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The child, Aylan, he was heading to Kos when he drowned with his mother and brother. When I read that, I went cold; he was heading to an island I know very well.

Life started to turn around for me when I became one of the 1% of care leavers to get a degree. At Salford University I met this very kind and cool bunch of international students from all over the world: Angola, Portugal, Greece. I became good friends with my pal George Frouzakis who had to go back to his island, Kos, and do his national service. I went to see him and was welcomed by his wonderful family. People from Kos are very kind, they share their food and take you in. This meant the world to me, with no family of my own.

When this crisis hit them – these waves of people seeking peace and security – the people of Kos and the Greek Islands were left to deal with the situation on their own. So I got in touch with George, he told me about Kos Solidarity and I hopped on a plane as soon as I could.

'The weirdest thing I've ever seen...'

The first time I went out, it was still at the human disaster stage. It was the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen. Kos has a beautiful harbour, all Italianate castle walls, archways. Sensual sea, blue Turkish coast in the distance. A long promenade where tourists stroll at sunset. Then opposite the police station were several hundred dome tents. And people, so many people, refugees, washing their clothes, making phone calls, washing in the sea. Peeing in the sea. It was a catastrophe and there was this terrible stench. Usually at that time of year the only thing you can smell is the heady scent of jasmine. The beach was littered with life jackets, discarded clothes, water bottles, flip-flops, rubber dinghies and people who had paid a huge ransom to flee war, the violence of poverty. Human driftwood.

At that point, international and local Greek volunteers were the only people giving food and water. Médecins Sans Frontières were there to give medical aid, Flying Help from Germany. We were there to give out meals prepared in a warehouse and brought to the port.

The night shift was where we greeted people arriving on the boats. Mostly soaking wet, forced to swim much of the way and then they had to walk five kilometres to us at the port. We could not go and pick people up, we would have been accused of smuggling.

Most people were shocked and traumatised by the journey through to Turkey, over the Maku mountains that stand at the border between Turkey and Iran. One of the familiar stories was that people, once in the hands of human traffickers, were forced to march over snow-covered mountain paths at gunpoint. If someone would fall and be injured, then the smugglers would knife them. If a baby cried it was given sleeping syrup, and sometimes those babies would not wake up again. It was described as being laden with dead bodies, that part of the route; they were treated worse than dogs; it was a repeated phrase.

Kos Solidarity

Solidarity is about being practical but also human. We welcomed people with a big smile, good wishes and the most basic things; my priority was water, warmth and laughter.

We wouldn’t force people to queue for food, we would take food to the tents, say Salaam, hello, ask how people were. Befriend them while they were resting at this waypoint on their journey.

It would sometimes take weeks for people's paperwork to be sorted out. People would sign in at the cop shop then wait for their name to be on the list outside the police station. This list was next to a list of the missing. So many did not make it. The Mediterranean claimed somewhere around 4000 people last year. There was trauma everywhere and shock, you had to keep your eye on those grieving.

However, there was loads of happiness when people got their papers to get on the boat to Athens. It was a bit like an episode of Love Boat, you got to know people very quickly in that situation, mini sagas had played out – then waving them off onto the ferry at the end. Repaired a little, a good outfit picked out of the lucky bag of donations.

'We are so buffered from this crisis'

I don’t think people realise how bad it is in the camps in Greece. A country that is in the midst of its own crisis is being left to cope alone with the people trapped there. We need to keep up our efforts to support them.

We are so buffered here on our small island from this crisis. Everywhere else in Europe has been affected. In all the major cities people have mobilised to support refugees. This gave people the chance to be kind. To be human, to be active. Here we are immune. I would often ask people which country they wanted to land up in. It made me feel sad that only ten people out of the thousands said England. I feel this is our loss. I met some ace people – doctors, teachers, mathematicians, carpenters, artists – and none of them wanted to come here. I don’t know, is it because we are an island that we are so convinced that we are the centre of the world?

A story that will never leave me is about a group of young men I met at Christmas. Fine blokes from Kurdistan, great haircuts. Decent, polite and very gentle. I'd got to know them a bit, we'd laughed a lot. They kept in touch during their journey. They did the march through the Balkan route, made it to Germany, got to a camp and then were told they had 30 days to get out of the country. They headed down into France, made it to Dunkirk. It was a frantic journey but they were sticking together. Then one of the lads changed his mind and decided to pay a smuggler to get him to Germany, where his uncle was. He froze to death in the back of the truck. I'd met him, laughed with him.

The rest of the lads made it to the UK, we keep in touch. They are doing OK.

I’ll never forget all the people that I met, both refugee and volunteer. It was hard work but also we had lots of good times. I will aways remember doing the night shift on Christmas Eve, all of us volunteers resting on Ikea bags stuffed with donations, looking up at the constellations; a poet, a couple from California, newlywed volunteers – this frontline was their honeymoon. Then we were joined by people from Syria, Pakistan, and the conversation continued and it felt like I was in the right time and place. Totally present and standing by the side of people who needed someone simply to be kind.

There is no such thing as other people. We are all the same, we laugh at the same jokes, want the same things. We all just want to be safe. No one likes to see anyone suffer – although one of the memories scored right into me is, there was this one running tap, by the square where we did our shift. There was a man brushing his teeth, there in his lunghi, no choice but to sort himself out there. And then groups of tourists would drift by and take selfies.

The Island, The Sea, The Volunteer & The Refugee

With my work The Island, The Sea, The Volunteer & The Refugee I want to motivate people to take an active part in this crisis, to understand it has not gone anywhere, that children are still drowning, that young teenagers are going missing and how empowering it is to be active in whatever way suits you.

In it you hear George Chartofilis, the founder of Kos Solidarity, by day a physics teacher and for the rest of his hours a real humanitarian, describing how he gathered his mates to a meeting where each person put five or ten euros into a pot and they brought food and water to the people. Then they were helped by tourists who could not ignore the people arriving on boats with no one to help them. They got on with it. They saved many lives, comforted relatives, delivered babies.

They motivated Greek grandmas to make hot food every day. They eventually got loads of help from around the world. Sometimes containers of rice would arrive from Ireland, knitted hats from Austria. It was quite incredible. Just ordinary people being given the opportunity to be kind. This is something that I feel aggrieved about regarding the way the British responded to this human crisis. I feel sorry that Calais was allowed to ever happen. It is in our make-up to show solidarity to others.

Kos Solidarity now supplies clothes to the Hotspot camp. If you would like to make a donation, visit kos-solidarity.com. Louise suggests shoes: "Winter is here and many people don’t have them."

Louise Wallwein was in interview with Lauren Strain

The Island, The Sea, The Volunteer & The Refugee is at HOME, Manchester, 15, 18, 19 & 21 Jan, part of PUSH Festival 2017

homemcr.org