Source: The Pappas Post
December 26, 2017
While others gathered with family and friends, celebrating the Christmas holiday, Maria Makroyanni spent the day in her kitchen, preparing meals for what she calls, her island’s most destitute people.
Maria, known throughout the world by her nickname Mama Maria, has cooked thousands of meals over the past several years, ever since she watched the first refugee mom walk in front of her seaside taverna on the island of Samos.
She doesn’t remember the exact year… 2015, 2016 she says… but the image will stay with her forever.
“I was sitting at a table at my taverna and all of the sudden, I saw a woman walking on the beach, fully clothed with a headscarf and all, soaking wet and carrying a child. She was visibly pregnant, too,” Maria explains.
The refugee crisis on the Greek islands was just beginning to infold and the sight of people arriving on rafts from neighboring Turkey was strange to locals, including Mama Maria.
...Read the rest at The Pappas Post.
