Since September about 400 refugees live in the camp of Serres. All of them are from northern Iraq speaking Kurdish. They all belong to their ethnically Kurdish religious community of Yazidis and here we are. In the centre of their believe stands “Melek Taus” the Peacock Angel, the seven miracles and sheik ʿAdī ibn Musāfir (1073–1163). Because it is already complicated enough to organize a refugee camp itself it helps a lot to have only people of the same religion together even if this situation of being separated is not possible forever hence religion will bring up a lot more complications in future…

“A refugee is a displaced person who has been forced to cross national boundaries and who cannot return home safely.”

Why Kurdish people from Iraq had to flee? Four letters should be enough as explanation: ISIS. Or what they always mention “Daesh”. Exactly in the area of the Kurdish minority in Iraq ISIS is being active in the moment. Hence a lot of people and inhabitants fled to turkey. Suddenly their normal life turned into the life of a refugee. What is the life of a refugee like? Uncertainty. You get sent from one place to the other, one person says this, the other person that – nobody knows. And you? You just want to reach your destination, have a normal life, security.
 
“Anywhere. Anything is better than this” he said as a tear trickled down his cheek
 
After the “mass invasion” of refugees coming to Greece the past years a lot of camps are in terrible circumstances. But I am asking, what do you expect as refugee? Especially when you know that you will be not the only one who flees. To fall back on the quote, would it really have been better if he stayed in Syria?

We, the volunteers from Praxis Greece, are working together with the refugees living near Serres since more than one month now. This work not only includes three different language courses (German, Greek and English) but also a weekly radio music broadcast. Last Friday we had the first broadcast where we presented different kinds of music: music from Germany, from Spain, from Greece, from Italy, from France, from Afghanistan and from Iraq. In total we were about fifteen moderators, the six volunteers from Praxis Greece, one Greek friend of ours, one male refugee and around seven little girls. The refugees, which are all from Iraq, enriched our broadcast not only with Iraqian music but also with their own voices singing some of their favorite songs.