Friday 25 December 2015

Une Baguette De Merde by Gawan Mac Greigair via Facebook: December 25th 2015



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It's taken some time, but I've found some words to say about our trip to the camps in Calais. If you have ever had – or given an appraisal at work, you’ll know the concept of a ‘shit sandwich’ where the manager gives positive feedback, then some critique, then more positive stuff so as not to leave the employee too downhearted about any criticism.

Here, reporting back from our Calais trip, I’m going to do pretty much the opposite. I’ll call it a ‘baguette de merde’. I don’t want anyone who reads this to feel on finishing it, good, satisfied, pleased, mollified, reassured. It wouldn’t reflect or respect the reality, which is upsetting, angering and is a foul-smelling stain on our societies and our governments. 

I’ll get to the chinks of light, including the end-use of your very welcome donations, in a bit. 

CONDITIONS IN THE JUNGLE 

The Jungle – named that by the migrant residents of the camp themselves – is a place of horrific squalor. It is the sprawling ‘home’ to around 7000 humans, perhaps more, and more arrive every day;men, women and children, including unaccompanied young teenagers.

The Jungle lies to the east of the port of Calais, and on one side is bounded by a motorway leading to the port. It sits on a former landfill site of mud, scrub and dunes.

Most people are living in flimsy, uninsulated tents, some in shantytown-style shacks, many with tarpaulins tied down across them for a little extra protection from the weather. Some have timber-framed and plywood-and-tarp-clad huts, which I’ll come back to. A small few – who must have been in the camp for a long time – have constructed impressive (in context) architecture from salvaged wood, pallets and tarps.

The site is filthy. Rubbish is strewn everywhere. There are large pools of water and deep, sucking mud which in places smells foul and suspect. In parts of the camp there is a moonscape of steep craters, where the ground looks as if it has given way, full of rubble and still more waste. Everywhere you go as you walk through the camp you pick your way through this cesspit, except for a few short stretches where a truckload of large gravel has, mercifully, been dumped and spread out along a roadway. All around is flapping, ripped plastic, discarded inappropriate clothes, half-collapsed tents. Find a rise in the ground and you can look out over an area the size of a small town composed of ridge, hollow, ridge and hollow of this scene, over and over. Traffic roars over the nearby flyover, where high fences and barbed wire have been erected (partly funded by the UK government). Police bristle in riot gear at the entrances, roads and boundaries, and now and then strut in groups through the camp, for no reason that is apparent unless it is to intimidate.

There are occasional rows of portaloos in the kind of condition you can probably imagine but would rather not – venture behind some of them and you will find deposits of human excrement every couple of feet, which gives you an idea of how bad the portaloos must be. The portaloos are only sited along the main ‘streets’ – I don’t know what people do if their shelters are far from these, but I’m sure you can travel there in your imagination.

There are a number of water stations for washing, brushing teeth and so on. At each, a low horizontal pipe carries a number of taps in a row, and people come to bend over to scrub their faces and clean up in a rudimentary way, balancing on loose platforms of sometimes rotting pallets to lift themselves a few inches above the mud that inevitably forms around the water stations. Like the portaloos, these stations are all located along the main streets, so washing is done in full view of everyone who passes by. There is no roof to protect people from the elements, no walls to protect them from view.

As you look out over all of this, it is impossible not to imagine how much worse and degrading this will become if and when heavy rain, snow and freezing temperatures arrive this winter.

There is a dire lack of firewood for cooking and keeping warm. Some people are so desperate that they burn plastic instead. The smell of it will hit your nose and throat.

DUNKIRK AND SMALLER CAMPS

Dunkirk, also known as Grande-Synthe, is a smaller, more recently formed camp about 30 minutes’ drive east of Calais. It is these days peopled overwhelmingly by Kurds. It is, inconceivably, in a worse state than the Jungle. The mud is deeper, and services almost non-existent. A kitchen has recently gone up but often runs critically low on supplies. The local government has supplied a few toilet facilities in portacabin-style structures, as well as a self-congratulatory sign telling residents – in many languages but not Kurdish – that they have done this and the facilities are free of charge.

Police have been very obstructive at Dunkirk, forbidding any vehicles from entering or leaving, and they forbid the entry of any building materials. Any supplies have to be carried in on foot from a nearby car park, where people gather waiting hopefully for vans to arrive with donations.


VOLUNTEERS, COMMUNITY INITIATIVES, SELF-HELP AND ECONOMY

Because France refuses to recognise the Jungle and the smaller camps as official refugee camps, there is no UNHCR presence here, no Red Cross, no central overseeing authority, no hierarchy, no lines of responsibility, negligible government contribution and no accountability. (The British government, who refuses to provide any safe route into the UK so that people’s asylum claims can be made, is equally at fault.)

