For Joanna Lapinska, reality just fell over her head. In the surroundings of Bialowieza, the Polish town four kilometers from the border with Belarus where he resides, more and more neighbors began to see hungry, thirsty and frozen people last month who had come from crossing it. With dozens of people he formed a parallel local network to bring food, drink and blankets to refugees and migrants, in coordination with Grupa Granica (Border Group, in Polish), a network of 14 NGOs that manages aid alerts.
“One day I was shopping in a nearby town and suddenly I received a message [de Grupa Granica, con quien ya había contactado] saying that there was a group of migrants waiting for water. I replied ‘OK, give me a few minutes’. I bought water and we just went there, ”recalls this 42-year-old product manager on a bench at one of the entrances to the primeval forest of Bialowieza, in the northeast of the country. “There were nine Iraqis and Turks, and they were very grateful. One was barefoot and someone brought him some boots ”, he recalls.
Thus began an activity that has become frantic as the migration crisis grows. The network receives requests for help through the telephone numbers of Grupa Granica, which are passed among the refugees. Once they have managed to sneak into Poland, they write through a messaging application and send their location with their mobile. “We ask them how many there are, what they need and we take things from a warehouse system that we have. We drive there by car, we try to prevent someone from following us, we park it in a place that is not visible, we go into the forest and look for people. Sometimes we can’t find them because they have changed places. And some of us do it and they are in a deplorable state ”, explains another member of the network, Kasia Wappa, at her home in the town of Hajnowka, 30 kilometers from the border. A routine that Lapinska never gets used to or thinks she will ever do. “It is very disturbing to give them water and watch them drink it as if it were the end of the world. You give them food, which they haven’t seen in five days, and they vomit because their stomachs are sick from drinking from the rivers, ”he says.
The local aid network moves between the grays of the legislation. The tonality depends in part on the courage or the legal interpretation that each one prefers to make. For example, feeding or tucking refugees is not a crime in Poland, although – Lapinska fear – some judge might consider it to help smuggle human beings into a mafia. Transporting them by car – even if a border is not crossed – or housing them, it can be, although no one in the network has been arrested for it. “It is clear that what we do is purely humanitarian, and not criminal,” he says.
The speed with which the network was born has a lot to do with the fact that, in a way, it already existed. Many of its members had previously coordinated to fight against the government’s tree felling project in the Bialowieza Forest, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
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Lapinska is part of a local aid initiative, known as Green Lights. It consists of making a light of that color visible to the refugees in the house, so that they know that it is a door to which they can knock and receive help. “It is based on goodwill. It is up to each person to help where they can. It also shows others that helping is legal and that they too can do it without fear. People are afraid to help or say it helps. It is, in a way, a taboo subject. We live in an area where refugees are not going to cross, because it has some fences around it, it is not part of the routes, etc., so in our case it is more a sign of ‘we are ready to help’. Plus the psychological effect ”, he explains.
Actually, there are no more than a few dozen. Some have put green plastic on the window and keep the light in that room on. Since she lives on the first floor, Lapinska bought a green light bulb online and placed it next to a window. Others, like Marius Kozak, illuminate the porch of their house in nearby Pogorcelze in that color. “I have not received any visitors yet, but the fact is that the police go around my house every night from ten o’clock, lighting the garden with flashlights to see if there is anyone,” he says.
The promoter of the initiative, lawyer Kamil Zyller, translated the announcement of the initiative into several languages commonly spoken by migrants, such as Arabic or Turkish, and disseminated it. “But not everyone knows it exists. And they stay in the middle of the forest, away from everything, ”says Lapinska.
Another minority
Wappa does not have a green light at his home, but admits that he has taken in several migrants in need. “My way of dealing with this situation is to help. Because once there is a person dying behind my garden, the situation has decided for me. I can’t say ‘I don’t care’ and go back to bed ”.
The family of this English teacher and translator has been in Hajnowka for generations. She is Polish of Belarusian culture, a community with a practically anecdotal population weight in the country as a whole, but the majority among the 15,000 inhabitants of the town, as evidenced by its high Orthodox Church, the branch of Christianity that it professes. Wappa believes that her minority status brings her closer to those she helps.
“One of the common questions is: why do you want to help us? Everyone has tried to trick us or hit us, why are you bringing us drink? Or external battery chargers, which is one of the things they ask for the most. Because without a mobile you are alone and you don’t know where you are going ”, he says. He gives as an example of this disorientation some Cameroonians who had their cell phones stolen and were walking in the opposite direction, back to the border with Belarus. An NGO activist recently helped a family who thought they were already in Germany.
Typically, the migrants he meets have not eaten in five days. “The worst situation I have encountered is 15 days,” says Wappa. They bring them canned fish, eggs, sweets, chicken pate spread on bread … Things that are easy to transport, but that provide energy and do not contain pork, since most of them come from countries with a Muslim majority.
“Sometimes they tell you that they have prayed for rain: on the one hand, it means getting soaked with cold, but on the other it is water, so they don’t know if being thirsty or cold is worse. They are very weak and the forest is very humid. Many have bruises from the blows of the Belarusian soldiers. And they are afraid, ”he explains.
Each one lives this new facet of his life in a way. Lapinska does not feel like an activist, but “someone who lives here and cannot do too much.” “It’s not that the whole town starts welcoming the refugees to their home. What we do is just a drop in an ocean of needs ”, he justifies. For Wappa, it is more of a way of “learning how to help” with a view to the future, unlike activists from other parts of the country who have responded to the emergency. “People come and go, but we are always here,” he says. “And I think the problem is going to be here for quite some time.”
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