forward or back. They wait on officials to tell them in which European country they will receive asylum. In the meantime, it's sit in the gravel and twiddle your thumbs.

Children play with stones from dawn to dusk.

Imagine your child living in your driveway playing with the gravel stones all day, every day.

Imagine a dozen families live in that driveway alongside you and no one has a washing machine.

Everything happens in your driveway, except sleeping, which happens on stretcher beds inside a shipping container, alongside multiple families, some with unsettled newborns.

You are preparing food and eating in your driveway and your children are discarding their leftovers in the dirt.

The heat doesn't help the stench from dirty clothes, human sweat and fly-infested food scraps.

The shipping containers block any breeze and ensure the air stays stagnant.

Someone in a uniform, who doesn't speak your language, stands at the end of your driveway 24 hours a day dictating whether you can leave.

You wonder whether your children will bounce back from this? Can they sense your fear and frustration? You've endured an escape where you could have been killed by bombs, bullets and waves, for this? You pray you made the right decision and they will get an education, one day.

Charlotte Bellis at Moria Refugee Camp in Lesbos, Greece. Photo / Supplied

Camp Moria provides the bare essentials for those with nothing left to lose.

Most lost all their possessions and assets in their war-torn home countries. Most arrived on the stony beaches in a black inflatable boat with a cellphone, their passport and some cash in waterproof sandwich bags shoved inside their bra or underwear. They are pushed together in sections creating a cacophony of different languages and accents.

The sun pushes the mercury towards 35C and yet I wear long pants with my arms covered.

Sweat trickles down my back and legs and penetrates my clothes allowing grit to adhere to the fabric.

I spend my days looking at job opportunities for the refugees, writing their resumes and creating photo and video content for charities' social media pages and websites.

I spend most nights at Damas, a locally-run taverna, drinking Greek beer and listening as the refugees purge their stories and reminisce patriotically about happier times.

Damas is one of the few restaurants that will allow refugees inside.

The Syrians fascinate me. I have made half a dozen close friends who are aligned with the opposition or Free Syrian Army. Half of those were tortured by Bashar al-Assad's army.

One 26-year-old was hung by his wrists from a prison ceiling and beaten for three months.

He tells me, "I never cried. I made a point of it. Also, the man beating me was just doing his job.

"When I was released, he asked why I never cried and I told him my pride was all I had. He nodded at me. If I saw that man that today, I'd shake his hand. We respected each other."

And then there's a handful who are aligned with the Assad Government and were tortured at the hands of the opposition. They drink together, their allegiances left behind on the shores of Turkey.

If Moria Camp were a person she would be a gruff, inattentive aunt who, resentfully, looked after you when you were a child and your parents went on holiday.

Sure she took on the responsibility, but she whipped you with a belt if you spilt milk.

Nurturing is not in her nature and you are vulnerable.

Moria is meant to be a place of refuge built upon the ideals of Europe and equality. But she exacerbates and compounds the torture her residents have endured.

It's no surprise that NGOs have switched from trying to save people from the sea to saving them from themselves. Mental health issues are the biggest killer now.

Every day I went in to Moria, I would see people with fresh white bandages, covering their wrists up to their elbows.

Refugees try to keep up morale by making friends and learning new skills. Bound by their struggle and living on common ground, they find common ground. Most of them have taught themselves English since arrival.

Everyone here must adapt their language, custom, religion, career and community to integrate in the West.

I teach them Netflix, social media, even dating app Tinder.

Syrian Wessam "Sam" Alkatrib is taken aback at Tinder.

"How can you tell if someone likes you if you're dating multiple people at the same time?"

Then it's my turn to be shocked when the 32-year-old says he's never had a bank account. He says no Syrians have bank accounts.

"If you don't have a bank account, how do you buy a house in Syria?"

He says with the war they're cheap, about NZ$4000 for a three-bedroom house and everyone always just pays cash.

"But you had a job in the military? How did they pay you?"

He replies, "A man would show up with bodyguards on a Friday and hand out envelopes of cash."

My level of freedom smacks me in the face. On a New Zealand passport with a savings account, I can go anywhere and do practically anything I want.

When it's time to return to London I hug Sam and wish him luck.

On a Syrian passport, living on a UN handout of 90 ($149) a month and a target on his back, Sam has one option - walk back to Moria and wait. Tears build in his eyes.

He heads back to Moria and that layer of dust that coats everyone and conceals their identity.

Dear citizens of New Zealand,

Syrian refugee Sam Alkatrib, who is in Camp Moira in Lesbos. He wants to NZ government to consider lifting its refugee quota. Photo / Supplied

I know you have an election coming up and that New Zealand's refugee intake is an election issue. As you debate my future, let me give you some insight into my world.

I am Sam Alkatrib. I am 32 years old, from Salamiyah in Syria, and I am living in a refugee camp on the island of Lesbos, Greece.

Before the crisis broke out, I lived a normal life with a girlfriend and a fashion business in Damascus.

In 2011, my home town was surrounded by Isis on the east and the Al Qaeda-linked Al Nusra on the west. I knew I had to do something so I left my life in Damascus.

I took a job with the Syrian Ministry of Defence. In February 2016, I was seconded to a role on the front lines.

I had never killed anyone in my life, but knew the role would involve heavy combat.

I chose to flee. I did not want the war to turn me into a killer.

I paid a smuggler to get me out of Syria to Europe. I was captured by opposition militia and tortured for two weeks near the border of Turkey but, after three attempts, I made it across the Aegean Sea to Lesbos.

The war has wreaked havoc on my family. My older brother was executed and another brother tortured for three years in prison. I thought he was dead until I bumped into him one day in a camp here on Lesbos.

I regret nothing. I stood fast to my convictions that I would not let the war change me.

I want to reach my potential and raise a family someday in a safe place.

I want to provide for my future family and live in place where my children can have healthcare and an education.

I would rather risk my life to follow that dream, than fight in a war I don't believe in.

While I might have been born on the other side of the world, we have more in common than divides us.

As I sit in Moria Camp, a barbed wire compound home to 3000 refugees, I read news articles where campaigners and politicians debate how many of us New Zealand can handle.

I worry you believe we will be an economic burden on your society.

While I cannot suggest what number is appropriate, I can tell you that all the Syrians I know who are displaced just want to return to being proud, happy people.

We want our honour back.

As someone who used to have a successful business, I want to contribute to the society that takes me in.

I didn't want you to vote this year without knowing a refugee's story.

We need your help to achieve a better life.