What there is is anarchy, in both its negative and positive meanings. In the negative sense this can mean mafia, exploitation, abuse, occasional scuffles as tensions boil over; duplication of, inefficiencies in or gaps in the attempt to meet needs. In the positive sense it can mean not a politically conscious anarchism of people sitting around discussing Bakunin but an anarchism of doing and action that hasn’t had the time or the slightest interest in stopping for a minute to think of itself or label itself as anarchism. (That said, Calais Migrant Solidarity – No Borders is a loose group of activists who take an explicitly political stance) I have heard someone at one of the warehouses say that “We’re not political, we’re humanitarian,” which is an attitude that troubles and disappoints me: how can you possibly not be politicised and political in a horrorscape that has been created by colonialism, capitalism and racism?

[Added later: Tom Tomski made an important response to this in a comment, and it’s worth including here: “If I could talk about where you mentioned "we're not political, we're humanitarian". I have used those words to describe the efforts of the group from Guildford with whom I work. We say this because we believe that there is a place for political discussion and a place for humanitarian discussion. Occasionally the two inevitably collide. I feel this is necessary but when political argument spill over and distracts from the work we are all trying to do then our already fragile aid procedures break down. I think we all would like to see a resolution to the issues faced by those we are trying to help but there is a time and a place for that kind of discussion. Through my efforts over the last year I have learned the importance of choosing that time, place and audience.”

I agree with Tom, and I see the logic of making the separation in the particular context of the warehouse and other donor operations. I was trying to describe what I felt in that moment, but I think what Tom expresses is probably what the person in the warehouse was trying to say. I’ve got huge respect for those who have been giving of themselves for so long under great pressure, and we tried to be mindful that we were newbies who were there to learn from their systems and outlooks and swallow any frustrations we would inevitably encounter, as these might spring from our own ignorance and inexperience.]

Where there are projects, organisations and collective or individual efforts to meet the basic needs of the camp residents, they are run entirely either by volunteers or by camp residents themselves, or by the two in collaboration with each other.


Volunteering and ‘aid’

The warehouses
There are two main warehouses, run by different organisations, in locations that are kept relatively secret and which are a 10-20 minute drive from the Jungle. One is l’Auberge Des Migrants, the other is Care4Calais. They have slightly different systems, but each accepts donations: of food, clothing, boots, tents, sleeping bags, blankets, building materials and other items. Before going for the first time it can be easy to get confused, and perhaps even turn up to the wrong warehouse. Their communications and online presences are often not clearly branded.


We delivered our vanload of donations to l’Auberge and spent much of the four days either working in the warehouse on sorting clothes or food, or putting our van to use by taking food or firewood from the warehouse to the Jungle and the Dunkirk camp.

The warehouse is swarming with volunteers in yellow hi-vis, beavering away, sorting donations into some kind of order that can allow them to be collated and distributed to the camps. This is a Sisyphean task – the mountain of clothes tripled in size during our time there – and is not helped by the large number of donations that are unsorted by gender, type or size, or utterly inappropriate (evening wear, high heels, large sizes – almost everyone in the camps is slim). It doesn’t take long working in the warehouse to lose your admiration for people’s generosity and to start to curse the thoughtlessness of those organising donations without checking the camp needs or considering the warehouse logistics. The fact is, inappropriate or unsorted donations DELAY the distribution of donations to people in desperate need.

The Auberge warehouse, nevertheless, is utterly remarkable, an extraordinary real-time experiment. Volunteers may be there for a day, a weekend, a week or several months – an unpredictable turnover with people constantly learning on the job and faces changing. Organisers wear orange hi-vis, but an orange vest has been known to be handed to someone with just a day’s experience if they seem to have their head screwed on.

Around the back of the warehouse is the building workshop. Here, the parts for timber framed and ply-and-insulation-clad shelters are constructed, then taken to the camp, where camp residents help to raise and finish them. They are very rudimentary, but far better than tents. There are now around 650 on site.

‘Independent’ Volunteers

There is a whole ecosystem of voluntary groups or individuals in the Jungle, many independent of the two warehouse operations. Anyone can turn up, try to identify an unmet need and then try to meet it. So there are other building groups, other distributors. Distribution is a tricky business, and the inexperienced can get into and cause considerable stress, so it is worth learning the tricks of the trade. ‘Line distributions’, where people queue up to the back of a van being unloaded, for example, can go badly wrong – if the line is not managed (or self-managed by assertive people in the queue) there can be a bit of a scrum, or people left empty-handed, disappointed and angry – and everyone left with their dignity lessened.

The mish mash of initiatives include a basic youth centre, supposed to give a place for teens (many unaccompanied minors) and younger kids a place to hang out safely and play. It’s not in a very safe neighbourhood, so the guys running it are fundraising to move it to a better spot, and to make a building three times the size to accommodate demand. We’ve spent some of your monetary donations on helping to ensure that this can happen.

Medecins Sans Frontiers have a presence on site (the first time ever on French soil), and there are other medically-oriented caravans and structures, including a vaccination centre, but all of this is pretty poor in relation to the need. Scabies and influenza are rife, and you will see many people with injuries: from barbed wire, falls, police beatings, accidents on the road or railway tracks, tear gas inhalation and pepper-sprayed eyes (the police again).

