{"id":602,"date":"2016-07-23T08:40:28","date_gmt":"2016-07-23T08:40:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/globalreporting\/?p=602"},"modified":"2022-03-25T18:34:13","modified_gmt":"2022-03-25T18:34:13","slug":"lesbos-the-waiting-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/globalreporting2016\/2016\/07\/23\/lesbos-the-waiting-game\/","title":{"rendered":"Lesbos: The Waiting Game"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Hayley Roth<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Take a walk down the main street of Mytilene, the capital of the Greek island of Lesbos, and you\u2019ll see freshly-scrubbed storefronts, colorful awnings and potted plants. Hotels, restaurants and travel agencies face the placid waters of the Aegean. Docked boats scrape against the sidewalks. Shopkeepers lounge in doorways, squinting at the sun. But the scene is incomplete.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t have tourists,\u201d explained\u00a0Diamonto Kordogianni, a young woman who works at a waterfront kiosk that sells information pamphlets, t-shirts, and trinkets targeted toward vacationers. Its\u00a0shelves are overstocked and no one is buying. \u201cIt\u2019s difficult. We don\u2019t have jobs.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"kiosk\"<\/p>\n

Kordogianni\u2019s kiosk on Mytilene\u2019s main street i<\/span>s\u00a0<\/span><\/em>brimming with merchandise.\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Lesbos is situated a mere five miles off the western coast of Turkey. In the past year, the island witnessed the influx of more than\u00a0850,000 refugees from the Middle East, all seeking asylum in the European Union. According to Marios Andriotis, senior advisor to the mayor of Lesbos, the crisis peaked in September 2015.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\u201cI was on leave for four days,\u201d he recalled. \u201cWhen I came back, the refugee population [of Mytilene] had gone from 17,000 to 24,000. 27,000 is the population of Mytilene, so we almost had another city to take care of.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

But since\u00a0the signing of the EU-Turkey Deal in March 2016, numbers have dwindled. A smuggler\u2019s dinghy is a rare sighting. The number of resident refugees in Mytilene has dipped below 2,500. The island’s smaller towns are tranquil once again. But the tourists haven\u2019t returned. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe hotels, the restaurants, all kinds of businesses [are affected],\u201d said Glykeria Kontaxaki of Repanis Tours, a local travel agency. \u201cAll the kinds, believe me.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

Repanis is one of 11\u00a0travel agencies on Mytilene\u2019s main street alone. More than 60 percent\u00a0of their 2016 bookings have been canceled. \u201cBefore last year, we had a lot of people from around the world,\u201d Kontaxaki explained. \u201cNow, we cannot issue tickets, we cannot rent cars, we cannot rent hotels because of the whole situation. [Tourists] keep watching videos from 2015 and they think that it happens now, but that\u2019s a huge mistake.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"b18968b8-4e8c-4bbd-9acd-30673721edda\"<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Glykeria Kontaxaki: \u201cWe wait to [get back] to normal life, <\/span><\/i>before the refugees.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

According to the mayor\u2019s office, roughly 45 percent of the city\u2019s residents live entirely\u00a0off tourism. So\u00a0restaurants and upscale shops also are struggling to make ends meet. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe sell a luxury product,\u201d said Ismini Mamouni, of\u00a0Gardenia, a boutique sweets shop. \u201cRefugees don\u2019t want to buy. But we\u2019ll see what happens. We\u2019ll wait for the war to end and for these people to have homes.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"727cc542-51a1-4233-8876-3124f3bec6d2\"<\/p>\n

Ismani Mamouni: \u201cIt\u2019s a pity that we are still influenced by [the crisis], <\/span><\/i>but we are also kind of optimistic. Things will get better.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Just as travel agencies and shopkeepers wait for change, so do the island’s refugees.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Most live in the isolated camps of Moria and Kara Tepe, both beyond Mytilene\u2019s city limits. All new arrivals to the island are now\u00a0escorted by the Hellenic Coast Guard to Moria, where they are detained for 25 days behind fences topped by coils of razor wire as the Hellenic Police perform background checks and process registration requests. After this period, they are free to move to the open camp of Kara Tepe or wander the island. But no refugees can leave unless their asylum applications are approved by mainland Greek authorities. The process is referred to as “an appointment,” even though no person-to-person visit\u00a0takes place. The refugees are given no chance to\u00a0argue their cases to authorities in person; the paperwork must speak for itself. If it doesn\u2019t, the result is often deportation to Turkey.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re just waiting for appointments,\u201d said Shareen Elnashie, Education Program Director for the Humanitarian Support Agency at Kara Tepe. \u201cFor some of them, they\u2019ve been allocated appointments in December, so they don\u2019t want to settle in too much. They\u2019re bored. They\u2019re just really bored.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

Without income, most have little to do in a town like Mytilene, whose shops are marketed towards affluent tourists. Children run from door to door, begging for coins. Young men cluster at the port every evening to watch the Blue Star Ferry make its nightly departure for Athens. They stare\u00a0but don\u2019t board. Most speak neither Greek nor English, so they talk among themselves. The sun sets on the same scene again and again.<\/p>\n

Lesbos has become a waiting room– for citizens, for refugees, for volunteers stationed along the island\u2019s eastern shore, scanning the horizon for incoming dinghies. The ferry comes and goes, but it brings few tourists, and it takes away few refugees. <\/span><\/p>\n

On an island once devastated by change, now change can\u2019t come soon enough. <\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Hayley Roth Take a walk down the main street of Mytilene, the capital of the Greek island of Lesbos, and you\u2019ll see freshly-scrubbed storefronts, colorful awnings and potted plants. Hotels, restaurants and travel agencies face the placid waters of the Aegean. Docked boats scrape against the sidewalks. Shopkeepers lounge in doorways, squinting at the<\/p>\n

Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":606,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-602","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","post-preview"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/commons.princeton.edu\/globalreporting2016\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2016\/07\/72961c3c-c533-4a6e-a9cc-00f2ec87a99c.jpg?fit=640%2C480&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7wyBy-9I","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":631,"url":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/globalreporting2016\/2016\/07\/21\/paradise-lost\/","url_meta":{"origin":602,"position":0},"title":"Paradise lost","author":"hwb","date":"July 21, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"By Harrison Blackman Four months have passed since the European Union outlawed undocumented migration from Turkey, effectively trapping new arrivals\u00a0from Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan in camps in Greece. 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