A BEACON OF HOPE
26 | June• 2019
IT IS 3AM, FEBRUARY 9, 2016
and 68 people sit cheek to jowl in a rubber boat,
eight kilometres from the Turkish coast. It is on
its way to the Greek island of Lesbos. But it is
overloaded, the motor has broken, and water is
slopping over the sides. Children are crying.
team sees from regular updates that
the boat is barely moving. An agonis-
ing hour passes. The water has crept
up to the waists of the women sitting
in the middle of the boat.
If the boat is to stay afloat, every-
body must stay still. Angeles urges
the passenger, “Tell the women to
sing, to calm the children”. She lis-
tens as their soothing a cappella
rendition of a traditional Syrian song
rises eerily into the night.
Suddenly, one of the volunteers
sends Angeles a private message,
“Have you seen their latest loca-
tion?” She checks the map, they
have crossed into Greek waters. Her
heart leaps. She calls the Greek coast
guard, reading the coordinates down
the phone.
Eventually she hears that all 68
passengers have been safely brought
ashore. Mindful that she must try to
sleep before getting up for work, she
crawls into bed. Tomorrow night she
must be back here, working the night
shift again.
This is the way Angeles De Andres
and her grassroots network of 3000Three thousand kilometres away
in the small Spanish city of Vigo,
Angeles De Andres sits alone in her
lounge room in pyjamas, concentrat-
ing intently on her iPad. The school
administrator’s heart pounds as she
receives a text message from a pas-
senger who tells her that the boat
is going to sink. Hearing of the 20
children on board, she springs into
action. “I can’t lose this one,” she
thinks.
The 46 year old opens a group chat
on the messaging service WhatsApp
and adds four Spanish volunteers to
the conversation, as well as Syrian
former merchant marine Mohamed
Hajira – known in refugee circles as
‘The Captain’. They ask the passenger
to send the boat’s location using his
phone’s GPS. Angeles dials the Turk-
ish coast guard to urge them to send
a rescue boat – but they tell her they
don’t have any available to send.
Angeles knows that once the din-
ghy crosses into Greek coastal waters,
the Greek coast guard – who are more
helpful than the Turkish, in her expe-
rience – will be able to assist. But the