Foodwise, there are kitchens offering free food: One Ashram kitchen twice a day, Alice’s Kitchen on a seemingly rolling basis as and when supplies are available. A Belgian kitchen we didn't see but heard of.

An Information Centre is run on a shoestring offering guidance on rights and asylum in European countries, printed in as many camp languages as they can manage. They need lawyers to volunteer. They have none.

Community Initiatives and Enterprise

Before I left, one friend asked me why the job of meeting needs is done by volunteers rather than by camp residents themselves. I didn’t know then enough to give an answer. I thought perhaps some answers to this might be: ‘Their movements are restricted.’ ‘With what money?’ ‘They are traumatised after fleeing wars.’ ‘Their primary goal is to pass through, not to live long-term in the Jungle.’

Now that I’ve been, I know that while much of that is true, the most relevant answer is: “But they ARE doing it for themselves!”



Zimako Jones runs l’Ecole Laique du Chemin des Dunes, a school made of timber and tarp just inside one of the camp entrances  On the weekend we were there he was hosting a remarkable art exhibition in the school featuring migrants’ stories and casts of their heads and shoulders.

Another man (I don't know if it's ok to use his name) – resident in the Jungle – runs a shack from which he organises distributions – of boots, food, etc. He is – and has to be – a formidable character, but has a gentle demeanour when he’s not berating some people for selfish or unco-operative behaviour. He is very active in working to support existing community kitchens and set up new ones, often run by national groups in the camp.

The advantages of these are ease of food distribution, culturally appropriate cuisine that people actually want to eat, and of course hubs for people to gather. These need a steady supply of gas, which is in very short supply, so we are spending some of your monetary donations on paying for a three-month supply to help this project.

There are of course, many many more resident-led – and volunteer-led – initiatives going on than we could become aware of in a brief four-day visit, and of course there are national / linguistic / subnational groups in which the job of community leadership and co-operation must be going on in countless ways, overt and subtle.

There is also enterprise – humans are gathered here, after all. So the main drags are lined with shops selling foodstuffs, top up cards and more. There are cafes (I recommend Kabul Café), barbers, hamams. For those with money, of course.

There are too many other resident-run or independent volunteer-run initiatives to mention here. However, even this remarkable effort and energy and commitment and co-operation is not meeting people’s basic needs. People continue to go hungry and cold, inadequately clothed and shod, ill and in danger. This is why there is no place for congratulation or self-congratulation. Even those working hard and selflessly to clothe and ‘house’ people in the camp will tell you that They Should Not Be Here. That no one should be abandoned in this dead-end, stomach-turning mire. Donating is not the end. Volunteering is not the end. They solve nothing, they only salve for a short time.


SPENDING YOUR DONATIONS

With that in mind, the five of us had much more money in donations than we ever expected – more than £8000. A huge thank you to those who donated, as well as to those who were unable to donate but spread the word, and those who donated things like clothes, boots and sleeping bags. Here is how we are spending the money:

Spent:

- Fresh food bought and taken to Calais: £120.50
- Dried food, oil, etc, bought and taken to Calais: £863.77
- Individual food parcels: £313.33
- More food bought in Calais: £206.08
- Kitchen equipment: £16.98
- Donation of £750 so gas canisters can be bought for community kitchens run by camp residents. 

This the first instalment of at least three. This will help get a large number of community kitchens up and running, run by and for camp residents. This will mean more self-reliance is possible, more culturally appropriate food, easier food distribution from warehouse to camp and a number of hubs where communities there will gather and share.

Committed:
- Two more instalments of £750 to fund the gas supply for community kitchens

- £500 towards the resiting and expansion of a youth centre that is one of the few places where underserved and vulnerable teenagers can go, have fun and be looked out for, as well as younger children. Demand has outgrown the facilities there, and it is not in a safe spot, so the people running it want to have a building made in the UK that is three times bigger, then brought to the site, as well as proper fencing to make it safer. The £500 is being match-funded and allows the move and rebuild go ahead.

Considering:

- Support one or more of the self-build shelter projects, which work with camp residents to build simple timber and ply dwellings (much better than flimsy, weatherbeaten tents). We are currently researching how best to do this.
- Donate towards the re-siting of the Dunkirk camp to an MSF-run camp

THE PEOPLE


As well as some of those already mentioned above, we met some people in the Jungle and Dunkirk who just won’t leave our heads.

One of our group was approached by a young boy who asked for a blanket for his friend. Luckily we had one spare in the van, so we gave it to him and asked him to take us to his tent, which meant picking a way through a labyrinth of mud, craters, tents and detritus to a spot not far from the flyover, from where French police randomly fire tear gas into the camp each night. He showed us his tent and introduced us to the four friends and cousins he was sharing it with. All were from Afghanistan, aged between 11 or 12 and 15.

