KeithDavies 100
Tele-Holic
PART 1 OF 3 - OUTBOUND
Another Tuesday, another gathering of vehicles and volunteers at Troels’ place outside Oxford, late Tuesday morning. Trip 28 since EdenAid started these over 6 months ago.
This was to be my fourth trip, and my final trip. The group as a whole will do its last run of the year in the first week in November. After that, the weather gets too bad and/or too unpredictable. I made the case with Troels for continuing further into the winter, declaring my preparedness for driving in bad weather. He made the crucial point that however prepared we might be to put with driving in bad weather, the more important point is whether we can guarantee our arrival. The refugees we pick up to bring back leave the only secure accommodation they have, with every possession they now own, and make their way to the pick-up point we’ve given them. The stakes are so high, for them, that we’re into the realms of that Yoda quote – there is no try; there is only do.
So, sadly, for this year at least and perhaps forever, this was the last time I would do this.
It’s exciting, all gathering for the departure. There are some people you’ve met and worked with before – Troels was leading this drive, and one of my previous co-drivers, Sylvie, was also on the team – but there were also a lot of first timers.
For the first-timers – I remember from my own – there’s a combination of excitement and apprehensive nervousness. One of them referred to me as a veteran. I said: “You gain that status frighteningly quickly!”
As ever, Troels’ wife Helene had prepared for us blocks of tiffin. For those unfamiliar – I’d never come across it before this – it’s a rich chocolate cake, a bit like a brownie but with a biscuit base. Absolutely wonderful as an energy boost in the middle of the night.
This being my last trip I was moved to suggest I may therefore never again taste a lady’s tiffin. This was misinterpreted by some people, but I don’t think I can be held responsible for that.
My co-driver this trip was Andy. I hadn’t met him before, but he’s been a constant off-stage presence on my previous trips. He and Troels have known each other for about twenty years, and did the first of our group’s trips, earlier in the year. Like most of us, he’s passionate, energetic, and cares deeply about the people we’re trying to help.
We were driving a Polish rental minibus – so left-hand drive, which is more comfortable once we’re on the continent, which is obviously the bulk of the drive.
We set off just ahead of time, at about 1:20, with all the of the minibuses packed to bursting with donated aid. I travel light on these trips – you’ve only got one night in a hotel, after all – but still my small rucksack, and Andy’s had to squeeze into the cab with us as there was literally no spare room in the back.
The drive down to Folkestone was slow. Heavy traffic on the M25, and then roadworks and diversions after that. By the time we were at the Channel Tunnel check-in we were about an hour behind where we wanted to be.
First-timers Pip and Nick were experiencing problems with their minibus, a British-hired Mercedes with automatic transmission. It seemed to keep coughing and then recovering, which doesn’t bode well when you’ve got 2,000 miles to go. Still, let’s stay positive. As Troels would say: “What could possibly go wrong?” (This crops up as WCPGW repeatedly on our WhatsApp comms!)
On the French side, Andy took over the driving, a couple of hours of heavy rain through France and Belgium.
At a rest stop near Antwerp late that evening, I spoke to one of the first timers, a woman called Lizzie. She appeared, bluntly, terrified of what was coming!
Lizzie was a friend of first-timer pair Libby and Sal. A day or so before we set off someone pulled out and we needed to find an additional driver. Libby and Sal persuaded Lizzie to jump in at short notice.
Lizzie has two adult children, and is comparatively recently divorced. Apparently the consensus view of her children and her ex-husband was that she wouldn’t be able to do this. “You don’t even like driving on the motorway.”
We changed drivers and carried on into the rainy night. Two hours later, at the next driver swap, I checked on Lizzie and she was doing fine.
Our destination on this trip was Poznan, west of Warsaw. There is a refugee shop and aid distribution centre there. Despite the bad weather, our late arrival at Folkestone, and the awkward Mercedes, we got there about on schedule, about 9:30 am.
It basically looks like a charity shop – which is what it is, I guess – but it has a basement, and a rabbit warren of store rooms at the back.
There was a big crowd of refugees waiting outside the place – inevitably, all women or older men. We backed up all the minibuses and unloaded them one at a time, with refugees forming a chain to pass boxes hand to hand over the pavement, through the narrow door, down through the shop to the basement stairs, and down. The whole 9 tons was emptied in only about 20-30 minutes.
Troels then called us, and the women who ran the shop, to line up for a photo in front of the buses. As we were gathering, a woman tried to say something to me in a language I didn’t understand. Polish or Ukrainian, I guessed, but it could have been anything. I smiled and said I didn’t understand, and she repeated it, clearly exasperated, and more emphatically. She had about three goes at it, but I speak not a word so that was that.
