Manawatu couple’s quest to help refugees
We read about it, we talk about it, we watch the graphic images on TV, we’re glad we live in New Zealand.
Steve and Lynn Gill from Palmerston North do something about it.
When we were hoping the weather would stay dry for Guy Fawkes, they drove around western Turkey looking for refugees.
They hired a car and, after driving for an hour, came across about 300 Syrian refugees scattered throughout a farming village. They’d fled Aleppo, where they knew they were at risk and would probably be killed or wounded in the cross-fire between Isis and Iraqi troops.
‘‘The refugees were sad, desperate and gaunt. They were trying to survive each day and feed their children,’’ Steve Gill says. ‘‘Some lived under trees, in paddocks or hovels, which they rented.’’
For $20 a day they worked in the fields, or picked fruit for 11 hours. Sometimes they didn’t get paid at all.
The Gills took out a $20,000 overdraft on their home and raised a further $14,000 through donations from friends and their church.
With the funds donated locally, they supplied food, water and shelter. Where a family needed a gas burner, they bought one; where clothing was required, they searched for some; where a family wanted a mattress, they bought it.
‘‘We were the hands extended from the Manawatu,’’ Lynn Gill says.
In the month they were in Turkey, one memory stands out more than others. They encountered a family with children, five and two, who had nothing, no food, living inside a shack of a house. The Gills supplied them with the basics.
The family was Muslim and had fled Aleppo. ‘‘They don’t want to emigrate to European countries or further afield. They just want to return home when peace is restored,’’ Steve Gill said.
The journey of mercy is not the first time they’ve taken time away from good jobs to assist refugees. Last year they used their funds to travel to the Greek island of Lesbos to help the boat people.
They welcomed people as they arrived off their overcrowded craft, offering them water and a blanket and moving them on to camps established for them. In the three weeks they were there they saw death, malnutrition and despair and processed about 80,000 refugees.
‘‘We witnessed people trafficking, corruption, neglect and poverty.’’
When asked why they did it, they said they were privileged. ‘‘We can’t change the refugee crisis, but, if we can make a difference to a few, then it’s very worthwhile,’’ Lynn Gill says.
Back home Steve Gill is a special projects manager for Brunton Engineering, a firm that has a large footprint within the New Zealand Defence Force. He handles million-dollar projects, including the recent ballistic fit out for the SAS battle training facility in Papakura. Lynn Gill works with international pupils at Awatapu College.
But Steve’s life hasn’t always been loving and giving. Following a dysfunctional upbringing, he spent time in the navy and was introduced to booze and drugs.
‘‘I had more than 20 years of substance abuse, which resulted in being on the wrong side of the law.
‘‘And I have the tattoos to prove it.’’