Some call it the Pournara camp's 'resort', with the children's club, restaurant, an inflatable swimming pool and free English classes. The three tents, where the Community welcomes refugees every afternoon, found their deepest meaning in the Gospel of the Transfiguration during the Sunday liturgy celebrated on 6 August with a hundred refugees in the camp:
- the Friendship Restaurant tent for everyone to have the right to bread, to food
- the School of Peace tent for the little ones
- the English School tent because we all need to learn, because words help everyone to dialogue.
Every day around 500 people gather in these three tents. The English school has about 50 students: it is a survival language, it will help them find a place in Europe
The School of Peace and the children's play area attract many. The little ones turn up at the gate at 5 sharp to book a swim in the small inflatable pool, with coloured balls, a real 'luxury'.
The restaurant tent offers tasty food, along with the possibility of talking and listening to each other's stories. Around 5 p.m., a cool refreshing breeze comes up making us want to stay a little longer until the camp gates are closed. Indeed, Pournara is a locked camp, a hot-spot, families cannot leave until they have been identified.
Everyone rediscovers dignity in the Friendship tents,: 'I am not just a refugee but first and foremost a person', who can also help others to live better. Several young people from Cameroon, Congo, Syria, Pakistan and Afghanistan joined the Sant'Egidio volunteers to serve at the tables, to take care of the little ones. Some of them are now familiar faces: they have become full-fledged 'Sant'Egidio volunteers' since we met last summer. Their asylum procedure is still pending, but they travel from the villages in Cyprus to come and help at the camp. Every evening we dance and sing. It's hard to leave!
In Larnaca, Nicosia, and Pafos there are many shelters for unaccompanied minors. More than 1000 minors are housed in the shelters in Cyprus, in addition to those still waiting in the refugee camp due to lack of space.
Each of the minors applies for reunification with a relative in Europe, but this is most often refused because of missing documents, degree of relationship not close enough. When the news of rejection arrives, despair sets in!
Sant'Egidio volunteers organise trips to the beach, mini-Olympics, lunches and visits with these young people.
The Ethnographic Museum in Nicosia was a discovery. What is a museum? They had no idea but discovered it by visiting the rooms, tracing the island history and having pictures taken with the mannequins dressed in historical clothing. There is a desire to understand and to learn. Some 30 shelter children in Nicosia come every day to the English school at the San Giuseppe Institute and ask for their homework.
Many teenage girls from Somalia have been participating in the activities with great enthusiasm. Talking is their most urgent need. Their whatsapp profiles reveal an immense longing for home, for family: "Mum, I miss you".
