A short walk from the spectacularly wasted complex at Gazi, a hop skip and a jump from the trendy bars down those back streets, is a place I can guarantee you have never been to and probably do not know it exists. It is a Roma settlement in the centre of Athens. After the trendy bars, you cross the train tracks (the wrong side of the tracks sprang to mind) Suddenly the road becomes dusty. There are no pavements. Dogs jump suddenly out of alleyways and bark at you until you make friends (which I did a couple of times and they became my faithful companion for about ten feet). Hidden behind a warehouse is a dirt track that leads to hell. This is the entrance to the settlement. I visited Soweto township in South Africa, many years ago and I can honestly say, this place is worse. I am ashamed and appalled that this Europe I live in allows this hell to exist within the shadow of the sparkling Olympic developments. At some point, in the near future, this wasteland is set to become a new sports complex and park but for now it is a rubbish dump that people are trying to live on. Once the evictions happen, they will be forced to move on. Probably to an equally disgusting place, somewhere as hidden and forgotten about as this one.

There are about 80 to 100 families living here (no-one knows for sure). As you enter the camp, there is a pile a old car tires and evidence of the recent fire that burned down several shacks. The smell of the burnt rubber and charred wood still hangs in the air. The small shacks are built from whatever planks and bits of wood, metal and plastic that the residents can find. Inside each one are neatly made beds and an improvised wood-burning stove like the one that sparked the fire a few weeks ago. Outside one such place a women was fruitlessly sweeping soot and dust away from the side of her home. As if she was attempting to make a small spot of hope in all this filth.

There is only one water tap for the entire settlement. The scores of children I saw were filthy, many of them barefoot, their feet so encrusted with mud it was almost as if they had shoes on. They were curious to see a stranger in their place. My guide Theo from the Human Rights organisation, the Greek Helsinki Monitor (GHM), had taken some group photos of the kids on a previous visit. We came across one of the boys in the group and he pulled the pictures from his bag. A small crowd of children who had been playing in the dirt in the distance quickly gathered around, barely containing their excitement. They delighted at showing me themselves in the pictures. I wondered if any of them had been photographed before? Perhaps only for grim reportage coverage of their miserable living conditions? I do not know. I wish I had a digital camera. I would go and take pictures for them, just for them, to keep and treasure.

It’s the children who break your heart. They were curious and excited. They were playing games that you see all children playing. Chasing and mock fighting. Giggling and pointing, as any child would, at this odd woman who looked so out of place here. Several called out hello. Many just came up and stood listening. Probably wondering what the hell I was doing there. And I wondered myself. What was I doing, observing their degrading living conditions? Unable to comprehend how we can allow these children to grow up here but unable to help in any way at all. Another useless onlooker. I knew I would come home and write about what I saw but I cannot help but think what bloody good is that. They do not go to school. Theo believed that only one of the boys is registered. Their parents mistrust the authorities and believe their children will be shunned and mistreated at school. They have heard what happens when other Roma children try to go to school. I think they have every reason to believe that they will not be treated well. I asked if there had been any attempt to bring teachers to the community. Apparently there has been talk and plans and ideas for this kind of project but, as with everything else, they have remained just that: talk. Almost all the children had missing or decayed teeth. I can only imagine what other health risks are occurring from these filthy surroundings. I believe Hepatitis is common in the Roma community. The children are under-vaccinated against childhood diseases.

The authorities are getting ready to evict this community from the scrapheap of land they live on. Theo was trying to press home the importance of letting the GHM know when the paper was delivered so that legal help could be given. It has happened before that court dates have been set and because no-one has turned up the eviction has been upheld and the police and bulldozers move in. The community here has little time for papers and courts. I suspect that from their point of view they are treated so badly anyway, there is little faith put in procedures. Even well-intentioned ones.

One image stands out in my mind. Everywhere I looked in this squalid, miserable place were hanging spotlessly clean, freshly washed clothes in all the brightest colours you could imagine. They were hanging from washing lines stretched between shacks. They were laid out along the walls at the edges of the camp. Every hanging space was used to dry hundreds of items of clothing. To me, it was like a symbol of the survival instinct of this forgotten community.

So I left their camp and headed home. I decided I needed to walk so I did for a long time before finally reaching home. My house with electricity and running water and bedrooms and oven and washing machine and a room full of toys and our computers and my garden. And I felt bloody guilty. I don’t know really know how to explain all the feelings I felt during my short visit. Shock, disgust, shame, helplessness, anger. But now I am writing this all I feel is guilt. Why? Because I am not going to do anything other than sit at my computer and write this. And that even this paltry attempt at trying to explain what the place is like is nothing like what it is really like. This is a brief description of what I saw. I cannot say what it must be like to grow up in such squalor, a short distance from the swanky bars and cafes of Psyrri. A stones throw from the heart of Athens. I know that I cannot look into the eyes of those children and say I will do something, I will make things better for you. Because they know and I know that I can’t. So does it end there? I am trying to get my head around what I could possibly do. The people at GHM work tirelessly with this community trying to defend their rights and attempting to force the government to live up to it’s obligations in housing the Roma. What could I do? What could we do? That I don’t know…