One spoke pretty good English. They had taken 50 days to travel from Afghanistan – fleeing the Taliban – to Calais, dodging wolves, wild dogs and violent adults. They were alone, now parentless, one had a painful persistent earache. They lacked boots, and they were cold at night in their tent, which was immaculately clean and tidy inside. They had arrived the day before, hungry, friendly, polite, open, sweet. They were children who had seen more than you and I will ever see, but so resilient and unbroken.

We showed them were they could get free food, found some information from them on asylum and rights in Pashtu, took them to the youth centre – who, incredibly, managed to get the timber and ply shelter they craved raised for them by the end of the same day.Later in the weekend we revisited; they told us how they had been scared the night before as they listened to tear gas being fired. Three of the five had ventured out, they told us. We worry every night now about where they are, what situation they are in. They are desperate to get to the UK, and they may do desperate things to get there.

On the day we were to leave we met another Afghan boy, Bader, 15 years old and arrived that very day, with no tent, no sleeping bag, utterly unprepared for the filth and chaos of the Jungle. He queued for half an hour for a tent, which turned out to be a beach windbreak instead, so we took him to Kabul Café for a meal while we sought him a proper tent.

Bader had fled Kunduz when the Taliban arrived, destroying schools and other buildings. His parents told him and his brother to flee. He doesn’t know where his brother is. He lost a friend who was arrested by Iranian police and had to continue without him. He came via a more official ‘Freedom Camp’ in Germany, but spurred by the myth that Calais is the stepping stone to the UK, he pressed on. Eyes wide and with a disbelieving smile and shake of the head, he said he had no idea that the Jungle was – well, as it is. We spent much of the last day looking in vain for a safe-seeming spot for him to pitch his tent, and eventually left him in remarkably cosy Alice’s Kitchen, where he would be allowed to doss for a couple of nights. We seemed more concerned about getting a roof over his head than he did: his priority was to find Afghan men to ask about ways of reaching the UK. Left to himself for 20 minutes he was already waiting for a call from an unknown man: a people smuggler? A trafficker? Someone who would charge thousands? Who would come through or not?

We went to Dunkirk to distribute firewood. Not allowed to drive in, we parked in the nearby car park and when we opened the van doors a crowd quickly formed. Firewood was gold dust, both here and in the Jungle. As we handed out sacks of wood, three or four tiny boys swarmed into the van. They were aged between four and six, perhaps, and they were determined to secure sacks of wood for their families. The sacks were heavier than themselves, and when the distribution had ended and the adults dispersed, these small boys were still with us, vainly trying to lift the bags. We locked up the van, took up the sacks ourselves and told them to take us to their families, wanting to make sure they were delivered. I have never seen such determination in anyone, child or adult, from one of the boys in particular – I can’t forget his eyes. There was no way in the world that he was not going to get that sack to his family in their pathetic, muddy encampment. He was serious and fiercely resolute. He looked five years old. I was ashamed in his presence.

The Jungle, Dunkirk and other, smaller camp are gatherings of human beings. That sounds obvious, and perhaps it sounds like it’s directed at your right-wingers and fearmongers. It’s also a reminder, though – for those sympathetic to their predicament - that the people in the Jungle must not be reduced to – and dehumanised as – victims. Some of the people we met are the last people you would want to reduce to that label. They are survivors and they are resisters. Some are good people, some are 'bad'. Some are peaceful, some rancorous, angry and lashing out. Some depressed, some irrepressible. Some wary and suspicious, some open, welcoming, friendly, at times inexplicably finding something to be glad of. None of them are only those things all the time. They have all travelled a long, long way. Many have faced the wrenching experience of leaving family and friends with the knowledge that the chance of ever seeing them again is very small.

I didn’t want to talk about how I, the privileged visitor, felt about the experience. I didn’t feel that this was important, and that it would be self-indulgent to navel-gaze. Others have said it’s important and helpful, and reaches some people in a way that facts might not. So:

The day after arriving home I felt flat, dull. As we went about our business, I felt I was seeing double in a way, but not seeing two of the same image; instead I saw what was in front of me, but overlaid with images of the camps. To cook a meal at home is to see people burning plastic because there is no wood, or queuing for food. To lie in bed under the duvet is to meet again the strangers who would wish you good morning (after a night of being gassed) and then politely ask if you could find them a blanket. To shower is to see the pallets and water stations. To hear the rain on the roof here in Kent is to hope to God and Allah and Vishnu and Pacha Mama and the isobars that it is not raining on the swamps that are the camps. To turn out the light at night is to wonder whether the boys we met are venturing out at night, risking their lives on motorways and railway tracks and being gassed by police.

On our way to the ferry I simply didn’t want to leave. I felt we were abandoning people who had already been abandoned so many times. On being home for 24 hours I almost – almost - wished I hadn’t gone at all, because the feelings of inadequacy are so strong. But we will be back, despite the doubts, because we’ve seen things that can’t be unseen, and so it’s too late to do otherwise. We’ll be back because the humans in Calais have been our best teachers. We’ll be back because there’s no excuse not to. And we’ll be back because in this country our comforts and riches have been built on the robbery and murder of people like those in the camps in Calais.

