"Our future rests in these hands" - one elder said to me After a days journey by train through Serbia our families have arrived at the border to Croatia and await the next train to take them one step closer and one country closer to a new home.

In Sid Serbia, exhaustion is visible everywhere. It’s in the darkened eyes of a mother carrying her sleeping baby off an overloaded bus. It’s in the tantrums of exhausted, frightened children being dragged by equally exhausted parents to wait in line for the next train north. It’s in the sagging shoulders of a man carrying his only belongings in a worn garbage bag.

The makeshift refugee camp on the shores of Samos would provide a home and safety for many children and families. Giving them time to rest and prepare for the long land journey ahead west through Macedonia, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, and then finally Germany.

After a harrowing journey through the night our man poses in the mornings first light on the island of Samos. It was just after 6 am when the first raft was spotted, a bobbing dot visible through the predawn gloom only by the florescent reflections of life jackets. The sun still had about an hour to rise and the waters that divide western Turkey from the Greek island of Samos were ink-black and calm.

Most of those making the dangerous journey are from countries engulfed in war. Nearly half are from Syria, followed by Afghanistan and then Iraq. They flee a level of violence and persecution outsiders cannot comprehend. They seek only a better, safer life for themselves and their families—a goal that all of us can relate to, whether we were born in Los Angeles, Lisbon, or Aleppo.

"The next generation is all we have now, I will risk everything to see my child grow up in a safe place”

By the time they reached Samos, Greece, Asha and her family had been traveling for 25 days straight. The trip took Asha, her husband, and their one-year-old daughter through Turkey to the shores of the Aegean Sea, where they climbed aboard an inflatable dinghy in the middle of the night and headed west towards the nearest Greek island. Just a few days before, 26 refugees and migrants drowned between Turkey and Samos. For Asha, the crossing was particularly dangerous: she is expecting her second child any day. Her daughter was suffering from a diaper rash, for which the clinic staff provided cream. But the one they were most concerned about was Asha. Because she spent the past month in transit, Asha was not sure when she should expect to deliver her second child.

By the time they have reached Sid, refugees and migrants have traveled well over 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) across at least three international borders, most often from Turkey to Greece by inflatable raft and then over mainland Greece by bus to Macedonia and then Serbia. Sporadic transportation disruptions and temporary border closures can leave them stranded and forced to sleep in the open. Conditions inside the buses and trains are dirty and wildly overcrowded.

My Interpreter For The Day In Sid, the town’s humble train station came into the spotlight last year when refugees and migrants, barred from entering Hungary, changed their route to reach Germany and other destination countries in northern Europe by going first through Croatia and then Slovenia—a route that takes them through Sid just six kilometers (3.7 miles) from the Croatian border, along the way. The place hasn’t been the same since, swollen with asylum-seekers who arrive in the hundreds and line up to board trains that will take them on their way.

By the time they have reached Sid, refugees and migrants have traveled well over 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) across at least three international borders, most often from Turkey to Greece by inflatable raft and then over mainland Greece by bus to Macedonia and then Serbia. Sporadic transportation disruptions and temporary border closures can leave them stranded and forced to sleep in the open. Conditions inside the buses and trains are dirty and wildly overcrowded.