What you see depends on where you Stand.

Getting to Lesvos was hard. I endured Chicago traffic, an 8 hour flight to Dublin, a 20 hour layover, a 4 hour flight to Athens that left just before dawn, a 6 hour layover in Athens, a 50 minute flight on a teeny propeller plane, after of course getting off a previous plane with a broken engine and all of these little miseries, I endured while lugging around a massive suitcase crammed with 10 ukuleles, 30 music books, 15 egg shakers (which caused people to eye me strangely as I walked by..) and other countless items found in a typical music teacher's tools box. I arrived exhausted and poured myself into bed despite not having eaten dinner. Getting to Lesvos was hard.

Getting to Lesvos was hard. A refugee may have fled in the night, risking hypothermia and dehydration in the Sinjar mountains, a risk preferable to certain slaughter in the valley. A refugee may have fled a bombed city, finding the way on foot, with everything that can be carried or nothing at all. A refugee may have walked a thousand miles through hostile territory, broken up by months or years in a refugee camp. A refugee may have boarded an overflowing shameless excuse for a boat, perhaps alone or perhaps clutching tightly to a hand of a loved one. A refugee may have watched in terror as large waves crested over the sides of the boat. A refugee may have stumbled cold, hungry and exhausted onto the muddy shores of Lesvos, knees giving way in grateful relief. Getting to Lesvos was hard. 

The choice to come here was absolutely political. I sat fuming into the small hours of the night on January 27th, my husband out of the country and my president signing an executive order to ban the travel of those who needed our compassion the most. I was enraged and ashamed and my first defiant thought was "well if they can't come here, then I must go there." I scoured the internet for ways in which I might help, even if just a little bit and I stumbled on a tiny posting for a voice teacher in the Kara Tepe camp on the Island of Lesvos. I sent off a resume and within days, we were talking of potential dates. And now I am here, for what seems a frivolously short span of a month to try to organize, teach and share music to the best of my ability. 

This is where my part in the story ends and I begin to simply share the vignettes and pictures being gifted to me. It is a privilege to stand in a new place in order to see.