The story behind this picture from Lesvos:
http://www.keeptalkinggreece.com/2015/10/19/three-greek-grannies-a-refugee-baby-solutions-where-governments-institutions-fail/Last Friday afternoon in the village Skala Sykamias in Lesvos. The three grannies sit on their favorite bench as every afternoon and watch members of the Coast Guard and volunteers helping refugees who have arrived with three boats from Turkey.
Militsa Kamvisi, 83, Eustratia Mavrapidi, 89, and her cousin Maritsa Mavrapidi, 85, suddenly hear a baby crying. The mother was holding it in her arms, was trying to bottle feed it. Her clothes were wet, the baby didn’t want the milk.
“Hey, girl, bring the baby over, I’ll feed it,” Militsa told the mother in Greek, a language she could not understand. But granny’s face expression and accompanying gesture were very clear and broke the language barrier. Militsa took the baby boy in her arms, gave it the bottle, she started to sing a lullaby together with her friends.
“A mother is always a mother. I don’t see very well anymore, I don’t hear well, but still I can feed and calm down a baby,” Militsa told the daily and added “The baby wanted security. the mother’s cloths were wet, the father was in panic because the baby was crying. We were just sitting there and there was something we could do. I grabbed the baby and the bottle, it felt the dry hug, we sang a lullaby and it drank the milk in one row.”
The baby was one month old.
Militsa, the woman from Skala Sykamias spent all her life working ‘in the olive trees’ of the family. She has raised 4 children and 8 grandchildren. A hard working woman, a modest woman.
“My daughter told me that the picture was all over the internet. I didn’t do something extraordinary. I just wanted to help a girl in trouble and in wet clothes.” Militsa tells the daily reporter that every afternoon she sits on the bench with her two friends and watch the rescue operations, “how rescuers jump into the cold sea to save people” or bring on the shore drowned children and adults.
“They bring out dead boys and girls. Adults, as well. My heart hurts and I can’t sleep at night. What’s these people’s fault? The lost their homes, they left their homes and came here before they further travel to Europe. It’s a sin that they are drowned in the sea.”
According to this video clip (in Greek) their parents were refugees from Asia Minor in the population exchange:
https://mobile.twitter.com/daphnetoli/status/656189046604058624/video/1
Topic: Greek island refugee crisis