#yes i drove myself to my summer job everyday the summers of ages 19 and 20 but that was Rough As Fuck

[themanwhowouldbefruit]

don't ask how i passed my regular driver's license test i literally don't know either. i was 18 so i think they just felt bad for me.

[thepensiverambler]

Little by little

26th I woke as usual, sweat on my brow to find another still day. Today was hot. Really hot. In my opinion it was no hotter than any other day only we didn't have a nice cooling breeze. I tried to get into the kitchen to make myself some breakfast on their was a great big lock in the way. After searching long and hard for a key (little over a minute) I resigned myself to wait for the others to wake and come and find the key. Once they did come and we were finally all sat at breakfast chatter began to wander towards the daily plan. I had had aspirations of starting to flatten the ground on which to dig the volunteer house and to dig it's foundations. It became clear to me that no one was keen on doing any strenuous physical activity. I helped Cuba with the minor chore of cutting away to filler he'd used on the walls in the kitchen. I decided I would go and help Hanna to rake field. We needed to get rid of all dry grass and other plants in order to transform it into a nice area for workshops. We decided to burn the grass in a metal drum as we were Coldingham the grass. The burning was talking too long so we tried burning the grass in clumps on the ground. We took precautions to contain the fire such as digging a small trench to around the fire, wetting the ground around it and we watched it closely armed with watering cans. The fire escaped after a while and crawled 2 or 3 metres aways before we spotted it and jumped into action with our emergency water. At the end of the field was a patch of ground I hadn't noticed before on which nothing grew. Perfect for our fire. I told the others that was the place for us. I was called a genius and we set to work, for about 5 minutes. Ali shouted at us all saying that we were all going to the beach. Now at this point I know a lot of you may consider me grumpy but I really didn't want to go to the beach. I'd had a day off the previous day, and I had a task in hand that was different to mixing concrete. I had’nt come to Turkey to simply go to the beach when it was a little warmer than was comfortable. After a little rebellion I and 3 others remained at the village to work whilst the others left to the beach. I was alone in the field. A vast expance to clear with just a bucket and a rake. I set to work. I worked nonstop for 4 hours. Well I took water breaks of course. And one for a coffee. And a few dates. And maybe a slice of water melon and a fig. After my tireless work I had got to about halfway through the field, there was now a large mound of hay at one end of the field but all I could see was the work still at hand. The four of us took lunch (pasta and a salad). As we finishing our post lunch coffees the minibus of beach goers returned. To get out of the way I went back to my field to get on with the job. I had the aim of finishing it by the end of the day and I knew that if stopped too long I wouldn't be able do it alone. Bit between my teeth I worked without regard for the sweat dripping of my nose and occasionally into my mouth. No regard for my t-shirt stuck to me with a large T written across my chest in slightly darker maroon than the original. Hoping all the while my morning crew would return and lighten to the load yet team never did. I had to employ the help of another volunteer, Eros. We worked for an hour together until at last my herculean task was complete. I had a haystack down one end of the field large enough to feed the entirety of the Grand national horses for a year. It was huge. Easily 6 feet in height, 10 feet long and another 6 feet in width. Now for the fun part or the day. The fire. After a few safety precautions we torched the lot, played a little ‘cricket’ as it burned. Cricket consisted of being tossed a ball and trying to pull the ball (stone) so that it might rain down on the others that were still building the kitchen. The bat was a slat from a pallet, not quite the fine piece of willow to which I'm used but a bat nonetheless. The shot need to travel around 60 metres but even my best times shots were falling 10 metres short. I had to go to the cafe to get wifi to find out when I would be going to University. Yes I should probably have known this before I came out and started to plan travelling Turkey but I didn't. I got on the pink bike and enjoyed a nice cycle into town. I spent a little time sorting my life out until I met a couple of the new volunteers. One was a 19 year old Norwegian girl that I’d chatted a little at the village earlier in the day. We sat and chatted for a while, to put it nicely she talked too much, to put it less nicely the girl had verbal diahorrea. I don't mean to be too rude because I thought she was a sweet girl but good lord she enjoyed talking about herself. I enjoy meeting new people because you never know what they'll be like but there's only so much I want to talk about exams and university. I would have assumed that