I have been told to sit down and write about my first experience at ‘The Jungle’ in Calais. I’m not pretending to be an expert and neither do I share some of the views expressed by the refugees I met.
Quick overview: I went to Calais Wednesday-Sunday of last week with a group of strangers from Facebook, although a couple of my close friends came and a girl I met 3 years ago in Edinburgh! Strange how social networking unites you.
We arrived at the camp on Thursday morning, meeting Francois from L’Auberge des Migrants by a garage on the main road. He had stressed that we leave our donations in our cars, and we (to my shame now) had a jumble sale-esque mix of coats, clothes, shalwar kameezes and rope. A definite pain for anyone distributing on camp. What we hadn’t realised is that there is no centralised sorting centre at Calais: just good people taking it upon themselves to rent warehouses and hoping that enough volunteers turn up to sort and distribute items.
Francois recommended that we walk through camp and get a feel for it before heading to the distribution centre. This is not to be underestimated. It is through talking to people and visiting their homes that you realise their particular needs: hair oil or firewood or SHOES. The bottom line of the whole camp is the need for men’s shoes. Also people are generous, hospitable and often want to share their stories. On hearing where I was from a man said:
‘It is your country that is creating this. We want to come and work’
Me: ‘I know you do. If it were up to me you would come. That’s why I’m here. It is the government’s problem’
Him: ‘You’re from a democracy aren’t you? Then it is your problem’.
My first impression of camp: male. I knew it was 70% men but it was actually more like 90%. More (wooden) structures than I had expected. A barbers, a couple of delicious afghan kitchens, little shops. The currency around bikes was palpable. They make you instantly stronger to reach the distribution vans.
We headed to joules ferry (the building on site) to help the kitchen. Some of us headed off to find the ‘equipment distribution centre’ (non existent). Instead we found Clare outside the showers, giving the refugees their 5 minutes for the shower. She had just arrived back, desperate to help distributions and rent a warehouse for coordinating donations. She’s still there and I’ll head back tomorrow to help her.
At dinner we volunteered in the kitchen, feeding 2500 mouths just once a day (the camp is estimated at around 4000). I was on line maintaining duty, discovered I had a rapt audience for my dancing skills, and sang Shakira. The following day a man said to me ‘Hey dancing girl. I’ve seen your video.’ My booty shaking had gone viral across camp.
Later Clare rang and told me she had found a woman who had a warehouse and was distributing donations. We piled into a too-small car (2 in the boot, 4 in the back) and swung off to find her. We met Liz at Chemin Des Dunes, the road alongside the camp.
There aren’t enough adjectives to describe Liz. She’s fierce, warm and doesn’t take no for an answer. A 5’2 8 stone woman with guns of steel she’s an ex fireman who titles herself ‘camp mother’, although more accurately ‘camp fucking mother’. She drives a badass truck which appears to have its own personality and when I walked through camp with her we couldn’t go 5 metres without someone asking her for shoes, or a house. She knew their faces and listened to their stories. An absolute hero.
The following day Liz piled us up and bundled us off. I’m being deliberately vague as she will continue to use this tactic. I can tell the story where Matt (one of our volunteers) rammed into a gate before breaking down in the middle of an ‘off-limits’ area. The car was then physically lifted by about 20 refugees and off it went again. Safe to say that bureaucracy prevents you continually from action in the jungle, and it drives everyone mad. In order to get stuff done, you have to blag.
With Liz we resorted donations and distributed them. I won’t go into detail here as there is plenty online if you look hard about how to conduct a distribution. Basically, go with queues. The piles of nappies in the storage rooms were dispiriting, as well as how many children’s clothes we threw away. There just aren’t many children. Then onto dinner and back to my dancing to the whoops and cheers of the eaters. What an ego trip.
A couple asked me in the queue to meet them. I got stuck in an area that was difficult to re-access doing donation sorting, so couldn’t. I’d noticed them as different from other people at the camp. Their English was flawless, and they held back from pushing in queues, waiting their turn with grace. I know that everyone at Calais meets people who stand out to them, but these two were mine. They were Eritrean and had been business analysts in their own country. One evening we were walking along the road and came across them, and I apologised profusely for missing the meeting. ‘Don’t worry, you keep African time’ was the smiling response. She had no shoes, wearing men’s flip flops over socks, and the same clothes I’d seen her in 2 days earlier. They weren’t pushers, they weren’t clued up on the camp, and thus the stacks of women’s clothes (and hair oil) we had in storage weren’t reaching her.
I attempted to get into the storage centre to retrieve her some things. She was desperate, in particular, for hair oil. A small thing but absolutely imperative for her to keep her thick, dark hair in any kind of condition. Despite wearing the L’Auberge des Migrants bib I was told that ‘no-one apart from L’Auberge and Salam are allowed in’. I pointed out my bib. Still a no. Later I was told that no English volunteers were being allowed in. Liz was performing guerrilla donation sorting on a back road behind the camp, all of us making up food packages on a weird wasteland, with the police hovering. Unacceptable.
Being barred from the centre in which I could retrieve items to make a dignified and intelligent woman warm was my breaking point. The five volunteers I was with rallied round with a big hug and an action plan. We headed to Carrefour and bought her what she needed, as well as some gifts for some of the boys’ friends. Driving into camp we found some of the other members of the group standing at the side of the camp with some tents for people they had found homeless. Two little boys had arrived parentless and people were struggling to find them. A bunch of Belgians had arrived, ignored instructions from Liz, and opened the back of the truck, making refugees scrabble in the dirt. A total disrespect for dignity and humanity, and devastating to see. On the bright side we later saw the truck being joyrided by members of the camp, one bloke lying across the top and being followed down the road by tonnes of men on bicycles. They were given personal instructions and had ignored them, and this was their comeuppance.
That evening we had tea and laughs with some Sudanese lads who the boys had befriended earlier. They shared their tea, their fire and even their donation bread, that they had queued for hours to get, with us. That evening Secret Cinema had set up an excellent quality screen in the middle of camp. We stood watching the Bollywood movie, laughing and roaring with the rest of the crowd.
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