I was a mother to 2,000 people

When Lisa Campbell arrived in Greece in November 2015 to help care for the flood of refugees she planned on staying for just a few weeks. She ended up running a refugee camp - until it was suddenly closed last month. What made an American Mormon grandmother of six leave behind her family and her job to deal with the chaos of Greece's refugee crisis?

Like a great many people in the US, I wasn't mindful of the size of the outcast fiasco until the photos of three-year-old Alan Kurdi appeared on a shoreline began being appeared on US news in 2015.

In any case, it wasn't until the point when I really arrived and saw with my own eyes the heaps of life coats and the vessels stacked on the shoreline that the size of it truly hit me.

I had withdrawn of nonappearance from my activity and intended to be in Greece for 45 days. My suspicion was that I would discover individuals who were housed, bolstered, and had essential administrations accessible.

That first morning on the island of Lesbos, I went out on my gallery and I could see nine water crafts running over from Turkey as of now. You hear individuals say that the vessels are over-burden, however to see 50 individuals get off of a watercraft that would be full with 10 is overpowering. I can't disclose to you how frequently individuals would get off the watercraft and actually kiss the ground. That snatches you.It was hard to wrap my head around what I was seeing. I was horrified at the stories that I heard. I was also happy to be able to help, happy to see that these children, once you got them into some dry clothes, were still looking for the first toy they could find.

There's probably not an emotion that I didn't experience, standing there day after day on the shore, watching the boats come in. And that's how my journey in Greece started.

When I got to the refugee camp in Oinofyta, on the mainland north of Athens, there was nothing there - just tents and army catering. I had no refugee experience, but I'm a do-er. After Hurricane Katrina, I helped start a non-profit called Do Your Part. We had worked in disaster zones before, but this was our first refugee crisis. I just started doing. I organised, planned, and built.After I had been here for about a month, a contributor in the US said he would support me to be here for whatever length of time that I required. Along these lines, I called my better half and stated, "I need to leave my place of employment and remain in Greece."

Before long, in June a year ago, I assumed control as administrator of the Oinofyta camp. I was somewhat dreadful in the first place, yet I knew in my heart it was the correct activity. These folks required somebody to mind, to battle, and to advocate for them.

I wound up running the camp for year and a half, until the point that the Greek government close it during a time prior.

From my point of view, this work resembles being a mother. I've brought up four kids and had a few encourage youngsters and the activity that I do here, despite the fact that it includes things like development and introducing electrical gear, in all actuality, it's practically being a mother.I'm not a saint. I've learned that love is a choice. For me, some of the more poignant moments have involved people that I don't necessarily really like. When they were informed that the camp was closing, these people came to me and said things like: "You've been like a mother to me, I don't know what I'm going to do without you." And I realised that I had met my goal - which was to take care of them and show them that they were loved. That they're cared about, not forgotten.

When the camp was shutting down, we were told that we'd have time to get our stuff out. We had about a quarter of a million Euros worth of property in the camp. Then, the Greek government, in less than 24 hours, gave me three hours to get it all out.

When that happened, I posted on Facebook: "I'm done. They win, and everybody else loses." That was probably one of my worst nights. How do you fight bureaucracy like that - bureaucracy that makes absolutely no sense?

The next day I woke up to a phone full of messages saying, "What do you need me to do? I will come help." And I thought, "OK, I can do this. We, together, can do this."When we were permitted to get our things, we were additionally educated that there was a probability the camp would revive. They have not said when, and each time I ask, I get told: "When they come up short on spaces in different camps." It's as doubtlessly unclear as you can be.

I realize that the greater part of the Greek islands are stuffed. I include a camp that inside three or four days could serve 500 individuals. For what reason aren't the outcasts here?

The inhabitants of our camp felt like "displaced person" had turned into a messy word. In any case, they're displaced people since they need similar things in life that you and I need. We had engineers, legal counselors, educators, performers, craftsmen, cops - individuals from all kinds of different backgrounds. They were much the same as you and me.

I've possessed the capacity to present huge numbers of the Greek individuals here to the exiles. That is the main way that we will get over the dread of outcasts. I've produced some colossal connections that enable me to help individuals in ways that the vast associations just can't, on the grounds that they don't have the trust.

The Greek individuals have opened their hearts in such huge numbers of ways, however their legislature and the huge NGOs are dumbfounded. We had a circumstance the previous winter where we had no drinking water on the grounds that the funnels were solidified. It was on a Sunday. I told the association who should be in control, and the soonest, the total soonest that they could get us any water in the camp was Tuesday.I said: "You're telling me I have to make people wait 48 hours before they can have drinking water? What are we supposed to do?"

I called a local restaurateur I knew and said we needed water. In two hours, I had a truck come in. I've met incredible people here who help me fight for what's right - not just the refugees, but the Greeks too.

Most of us are hardwired to want to provide for ourselves. When your life is spent getting handouts from everyone all day, you lose your dignity. I had this wild idea that it would be great to start a business, sewing bags from leftover tent material. I tell you, those workers were the happiest people in camp because they had a purpose other than sitting there waiting for their asylum interview.

They still have that purpose today. We currently employ 18 residents. Last month, I signed the lease on a new building for Oinofyta Wares and they will be moving to the nearby community of Dilesi. We have companies and purchasers in America who want to buy these in bulk now. We are one meeting away from it being registered as a Greek business, and these guys will own it.My dad was a maritime officer and my significant other was in the US Coast Guard, so at regular intervals, our family moved. Some portion of my life has been figuring out how to state farewell, which has been one of the harder things here at the camp: the steady turn of volunteers and occupants.

The hardest farewell was to four-year-old Mustafa. He was here with his mom, sister and younger sibling, holding up to rejoin with his dad and more established sibling in Sweden. I knew them for around 16 months, and I developed to totally adore that young man. He would sit in my office and say we were both the camp directors. He was a tremendous identity in a little minuscule body.

I was so cheerful for them when they got their family reunification, thus dismal in light of the fact that I realized that the probability of me having the capacity to ever observe them again was entirely thin.

My own particular children are largely asking a similar inquiry now: "Mother, when are you returning home?"I don't know. My volunteer visa expires 22 December, so maybe that's when I come home - because the Greek government won't let me stay any more.

I hope that my legacy here is that the people that I have touched, the refugees or the Greek people, will always remember that I cared about them. That they were special and important. That they were worthy of that care.

My husband asks me: "What are you going to do when you go home? You've been the mother to more than 2,000 people that have come through this camp."

I'm going to stand as a witness. I'm going to talk about what has happened here. I'm going to try to make people understand that we are all human beings.