The sky’s the limit if you have a roof over your head
-Sol Hurok
BASEMENT
It is 8am and we are handing out tickets for our limited seating breakfast. Men jostle and soon we are at capacity. We close our doors to imploring or frustrated glares in order to set the tables with simple breakfast foods. Chance made me my favorite breakfast potatoes this morning. It now weighs heavy in my stomach as I’m informed that this maybe their only meal of the day. Outside, bowls of cat food for the strays seem unfair. When we open the doors, those with tickets enter and breakfast is eaten quickly.
Everyone helps to transform the basement breakfast hall into a pingpong/laundry/shower lounge. Sign up sheets for each mean everyone present knows to wait their turn. From morning until we close at night, the laundry machines and showers will be in use. And fierce ping pong competitions will break the boredom.
1ST FLOOR
The women amble in, some with their children. They are coming here to sew, to chat, to learn. The Cyprus government offers more support to women in the form of quicker processing for access to necessities like food stamps and housing. However, paid work is hard to come by. Refugee Support Europe pays the women upfront for any of the bags, aprons or cushion covers they sew. Before payment is made, strict quality control is imposed, and much giggling over the rules is had before fixing a wonky stitch. Children wander around, watched over by the women waiting their turn at a sewing machine. It is more relaxed and calm here.
Products made by these wonderful women: https://refumade.org/
2nd FLOOR
This is what an official landing in Cyprus should look like. A computer room with computer classes, language courses, cv writing workshops. Bright, airy, comfortable. You can have tea, coffee, water. You can look up jobs or ask questions for where to get services.
This is a far cry from the tented, barb-wired arrival camps where asylum seekers first get processed. I sit, I offer membership to newcomers (free of charge), I help write CVs. Once a week a barbering service is set up, and resources and contacts are given for legal, food and housing advice. In a private yellow room in the back, Raymond paints and dreams in his artist room. In exchange for volunteering, supplies and space enable his creativity to flourish. His paintings are also for sale on Refumade: https://refumade.org/
How fitting that the top floor of the Dignity Center would reach its highest objective: to help others strive for their highest potential, with dignity.