We took the photo, and then moved to board the minibuses to head to the hotel, but the woman grabbed my arm and called over one of the women who ran the shop, and who spoke some English. Another few women gathered around me as well, as the woman searched for something on her phone and spoke with ever greater emphasis to the woman who spoke some English.
Finally the woman held up her phone for me. A photograph of two men, arms around each other's shoulders, in full combat gear, smiling at the camera. The brother and husband of the woman who was trying to communicate with me. The woman who spoke a little English translated. The message basically, was thank you, and this is very important.
I was quite moved. Not just by what she had wanted to communicate but by how desperate she had been that I did understand that this was what she wanted to say to me.
I said that this was all I could offer by way of help, and that if I could do more I would. The translator said: “But what you do here is so important. For her brother and her husband. And for this woman’s son, and this woman’s brother, and this woman’s husband,” gesturing to the other women that had surrounded us.
Well, I was in tears by this point, as were they.
We go off on these drives and it’s a great adventure. Then you get over there and there is always something like this that reminds you, it’s not all just a big adventure for them.
Those women – hopefully most of them will be reunited with their menfolk in due course, and their lives can continue. But they won’t all be, will they? That’s not how war works.
I hugged women I will never see again, and we got back in the minibuses. Andy was driving this leg, which was just as well really because I needed a bit of time.
In the photo below, I’m in the pale blue hoodie, towards the left of the pic. The woman who so desperately wanted to communicate her thanks is in the black-and-white check coat beside me. The woman who spoke a little English is a couple to my right, in the dark red cardigan. The other women who gathered round me were all the women at that end of the line-up.
The guy kneeling, in the EdenAid T-shirt is Andy, my co-driver. Pip and Nick, driving the troublesome Mercedes, far right, with Troels just behind them, and Troels’ co-driver, John, kneeling.
We left Poznan and headed for Lodz, where we had a hotel for the night. This is a much shorter drive than many previous runs. We were at the hotel by about 1:30pm, whereas previous runs have had us still on the road well into the evening. We all had a nap, and then headed out for a beer and a meal about 4pm. It’s always good to relax, talk and laugh about the previous 24 hours, get a proper meal, and then it’s back to the hotel and get some proper sleep. I think I was in bed and asleep by about 9:30!
Another Tuesday, another gathering of vehicles and volunteers at Troels’ place outside Oxford, late Tuesday morning. Trip 28 since EdenAid started these over 6 months ago.
This was to be my fourth trip, and my final trip. The group as a whole will do its last run of the year in the first week in November. After that, the weather gets too bad and/or too unpredictable. I made the case with Troels for continuing further into the winter, declaring my preparedness for driving in bad weather. He made the crucial point that however prepared we might be to put with driving in bad weather, the more important point is whether we can guarantee our arrival. The refugees we pick up to bring back leave the only secure accommodation they have, with every possession they now own, and make their way to the pick-up point we’ve given them. The stakes are so high, for them, that we’re into the realms of that Yoda quote – there is no try; there is only do.
So, sadly, for this year at least and perhaps forever, this was the last time I would do this.
It’s exciting, all gathering for the departure. There are some people you’ve met and worked with before – Troels was leading this drive, and one of my previous co-drivers, Sylvie, was also on the team – but there were also a lot of first timers.
For the first-timers – I remember from my own – there’s a combination of excitement and apprehensive nervousness. One of them referred to me as a veteran. I said: “You gain that status frighteningly quickly!”
As ever, Troels’ wife Helene had prepared for us blocks of tiffin. For those unfamiliar – I’d never come across it before this – it’s a rich chocolate cake, a bit like a brownie but with a biscuit base. Absolutely wonderful as an energy boost in the middle of the night.
This being my last trip I was moved to suggest I may therefore never again taste a lady’s tiffin. This was misinterpreted by some people, but I don’t think I can be held responsible for that.
My co-driver this trip was Andy. I hadn’t met him before, but he’s been a constant off-stage presence on my previous trips. He and Troels have known each other for about twenty years, and did the first of our group’s trips, earlier in the year. Like most of us, he’s passionate, energetic, and cares deeply about the people we’re trying to help.
We were driving a Polish rental minibus – so left-hand drive, which is more comfortable once we’re on the continent, which is obviously the bulk of the drive.
We set off just ahead of time, at about 1:20, with all the of the minibuses packed to bursting with donated aid. I travel light on these trips – you’ve only got one night in a hotel, after all – but still my small rucksack, and Andy’s had to squeeze into the cab with us as there was literally no spare room in the back.
