It's 20 past 5 in the morning and we're in the middle of the 4 hour drive back to Budapest. We spent the day (and well into the night) in Tovarnik in Croatia where thousands of refugees have been held by police after arriving on trains from Serbia (now the Serbia-Hungary border is closed).
I can't even fully compute what my eyes have been seeing. Thousands of people, families, so many kids and tiny babies, just trapped. They arrive off the train only to be met by riot police not allowing anyone to pass. They have money but there is nowhere for them to get food or even water. Slowly people were being allowed onto coaches after waiting for hours in the sun, but families were being separated as they were prioritising allowing women and children on board. A young boy cried to us having been left alone.
There were a few amazing people handing out fruit and water and providing basic medical aid to those collapsing in the heat / in the crowds. As it got later, people started to lie down on the grass to sleep, trying to make the kids as comfy as the could. We packed 20 portions of chips into our tripod bag (the best we could find in the near vicinity) and sat and ate with some of the amazing people we had met.
Again, their stories were heartbreaking. One guy told us he had slept for about two hours in the last 10 days. He had left Syria after his girlfriend was killed by a bomb. Many told us they had escaped compulsory military service. 'It's kill or be killed' they told us.
The local people were standing outside their houses watching in disbelief. One guy told us that nothing like this had ever happened before and that it was devastating to see.
When we left, with difficulty, we had been driving an hour or so when suddenly we drove through HUNDREDS of people sleeping on the side of the road around a petrol station. It looked like this is where the bus loads had been taking a lot of the people, an hour up the road to a situation just as desperate. The buses that had been like a beacon of hope, pretty useless in their solution.
But then what is the solution? Where can they go? I don't know. They don't know... but they need to go somewhere that's not a train station or petrol station in rural Croatia...!
This is a brief report from the Worldwide Tribe / CalAid, reposted from facebook