The Journey with Life Line Ezidi

This is a follow up post to How to help save a life. If you haven’t read it yet, please start there for the back ground information.

On January 27th I met the fantastic founder of Life Line Ezidi at a Cafe in Galatasaray, Istanbul. We became fast friends with common goals and on January 28th (about 15 hours after meeting him), I found myself rushing to meet up with him to take on the day’s tasks; to bring back as many lifejackets as possible to give to at least three families who would be departing on the Agean Sea in small, rickety boats on January 29th.

He had warned me that our own journey would be long, physical and a bit chaotic. He was indeed right about all of it, but I was up for the task.

At 10am I left my house, walked to Taksim square to get my Istanbul kart (public transit card). After a couple of complications, I was on my way by Metro (subway) to Yenikapi where I would meet up with David before continuing on. We crossed under the Bosphorus Straight via the Marmaray, switched to another Metro line and went all the way to the end. We then caught a bus which took us another 10 kms where we hopped off and walked another couple of kms to the Manufacturer’s location in the outskirts of Tuzla. All in all, we arrived around 12:15 or 12:30pm (about two hours of transit from my home).

We were greeted by David’s contact, Mehmet at the Tuna Ship Supply Ltd Co. where we were to wait for the delivery of a few lifejackets that had to be special ordered from another factory.

As a side note, there have been horrific stories of factories making fake life jackets and selling them on the streets. This is part of what prompted David to start Life Line Ezidi. He wanted to ensure that if these families were going, that they at least had proper life jackets. He sourced out a manufacturer that provides life jackets for the shipping industry with very high standards. All of the life jackets purchased are SOLAS approved and built to keep people alive and their heads above water in rough seas.

On occasion, when David inspects the jackets, if he sees an inconsistency, he returns them to the factory to have them repaired before giving them to families. He takes no chances that the life jackets aren’t 100 safe. I saw this with my own eyes as he returned two that morning for stitching that had started to part from the jacket. We were assured that the jackets were still safe, however they didn’t hesitate to fix the small errors.

We sat and discussed the day’s order of over 40 jackets of different sizes from adult to child to infant and then we waited for the delivery to arrive which took an hour or so more.

Mehmet shared stories of his own life as a deck hand at sea and that he had visited over 40 countries in his career. Wow! Amazing to meet someone who had traveled more countries than I have. And to hear his stories of small ports where he had spent anywhere from a couple of days upwards to a month. His English was excellent and you could tell that he was willing to do anything he could to help out this cause.

When the life jackets arrived, they were repacked into large white bags that David and I would carry back to a common area where we would meet the refugees and deliver the jackets. In the end, we ended up taking 12 adult life jackets, 19 child life jackets. This was literally all that we could physically transport. We took all of the child life jackets that were ready and had to leave a handful of adult ones behind, simply not being able to carry them all. Not only are they bulky and awkward, 15 life jackets are also pretty heavy. It would be one thing if they could be carried on your back, but they can’t, so lifting 20 to 30 lbs of awkwardness in your hand is difficult, especially for long periods of time and lifting them over turnstiles, up and down escalators and stairs.

Mehmet was kind enough to take us by vehicle to the first Metro so that we avoided taking the large bags on the bus. We maneuvered down the stairs and escalators to the underground where at our first entrance, we were stopped by security who didn’t initially want to let us through. The issue, more than anything is the size of each of these bags (approximately 4 feet high by 3 feet wide by 3 feet deep) They are not small and take up the space of at least a person on the metro. After waiting for two more security guards to come, scan the packages, ask a few questions, check for our payment receipt and David’s passport, they let us go. All in all, relatively easy, but none-the-less, a pain in the butt when we were on a time line to get them to the families before their departure.

Aboard the metro, it was relatively unoccupied, which made life a little easier. Our 20 minute journey was relatively uneventful. Then we pushed our way off the metro through crowds of people boarding with their heads down looking at their cell phones and not caring if people were trying to get off the metro. We took a rest to regroup and for David to begin organizing which families would get which jackets.

This process is particularly complicated.
David can only purchase life jackets when he has donations to do so. These have been coming fairly regularly, but in small amounts. He does not have the luxury of buying many at once, nor does he have a location to store them. The other large complication is that he often only gets 24 hours notice when a family (often of 7 – 15 people) is coming to Istanbul. Within that 24 hours, he needs to raise the money for the lifejackets, place the order and make his way to / from the manufacturer (5 – 6 hour journey) with the correct sizes for each family member. Further than that, often three to seven families can arrive on the same day. That could mean up to 50 life jackets are needed with 24 hour notice.

To this point, David has now delivered approximately 600 life jackets since November, with his record being 44 in one day.

On our journey, we started out with three families that we were hoping to help. Because we could not physically carry all of the lifejackets, we would only be able to provide for the children and the youngest of the adults in these families. Sadly, difficult decisions have to be made and this day it was that anyone over 40 would be last priority. So we carried what we could to help as many as we could, insuring that children were first priority.

We were told that these three families would be leaving the same night to head to Izmir to board the boats to head to Greece. Other families who have been waiting for lifejackets were put on hold as these families leaving same day became priority.

