Oda and her colleagues say that what the fifty or so people a day who currently come to the group’s tents really want is not the tea, the water, or some of the three to six hundred portions of food a day they hand out to supplement the food people get at the main camps. What the Afghans, Pakistanis, Moroccans, Eritreans – evenly mixed – who come here want, they say, ‘is people to respect them’. They had recently met a Christian from Pakistan whose family had all been killed by the Taliban. Asked what he wanted most now, he said ‘a smile’.

But the German ‘No Borders Group’ are not universally welcomed. Aside from their problems with their former landlord and the island authorities, some locals are suspicious of their presence. And not only because they think the presence of the group suggests that the Greeks cannot cope. One local says the group are ‘bad people. They are political activists.’ But other local people are helpful. Some even give extra aid. A local vegetable dealer gives them free supplies. And at least here, unlike up the road at Moria, people do not have to stand in 200-metre-long queues for food. Complaints of food shortages, food poisoning and other squalid conditions at the Moria camp make it clear why this facility is one that the authorities refuse to allow anyone to visit. Three 16-year-old Afghans explain that they are not even allowed to take photos in the Moria facility where there are currently 3,000 people. The nearest a non-migrant can get to is the gate, but even from the outside it is clear that this is a different proposition to Kara Tepe.

The former army camp of Moria now has three or four different sections of barbed wire on each side. Its present occupants are from all over the Middle East, Africa and Asia. Whereas most are from Syria, Iraq, Africa and Afghanistan, there are also migrants from Bangladesh, Myanmar and Nepal. A young Eritrean explains his route to Sudan from where he took a plane to Iraq, travelled to Turkey, and from there to the beach on Lesbos on which we end up sitting. The Afghans, by contrast, came through Iran and sometimes via Pakistan before getting to Turkey. All say that these days they do not meet the smugglers they pay to traffic them here. Everything is done by phone, with instructions given to them at steps along the way. A nine-year-old Afghan boy with his father explains his route. He has now been in Europe for two months. The father signals that he would like to speak in private.