being the same age we'd have had a similar experience over the past year of everyday conversations about university and future. I'm sick of it. I don't care what uni you're going to. I don't care what you're studying. I don't care if you're nervous, excited or unsure about the experience. I really don't care if you're looking forward to freshers or not, it doesn't matter either way we both know you're going to turn up at freshers, get too drunk one time and think you're now a ‘hardcore student’. Regardless of this it's the common ground we found and, wishing we were both into football I covered the usual topics as though ticking them from my checklist. After some dinner we had delivered I got a lift home and went to bed. 27th I was picking up stones in the field when Beret came to me and asked if I wanted to come to the police station to distribute to a group picked up trying to cross to Chios that morning. Yes. Of course I did. We got in the car and drove to the shop picking 48 bottles of water and countless loaves of bread. We then drove to the cafe and picked up toys for the children and tinned beans. 200 metres down the road was the police station which was right on the sea front between 2 fancy bars. I nearly walked straight past it but the others turned in and we walked up the narrow steps into a courtyard. I was expecting to find 15 or so refugees sat in a hostile, white synthetic room with water coolers and cork boards. This was not the case, 30 or so refugees sat in the courtyard struggle to find shade from the midday heat. We went round handing out bread, water and toys for the children. The groups ranged from large families of women and children to couples to lone men. I didn't find out where they were from which would have such an impact on their future. It seems strange to think how these people could be treated so differently to me due to their place of birth. How they could be treated so differently to each other depending on whether they were Syrian or Iraqi. During my visit we were fortunate to be supervised by a nice police officer. He was friendly, opening a tin of beans for us and even fetching another loaf of bread when we ran out. We are lucky in Cesme that the police station is quite nice to give us a call when they've made arrests so that we can come and offer some relief. We're lucky in Cesme, to have quite a cooperative police station which will call us when they've made arrests. Sometimes they'll feed them, sometimes they won't. The police argue they don't have enough money to spend on food for refugees. Some policemen aren't as nice as the one we were supervised by today. Every volunteer who has spent a significant amount of time in a camp has witnessed violence from police officers. The worst thing as a volunteer is in these sorts of situations there's nothing you can do. If you interfere you jeopardise the relationship with charity and police which endangers the welfare of far more future refugees than the one receiving the beating. The situation reminds me of that of Rwanda when the UN force was sent in during the mass genocide with a mandate that wouldn't allow them to interfere with violence. Cases were reported where UN officers had to stand by whilst they watched the slaughter of men,women and children. The effects of the genocide has given both murderers and UN officials PTSD. I'm sure this crisis will do the same. I'm fortunate not to have witnessed much violence in my brief time volunteering. It's seems silly that in the total 4 or 5 days I've spent in the presence of both refugees and law enforcement that I should feel fortunate not to have witnessed grave violence. Cesme police station treats it's detainees well to a point. They often leave it a few hours until they call us, leaving refugees to grow more and more uncomfortable and hungry in the midday sun. I see no point in treating refugees poorly in detention. Some argue that it's to act as a deterrent, to teach them a lesson. These people are willing to risk their lives to get to Greece a few hours of discomfort is not going to do well as a deterrent. The proof of this is easy to find, today I heard of a man that had attempted the crossing 8 times unsuccessfully. So why not treat these poor people as human beings and not animals to be punished for attempting to improve their lives. 28th The news came that last night a boat had sunk attempting to make the crossing. 7 dead, 10 alive. It shook me a little as I'd been to a departing beach just days before, met with refugees that had attempted the crossing just yesterday. It made me think and question whether I doing all I could at this moment in time. Surely it's more important to save lives than to improve them. But what life can you lead without the possibility of betterment? Just crossing your fingers and hoping that you'll be able to save enough money over the summer to feed yourself for the winter. I was told in Calais that whatever we do will never be enough and it's true. You can be working 20 hours a day 7 days a week and you won't think that it's enough. All we can hope to do is improve lives little by little to a point where they can start to improve them on their own.