(At least I think, for now, that we'll be back. One thing we learned in the camps is to not make promises if you don't know for sure you can follow through.)

To see the shifting mass of people there is to see the personification of the consequences of so many of the world’s war zones – most of which our government or its closest allies have had a hand in creating or worsening.

There are Kurds, Sudanese, Eritreans, Ethiopians, Syrians, Iranians and a host of others. Perhaps you, like me, stopped reading the reports of explosions in Baghdad market places some time ago, feeling increasingly detached, helpless and ignorant. To go to the Jungle and Dunkirk is to be whacked around the head with the reality of the human consequences. Here are those consequences, on our doorstep, in the form of people like us, and if they must be anywhere we should at least in some way be grateful that they are here, so close, where it is increasingly difficult for us to look away, because we have no right to look away.

They are there because of centuries of colonialism, which continues today in the form of capitalism and its associated resource extraction and labour exploitation, because of historic European robbery and genocide, because of imperial game-playing and the catastrophic carving up of other people’s lands with random borders (everyone in the Middle East knows what Sykes-Picot is, why don’t we?). The comfort we have here is not random good fortune or the result of our hard work and industriousness, it is the result of a long-term zero-sum game with the odds stacked in *our* favour. The results of that injustice are now personified in their thousands just 22 miles from the English coast.

A WORD ON CHARITY AND THANKS

Even before we left for Calais, while gathering donations and making preparations, we were often thanked by people making those donations. Phrases were used like “Thank you so much for doing this”, “Thank you for going because I couldn’t”, "It's so good of you".

I have no wish to be ungracious about those words, and I take them at face value and I am grateful for them. It is hard, though, to express just how awkward it felt to hear them – not out of modesty or false modesty, but for a reason I couldn’t quite put into coherent thoughts and words they made me squirm with discomfort and unease. Part of it was the knowledge of the inadequacy of whatever we might do, but that wasn't what was bugging me. On talking to my mum when we returned to Kent, she was the one who was able to vocalise the discomfort.

It’s as if, she said, it expresses a belief that you have no obligations to anyone beyond yourself or your immediate family. It says something about where as a culture, as a society, we have set the boundaries of what constitutes the community to which we have duties. I think she’s right. And I repeat that it is not a criticism of any individual who might have expressed ‘thanks’, nor a questioning of their personal values. But that impulse to thank does say something rather dark about where we have collectively set the boundaries of what we think of as our community, our obligations and our brotherhood and sisterhood.

(I’d also add that, especially if you live in the south east of England, yes, you can go to Calais – unless you are in poor health or perhaps have two babies on your hands, you can do it. There is a useful role for anyone, there were elderly people volunteering in the warehouse, there were people who had left their families to go and some who had brought their families with them. And the ferries are cheap.)

On the subject of charity, as I said above, the people in the Calais camps should not be seen as victims needing our help. They are the most resourceful and resilient people currently residing in Europe. Their journeys have been acts of resistance against systems of oppression and against borders which block (and kill) humans but allow and celebrate destructive flows of capital, weapons and stolen natural resources. Their repeated and continued nightly attempts to cross to the UK are admirable and brave acts of resistance against a monstrous injustice and a moral outrage in which Britain and France have abandoned thousands of human beings in a squalid, purgatorial dead end. If and when we go to Calais again we won’t go as volunteers bringing ‘aid’ to victims, we will go to work alongside our new neighbours.

Wednesday 23 December 2015

Benedict O'Boyle Recounts His Experience of Volunteering in Calais: December 23rd 2015

DAY 1

Albert and I left at 2am collected some donations en route and chunneled to Calais for the 9am briefing. We arrived at an abandoned industrial estate and were shown a warehouse with a kitchen that provided volunteers a hot lunch and organised food donations and distribution. A mountain of bin bags full of stupid donations at the front sold by the ton and recycled. At the back was sorting area, bustling with people sorting everything from medicines, tents, tarps, clothes, toys and more.

We unloaded our donations the tools in the back gave away our skill set, so despite being knackered we headed straight to the workshop and started making shelter frames from 2 x 2 pine. We got set up and cracked on. We worked until 9pm and with various teams making various parts like wrapping doors in tarps, cutting timber to length or whatever needed doing. Anyone who can use a saw and a drill could do this work. We made a lot of frames and talked to a few people about the situation. Van drivers would come in and collect the shelter components and nails/screws required to build them and ferry them back and forth to the build crews in the Jungle.

We spoke to a few people, but mainly worked, we listened to accounts of "The Jungle" as it's is known by refugees and volunteers alike. There was a lot of positivity but obvious pain, fighting a losing battle against weather, funding, volunteers and materials. While more refugees arrived every day and 6000+ people were living in sodden tents in a filthy hell hole.