This alone weighed on me all day. As I carried 19 lifejackets, having trouble lifting them and manouevering them, I kept wondering, could I have taken just one more? Could I have helped save one more adult?

When we exited the Marmaray, we again regrouped. We found a corner of the station where we were out of the way and not blocking any entrances. We began the process of putting life jackets into large blue plastic bags for each family. Generally speaking, when the families meet in a public area to pick up the life jackets, they don’t want anyone to see what they are doing, so the life jackets need to be hidden in bags. After about five minutes of starting to organize and re-bag life jackets, security came over and told us that we could not stay here. We asked for two more minutes and were able to push it to five or seven more minutes where we were able to almost finish sorting everything. When the next security guard came over, he stood with us and waited as we packed up, ushering us to our next destination, through another set of turnstiles to go on yet another underground. This one was a bit more difficult as it was busy and getting around with these large bags is difficult alone let alone when people are pushing and shoving to get through turnstiles.

We made it.

On to the Metro from Yenikapi to Aksaray which would be our last stop. On arrival at Aksaray, we stopped to rearrange everything that was left and ensure that everything was bagged properly for each family. At that time, David also was still receiving messages about other families looking for life jackets, others who would also be leaving tonight and some who would be leaving the next day. Ah! The confusion! The pressure.

Not to mention that he’s also in touch with the refugee families to advise of meeting time and location. He also has the awful job of telling them that he has as many lifejackets as possible, but he does not have one for everyone in the family.

Don’t forget, very little of this is being done in English and David does not speak Arabic. He speaks a tiny bit of Kurdish and the refugees speak Kurdish, Arabic and a tiny bit of English (some more than others).

Once again, we made changes to the bags, last minute. Now we would be providing child life jackets to four families and adult jackets for part of each of three families. We had spread the supply as far as it could possibly go.

We walked to the meeting point to see four anxious men waiting for us. We greeted them, confirmed their identities and began handing out the pre-bagged life jackets prepared for each family. Of course, in finding out that there were not enough jackets for everyone in each of their families, they were heartbroken and begged for more. They could see we had more life jackets with us (a big white bag half full) and it was very difficult to explain that they were for a different family and not the right sizes for their family.

Sadly, in this time of need, they aren’t able to understand that a child life jacket will not support the weight of an adult, therefore it will do them no good, but it WILL help save the life of another child. They pleaded with us for more. It was heart wrenching.

David explained to two of the families that he also has infant lifejackets for their youngest family members, but he needed to go pick them up. After some miscommunication / language barrier, everyone understood that David would return that evening to the same location with infant life jackets for their families.

Once the life jackets were handed out, their faces wrought with anxiety, they smiled through it, shook our hands, thanked us and went on their way. I shook each of their hands with the beginnings of tears surfacing in my eyes, wished them a safe journey and then we all parted ways.

David continued his journey – another approximate two hours in transit to pick up infant life jackets and return to meet two of the families again to provide hope for their littlest family members.

At 10pm I was in touch with David and he was meeting with the last of the families for the day. Getting ready to return to his home, calculate funds raised on this day (most of which came from YOU my fabulous supporters). He would then sleep and do it all over again the next day because he had new money to buy more lifejackets!

As for me, I arrived home around 7:30pm. Although I had wanted to continue on, I was exhausted. I also knew that David did not actually need assistance carrying the infant life jackets, I would just be tagging along. I decided my time was better spent promoting the cause on social media.

I am extremely proud that my friends and family came through with over $400 CAD worth of donations for this great cause. I had been aiming for $200 to cover one family of seven members and in the end, we covered two families. That’s about 15 child lifejackets a couple of adults and a couple of infant ones. These will be picked up on Monday, Feb 1st and delivered to the next families in need.

At the end of the evening, I swear David had said thank you to me at least 50 times. It is just the kind of guy he is. He is caring, compassionate and thankful for everything that everyone does. I said to him, ‘I don’t really feel like I did all that much other than keep you company and help you sort through a couple of complications.’ He forcefully reminded me that I had done so much more. He praised me for the fact that if I hadn’t tagged along he would only have 15 – 17 lifejackets to provide, but because I was with him we were able to transport 31 in total. That made a difference to at least 15 more people.

Then my heart swelled and I nearly cried. Not sure how I hadn’t realized the impact I was making, but he laid it right out there for me. Me spending 10am – 7:30pm that day trapesing across the city to pick up and deliver these life jackets was the difference in 15 people having a much better chance at survival across the cold, angry, Agean sea that night.

There is never any guarantee that a life jacket is going to save a life, but it is certainly a much better likelihood than not. And with thousands of refugees drowning in the waters of the sea after capsized boats, all I can do is cross my fingers that if their boat didn’t make it, that they were able to swim or float until rescuers on the other side were able to get to them.

I hope to have an update in the next day or two on these families and if they made it safely. They aren’t always able to get back in touch, but if they do, I will let you know!

If you are inspired by this story and able to make a donation, it is always appreciated. Please click here to make your donation. Any amount helps save a life!