In the middle of the swirling chaos of the World, stand still. She will show you what is yours to do. After refugees, after a harrowing nighttime journey in rubber rafts, the refugees have just endured a four-day “layover” on the Greek Military island of Farmakonisi. They have had no food, insufficient water, no shelter from the blazing heat. Hundreds of hungry, sea-ravaged and terrified men, women and children arrive by the boatloads here on Leros. The smallest of the G

At 67, heading into the thick of a refugee crisis seemed an odd thing to have on my bucket list. But it kept rising to the top—beyond going to the Galapagos, spending a month in silence, or visiting the temples of Myanmar. It is raw here. Visceral. Without the filters of TV and computer screens, the complex challenges of “the refugee crisis” is embodied in each person I meet and in all those I pass, sleeping on the sidewalk, huddled with their families and friends and those t

September 2, 2015. Within a few hours of arriving here we have rented a scooter and are on our way to meet Martina Kastavelli, founder of the Leros Solidarity network, and my only contact here, at the Port Police Station in the town of Lakki. Martina is pointed out to us, a cell phone held to her ear. There are hundreds of refugees basically locked inside the Port Police compound and others huddled on the sidewalks. Within the next few hours we are handing out water, crack