We set up the pop up tent in the back of the van, had a few beers and went to bed. Exhausted but feeling positive...

DAY 2


I arrived in the workshop ready to make more frames, but overhead a build crew saying they could do with another pair of hands building shelters on site, before I knew it i was driving to the camp with Tom and Glen and a load of tools.

As I pulled off the motorway, passing the flashing blue lights and angry looking French police. I could see across the sprawl of The Jungle and finally appreciated the size of the problem.

Thousands of tired tents, tarpaulin shelters and make shift buildings peppered the muddy field and interspersed with litter. It was a horrendous mess.

I parked at the entrance, as we unloaded the van, inquisitive refugees keeping an eye on the motorway trucks, gathered in an orderly queue and asked,

"Line? Line?"

"No line my friends, we are here to build shelters." Tom informed them. They understood and appreciated that we were there to help and returned to their business of watching and waiting.

We lugged our tools in to the camp, past the toilets, the stench of human waste stinging your nose and eyes.

Ignoring the wet mud we walked through the Afghan area, past little shanty town shops selling food and drink from makeshift shelters, small restaurants serving, great looking food.

People were singing, smiling and laughing, holding onto their dignity as their world disintegrates into fear and filth.

A few had their faces covered by scarves and their angry eyes burned with fury as we passed, their dislike for the westerners whose government destroyed their lives and killed their loved ones was clear and I couldn't blame them.

We trudged on past water points, distribution centres, the brothel and the church.

Eventually we made it to the Women's and children's area, a safe haven created to protect from the horrors that have befallen most of the vulnerable, fenced off and locked up at night. We delivered and installed a projector and then headed back out to see who we could help.

There were no shortage of people who needed us. I had brought some Tarps which we used to waterproof a few tents and shelters, the mud and conditions generally making progress slow. Everywhere we went people would ask for help,

"Hello, 1 minute please Sir, you help?"
Five minutes later, they had a fixed door latch, or some nails to hang clothes from or a verbal agreement that we would try and get them a shelter.
Nothing takes a minute in the jungle and everyone needs help.

Every time we fixed something, another person would come over and ask for help. We were shown small leaky tents that housed 8 people, whether it was a waterproof roof, a repaired lock, or just giving them some nails, they were always grateful and often invited us for tea. But at this point I felt that there was too much to do for a tea break. So we worked on.

It had been dark for a
while by the time we headed back to the van at 8pm with the tools. Covered in mud from the knees down and still trying to process the humanity along side the inhumane conditions.

The Jungle was beginning to wake up for the night. The atmosphere changing as music came blaring out of a large, black plastic covered building. The Sudanese Bar/night club. The hustle and bustle of people emerging from their tents to eat or socialise.

We didn't see any trouble, but you can feel the potential bubbling under the surface, only a spark would be needed for an explosion of anger or frustration. The suffering these people had endured to get this far had left many irreparably damaged.

They try to get along, despite the conditions, their journey and being such a wide demographic of people, Afghani, Eritreans, Kurdish, Pakistani, Iranian and Iraqi, Syrian and Sudanese and many more.
Previously nations that disliked each other are now forced together in abhorrent conditions, while they strive for a peaceful life in a living hell, they ran from bombs and death hoping for a safer life, almost all have lost loved ones and now all they have is hope.

DAY 3

"The Jungle" which is an amazingly diverse community of refugees from various countries trying to coexist and survive as best as humanly possible. There is laughter and music and song, the mud is like Glastonbury...in December. There are broken tents and plastic clad pine shelters everywhere, shops and shanty restaurants, mud more mud and then mud. But the people on the whole are lovely, they appreciate the help and regularly ask,
"What will the British government do to help us? Is there hope?" I don't know the answer, I don't believe our government will do enough to help the displaced citizens of the countries they are destroying. But I have to look them in the eye and say,
"There is always hope."

Today we made some bunk beds and installed them, did running repairs on shelters and agreed to find a base for 9 people who are on a tent on the ground. We will take them a base tomorrow. Then spoke to people who needed a new roof, which we will fit tomorrow, they have lashed tree branches together and the water pools in the plastic sheeting and it leaks, they have to keep pushing the roof up during the night to stop it leaking and if it snows it will collapse.
Ate dinner in the Afghan Flag restaurant. Amazing food, lovely people, fighting to create a community and keep going despite the abhorrent conditions.

The volunteers are amazing, doing so much with so little. Some have been here months and just can't bring themselves to leave. I know how they feel.

For the first time in a long time, I cried tonight.



DAY 4

We loaded our van with supplies to fix a roof and and headed to the jungle, refugees now recognising us as familiar faces. A teenager approaches and asks,"I help you brother?"

We tell him where we are going (it may take him out of his territory and place him a danger), he shrugs so I hand him some timber to carry and we trudge in through the mud loaded with tools and materials.

