In the last five years of working in these settings I have met some of the bravest, most creative, resilient, and extraordinary people of all ages. Of course, there was violence and crime, as there is in all communities. But it is the ability to cope and survive in the most dehumanising conditions, the compassion and concern for each other, and the courage and dreams that have inspired me, that I hope I have accurately reflected here.
Note on the text. All migrant names and some personal details have been changed to protect identity. Some individuals (Housam, Stella, Daniel and Cosimo, Mahmoud and Aboolfazl) have given permission for their names to be used.
All pictures, unless individually credited, are by the author. The picture credits by children from the storytelling project are taken from https:///migrantchildstorytelling.org/the-pictures and use pseudonyms chosen by the children.
2015
Calais
France, October—November 2015
The Jungle, Sunday 18 October
How stupid can you be?
I pull up on the muddy track that provides one point of access to the camp. On one side there is a ‘restaurant’ constructed from heavy plastic tarpaulin and wood. On the other is a field of tents stretching to an embankment with an 8-metre metal fence topped with barbed wire. This protects the endless queue of container lorries, on their way to the cross-channel ferry, from the rabble in the field below. It is midday; there is no one around. A thin African boy walks up to me and asks if I have shoes. He is wearing flip-flops.
– Actually, I do, I say pulling open the boot.
I have six pairs in the back of my car, donated by my neighbours in the half hour before I left home. Immediately some dozen young men are around me, pushing and grabbing at the boots in the vehicle. They quickly work out that none fit and hand them back, but one man is shouting at me:
– Your phone, your phone, it’s taken!
Someone has reached in and grabbed it from the front. Well at least they left my bag with passport and purse. The other men look sad and shake their heads. The thief has disappeared into the cluster of sodden tents. A couple run to try and find him, but he has disappeared.
– Welcome to the Jungle.
A young man in a woollen cap and duffle coat comes up:
– Hello, I’m Toby. First rule—don’t distribute from the back of your car. You might think I would know that after some twenty five years working in refugee camps.
I am here to meet Tom and Shizuka who have been coming to the camp regularly since August and have set up ‘Help Calais,’ a crowd funding platform that has already raised more than £60,000 to help various projects in the camp. When I asked on social media if they needed some help, they said: please come over.
The Jungle, Calais, October 2015
I drive back into Calais to find a WIFI connection for my computer and cancel my mobile SIM. I don’t mind losing an old smartphone, but I can’t afford to fund endless telephone calls to the Middle East or wherever. On the way back, I pass three bewildered looking young men standing on a roundabout. Two are clearly Ethiopian and one says he’s Afghan. They just got to Calais and want to find the Jungle. I suddenly feel like an old hand: Get in.
We drive back along Route des Gravelines, passing a procession of refugees, mostly men and boys all walking in the camp direction after a night spent trying to get on trains or lorries in order to get across the Channel.
The Ethiopians are from Dire Dawa. They are delighted to hear my husband comes from neighbouring Harar and that I know the town well. The Afghan boy cannot speak any English and stares solemnly out the window. I take them to the Pink Caravan where Toby lives and from which he does some distribution. There is a sign up saying, “tents are for newcomers only.” Toby says he will get them sorted. I spend the rest of the day trailing Tom. He is a Buddhist priest who gave up a career in acting to become a mental health outreach worker in Lewisham. Now he applies his casework skills to the Jungle. He and Shizuka spent the morning helping a heavily pregnant woman relocate from a filthy tent in a satellite camp to a better one nearer the medical tent run by Medecins Du Monde. He wants me to meet Riyad, who we find at Jungle Books.
This is a small, brightly painted wooden construction filled with donated books, dictionaries and language training materials. It was set up by Bahirun, one of the Afghan refugees, and Mary, a volunteer. Three young men are sitting reading inside. Next door, there is a larger meeting room with a wood-burning stove. Riyad is a tall, thin, sad looking man who greets me with a gentle courtesy. He left his home, shop, wife and child in Sudan when the regular arrests, beatings and extortionate demands for money, that were meted out for his failure to support the government, became unbearable. He simply wants to make a better life for his family. He speaks fluent English and cannot imagine how he would adapt to any other culture. That’s why he will try to cross over to the UK.
Mustafa, who is sitting here with us, is taking a different route. He is a sociology student who was driven out of Darfur by the continuing conflict. His home has been completely destroyed. He had hoped to get to Britain, but after one night at the Tunnel Terminal, watching the police and dogs, seeing the injuries suffered by fellow migrants, and hearing about the regular deaths that occurred, he decided— it’s not worth my life. Possibly between one and three people die in the Tunnel every week. It is impossible to get accurate figures, but everyone knows that a 16-year-old Afghan refugee died a week ago. His body was spread over 400 meters of rail track. Mustafa has applied for asylum in France, been fingerprinted, and told to wait in the Jungle.
Bizarrely, although the French Authorities regard the settlement as illegal, they still use it as a holding area for their own asylum seekers, without providing any assistance for them. Later in the evening I meet two more Sudanese who have both waited almost a year among these sand dunes for their asylum applications to be processed. They are now off to start new lives in Paris and Lyon. Riyad cannot bear the thought of remaining in France, not just because of the appalling conditions in the camp, but because of the way he is treated in town.
– People spit at you; they won’t speak to you or serve you in shops. One man tells me about injuring his leg and being told by the police that he would only be taken to the hospital if he agreed to be fingerprinted here. He refused and crawled back to camp to get treatment from Medecins Du Monde. A few weeks ago, a refugee was attacked by local people, stripped, beaten and left for dead. He managed to make it back to the camp, naked, but no one helped him along the way.
– We are human beings, we have not committed any crime, we just hope for a better life.
It