The drive down to Folkestone was slow. Heavy traffic on the M25, and then roadworks and diversions after that. By the time we were at the Channel Tunnel check-in we were about an hour behind where we wanted to be.
First-timers Pip and Nick were experiencing problems with their minibus, a British-hired Mercedes with automatic transmission. It seemed to keep coughing and then recovering, which doesn’t bode well when you’ve got 2,000 miles to go. Still, let’s stay positive. As Troels would say: “What could possibly go wrong?” (This crops up as WCPGW repeatedly on our WhatsApp comms!)
On the French side, Andy took over the driving, a couple of hours of heavy rain through France and Belgium.
At a rest stop near Antwerp late that evening, I spoke to one of the first timers, a woman called Lizzie. She appeared, bluntly, terrified of what was coming!
Lizzie was a friend of first-timer pair Libby and Sal. A day or so before we set off someone pulled out and we needed to find an additional driver. Libby and Sal persuaded Lizzie to jump in at short notice.
Lizzie has two adult children, and is comparatively recently divorced. Apparently the consensus view of her children and her ex-husband was that she wouldn’t be able to do this. “You don’t even like driving on the motorway.”
We changed drivers and carried on into the rainy night. Two hours later, at the next driver swap, I checked on Lizzie and she was doing fine.
Our destination on this trip was Poznan, west of Warsaw. There is a refugee shop and aid distribution centre there. Despite the bad weather, our late arrival at Folkestone, and the awkward Mercedes, we got there about on schedule, about 9:30 am.
It basically looks like a charity shop – which is what it is, I guess – but it has a basement, and a rabbit warren of store rooms at the back.
There was a big crowd of refugees waiting outside the place – inevitably, all women or older men. We backed up all the minibuses and unloaded them one at a time, with refugees forming a chain to pass boxes hand to hand over the pavement, through the narrow door, down through the shop to the basement stairs, and down. The whole 9 tons was emptied in only about 20-30 minutes.
Troels then called us, and the women who ran the shop, to line up for a photo in front of the buses. As we were gathering, a woman tried to say something to me in a language I didn’t understand. Polish or Ukrainian, I guessed, but it could have been anything. I smiled and said I didn’t understand, and she repeated it, clearly exasperated, and more emphatically. She had about three goes at it, but I speak not a word so that was that.
We took the photo, and then moved to board the minibuses to head to the hotel, but the woman grabbed my arm and called over one of the women who ran the shop, and who spoke some English. Another few women gathered around me as well, as the woman searched for something on her phone and spoke with ever greater emphasis to the woman who spoke some English.
Finally the woman held up her phone for me. A photograph of two men, arms around each other's shoulders, in full combat gear, smiling at the camera. The brother and husband of the woman who was trying to communicate with me. The woman who spoke a little English translated. The message basically, was thank you, and this is very important.
I was quite moved. Not just by what she had wanted to communicate but by how desperate she had been that I did understand that this was what she wanted to say to me.
I said that this was all I could offer by way of help, and that if I could do more I would. The translator said: “But what you do here is so important. For her brother and her husband. And for this woman’s son, and this woman’s brother, and this woman’s husband,” gesturing to the other women that had surrounded us.
Well, I was in tears by this point, as were they.
We go off on these drives and it’s a great adventure. Then you get over there and there is always something like this that reminds you, it’s not all just a big adventure for them.
Those women – hopefully most of them will be reunited with their menfolk in due course, and their lives can continue. But they won’t all be, will they? That’s not how war works.
I hugged women I will never see again, and we got back in the minibuses. Andy was driving this leg, which was just as well really because I needed a bit of time.
In the photo below, I’m in the pale blue hoodie, towards the left of the pic. The woman who so desperately wanted to communicate her thanks is in the black-and-white check coat beside me. The woman who spoke a little English is a couple to my right, in the dark red cardigan. The other women who gathered round me were all the women at that end of the line-up.
The guy kneeling, in the EdenAid T-shirt is Andy, my co-driver. Pip and Nick, driving the troublesome Mercedes, far right, with Troels just behind them, and Troels’ co-driver, John, kneeling.
We left Poznan and headed for Lodz, where we had a hotel for the night. This is a much shorter drive than many previous runs. We were at the hotel by about 1:30pm, whereas previous runs have had us still on the road well into the evening. We all had a nap, and then headed out for a beer and a meal about 4pm. It’s always good to relax, talk and laugh about the previous 24 hours, get a proper meal, and then it’s back to the hotel and get some proper sleep. I think I was in bed and asleep by about 9:30!
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