We arrive at the shelter and are greeted like old friends, the eldest Mohammed, an economics professor puts a pot of water for tea straight onto the small gas hob.
They clear their 3.5m2 shelter, piling all their belongings into the corner. We put down plastic to protect their home from the mud and start cutting the string that lashed together the branches.

Nasser a teenager, who speaks excellent English and studied mathematics, passes the branches out as we remove and support the roof. The branches are cut up for firewood, which is always needed in the jungle.

We stop for tea and have a chat with our hosts, familiar sad stories of loss and pain are mixed with jokes and laughing. Mohammed tells me all he has is hope and Nasser asks if I can help him get to England.
"I will be your servant forever my brother." He pleads.
"If I can get you to England my brother then you will be my friend forever." I reply. We talk about our governments, i apologise for our countries role in their tragedy.
Mohammed smiles and says,
"We have a government too. They don't listen to their people."

The roof takes a few hours, but by the time we are done has 2x2 timber rafters, with 50mm Celotex insulation I brought over with me. It's sloped and study and won't collapse if it snows. Glen hangs from the roof to show its strength and jokes about his weight, we all laugh.

We have a coffee as we tidy up, ready for the next job and I take Nasser' number and give him mine.
"I will do what I can." I promise him.

Knowing they will be warm, dry and safe now, they are all in high spirits. I'm invited back for dinner, but have to decline as I'm the driver.

"Tomorrow night my brother, please let us cook for you."

I explain that there are so many brothers that need our help I may not be able to, but agree to try and promise to at least return for tea before I leave. There are warm hugs for all as we leave and Mohammed kisses my cheek with tears in his eyes and thanks me again. I tell him to keep looking after the lads he's with and to keep hope.

We load up and hike on to the next site with mixed emotions, knowing we have made a difference, but barely.

Before we left France, I kept my promise and returned to see my friends for tea and biscuits.

The next site is a medium sized teepee style tent. It's right on the edge of the "road".
There are 8 people sleeping in it and the floor is always wet as it is sat on mud. They have been living like that for months. I put my head in the shower block, set up run by Amir, he is from Afghanistan and speaks 8 languages. He's living between the Sudanese and the Pakistani's having moved out of the Afghan area to avoid the trouble making. I used his skills numerous times in the jungle and he was always happy to help his brothers of any nationality. Amir organises the lads in the tent and we lay a tarp out on the floor for there damp belongings.

I've managed to scavenge two bases left over from heavier duty shelters they used to make. With difficulty we unload them from the lorry, one gets caught and then gives suddenly sliding and smashing me in the face. We remove the tent and flatten the ground with a shovel, before screwing the bases together. There are smiles all round as we re-erect the tent and they know they will be dry tonight.

Our next job is to put up a shelter with some teenagers who have been on the list for a month, but as we prepare to leave an angry Iranian man in his 60's is shouting at me, gesticulating with tears running down his face.

I fetch Amir and he translates. The man is next to the road, which is a mud track with huge puddles. Every time a vehicle passes filthy water washes into his tent. I look inside and there is 2" of muddy water in there. It's smells of sewage.
The man is distressed because he knows they will die if they sleep there and there is nowhere else to go. But they are only 4 adult men and have no hope of getting a shelter.

I tell Amir I will be back shortly, the angry man shouts at me believing that I won't return, but Amir tells him I am a good man and to have faith.


I track down Pete the van driver and ask about a shelter, I explain the situation and Pete tells us to take the last two shelters in the van, he'll head back and get some more, we split our build team and Glen and I return to Amir with the lorry after dropping the others to build elsewhere. It's late afternoon and the temperature is dropping. It's been an hour since I left, but getting around and finding people in the Jungle is difficult and you have to surrender to "Jungle time".

Amir scolds the angry man and enjoys his moment of being right. The angry man bows his head and touches his chest, I smile and give him a hug and tell him he will be dry tonight.

The shelters take a few hours to unload, assemble, clad with plastic and insulate, the ground is rarely level or flat.
It's dark by the time we finish and our drill batteries are almost as tired as us. The guys helped where they could holding timber or stapling plastic sheeting down. They are very careful and know this may be their home for a while.

It's about 8pm by the time we say our goodbyes, meet up with the others and head to the van. Someone runs past us splashing through the mud, and then another and another. This is unusual, people don't run in the jungle, it's slippery and messy and nobody wants to get injured.

Within a few seconds there are hundreds of people running and cheering excitedly towards the entrance of the camp and the van. We hear that there is a traffic jam on the highway and the trucks have stopped! Everyone is running to try and jump on one before they move again.

Glen and I agree this is a desperate side of the situation and we don't want to see people potentially risking their lives to escape. We are not here for entertainment. We head back into the jungle and go to the Sudanese pub for a beer. Glad to sit down. As we drink our beer we hear the "pop, pop" of a grenade launcher and people running and shouting. The police have started firing teargas into the camp. We can smell and taste it, and even inside the tent our eyes were stinging. Outside people near the chemical weapons being used would be blinded temporarily and in a lot of pain.

