First-person piece by MSF psychologist Marina Spyridaki
“Refugees sleeping on the streets of Kos tell me, ‘At home we had war, but at least we had
dignity’”
Marina Spyridaki is an MSF psychologist working with refugees on the Greek island of Kos as
they wait to receive papers that will allow them to leave for Athens and continue their
journeys.
“I am here offering psychosocial support to people wherever they need it – I hold sessions in
the park, the port, wherever there are refugees trying to live.
There are so many young children arriving on the island. I organise play sessions for them –
through play, children express their emotions. It is also a way to identify how we can help
them more efficiently – we do creative activities like painting and doing puzzles. The children
do talk to us about wanting to go home, but I think they mean home as in somewhere safe,
away from war and away from the streets of Kos. It is one of the most common themes in
their drawings: a house on a sunny day with their family around the home.
But even as the children are playing happily, their parents tell us how hard it is on them to
be here. They say their children’s behaviour changed after the dangerous boat ride from
Turkey to Kos, and that now they cry a lot. Often our role involves supporting the parents in
how to deal with such changes in behaviour and offer comfort to their children during this
process.
It really worries me that these children have endured so much, including war in their country
and the trip across the sea. Unless they settle down in a stable home and are given lots love
and protection, it will be very difficult for them.
I saw one young Syrian boy who was at home when the house was hit by a bomb. His
parents told me that his behaviour changed after that: he couldn’t sleep at night and he
stopped communicating. He was later diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.
There are many unaccompanied children, but often they are reluctant to reveal their real
age or the fact that they are here alone. Often they will insist that they are 18 and are
travelling with an uncle or cousin because they were told that they will be detained if
recognised as unaccompanied minors.
There was a 14-year-old Syrian boy who arrived here on his own. A woman working at the
port saw him crying day after day and asked us to help him. He was desperate to go back to
Turkey, where his mother was. He felt he just couldn’t survive without her. But it had been
the family’s decision for him to leave, and it wasn’t possible for him to go back.
We hold group sessions for adults too, and people are very open to sharing their concerns
and emotions with us. It is during these group sessions that people express their fear about
both the current situation and what the future holds for them. We also hold individual and
follow-up sessions where needed.
‘My two daughters died when a bomb hit my house,’ one father told me. ‘I didn’t have time
to mourn their deaths as I had to save the rest of my family.’ This is something I hear often;
people have endured so much and feel there is no time and energy for anything but survival.
Very often, they talk about the travel from Turkey to Kos. Some refugees say they were
treated well by the smugglers; others describe being kidnapped when trying to cross into
Turkey by groups who demanded ransoms for their release. Others report being tortured at
the hands of people traffickers. They always emphasize the fact that they had no alternative
but to pay smugglers to flee their homes ‘We could either stay in our country – where we
had two choices: to kill or get killed – or we could save ourselves. There was no choice.’
After everything they have been through, here they are, sleeping on the ground, without
water or food. Many people have said to me, ‘At home we had war, but at least we had our
dignity.’
Parents often feel lost without their role