We finish our beers, thank and pay our hosts. It's returned to normal again outside, people eating and laughing. Singing and smiling.

We get back to the van which would have had a prime view of the earlier melee. But it's calm now and we finally head off.







Day 5- you could do it too...




We met Josh and Marcus at the workshop, they'd been making shelter components for days and were ready to go into The Jungle and help assembly. We jumped in the van and headed in, the more the merrier.

I watched their expressions of horror and sadness as they took in the sight of the Jungle sprawl, a canvas of tents and mud, as we made our way past the overflowing toilets near the entrance. As we walked past the shops and restaurants and made our way deeper in, I tried to answer the same questions I myself had asked only days ago. I had learned so much and most of my fears and queries had been satiated, but to think I was now considered informed was a worry. The Jungle is a complex and dangerous place, beautiful and terrible all at once.

Marcus, a big guy, with long dreads and always a smile, quickly found himself at ease, with lots of nods and 'hello brothers' from the passing refugees.
I saw his eyes start to change from sadness, as the singing and smiling sparked back the glimmer of hope and the initial horror subsided, if you can sing in a place like this then there is hope.

Marcus and I paired off and got cracking on a shelters.
The group we were assembling the shelter for were pretty helpful, holding timbers for sawing and helping wrap the plastic sheeting as taught as possible.
Despite the usual difficulty of "where is my shelter" and "please, 1 minute you fix." from other groups nearby makes Jungle time slip by.

But we work hard and have a couple of shelters up in time for a late lunch. We meet up with the others and head to eat. The first restaurant is out of food, we came too late, the next gives us the thumbs up and we sit and eat. It's good to rest and talk to like minded people, plus the food is excellent.

After feeding body and soul, we all make more shelters in the afternoon. I pop into the women's and children's area, to deliver a snowsuit and call in at the kids centre as I pass to confirm a rumour.

The cot bed I made has been smashed up by a young boy, it can't be repaired, but the mattress is at least still useable. I ask about the boy; he is 7 and is here alone, he doesn't know if his parents are alive and after his harrowing journey he had been abused since his arrival.

Although systems are now in place to protect the vulnerable, the jungle is still dangerous for a child. I didn't blame him for his rage, if I had been through his experiences I'd be smashing things up too. There are trained volunteers helping people but never enough.

I returned to Marcus "the lionheart" and his warm "hello brother" and a big grin cheered me up. We cracked on finishing the last shelter in the dark. We leave the cutting of the underlay (used to insulate walls, roof and floor) to the guys living there, and I give them my torch to keep and my knife and hammer to finish off the interior.

"Will you get that back do you reckon?" Marcus asks as we have a quick beer in the Sudanese bar.
"Probably..."
I've lent a few tools out and people are good at returning them if you go back and ask...and they're in. Apart from a staple gun that was lent to a massive guy to fix his tarp, i asked him for it back and he just shook his head and said
"I keep." I wasn't going argue, he needed it more than me.

Marcus and I went out for food and drinks to a friendly pub in Calais. The volunteers are not welcome in most of the bars as the refugees are not appreciated by the locals. But the Family Pub always looks after us.

Later we tried another bar on the way home, just because fuck em why not, we received a much colder welcome, we kept calm, talked of peace and our experiences of the people we met there, we didn't raise our voices and we didn't find trouble. We had to calmly agree to disagree a few times, but had managed to evolve a few minds by the time we left...

The highlight of ignorance was the Irish lads, who moved to Calais, to open a wine warehouse...and had the nerve to complain about immigrants...

That night I crashed with Marcus and had a shower and slept in a room for the first time that week. Nothing compared to some in the Jungle, but I definitely needed and appreciated it!

As adults, we all get to choose what we want to believe, how we want to behave and the effect of our actions, is our responsibility good and bad. We can help those who need it or you can ignore their desperate plight and make excuses based on race, religion, money, time, or any number of reasons....but trust me, if you want to make a difference, you can




Thursday 26 November 2015

Hope for Humanity by Justine Corrie via Facebook: November 26th 2015

Hope. That’s what I’m left with ultimately. Hope for humanity. Spending just a weekend out in the camp known as ‘The Jungle’ in Calais – I’m left with many, many mixed and contradictory feelings – but ultimately hope stands out. I can’t help but be reminded of Pandora’s box – a sense of all the evils of the world having been unleashed, the horrors unfolding around the world that many of the refugees are fleeing both from and into in – yet there, in the Jungle, behind the barbed wire fences, beneath the tarpaulin shelters, amongst the rubbish strewn mud and sand dunes there is still some hope- in the eyes of the people; in the smiles, in the laughter, in the meetings and connections – there is hope.
I was only there for 2 days, so I don’t feel qualified to write anything that resembles an accurate portrayal of life in the Jungle. I can only say a little about my own experience there and what I’m left with. I don’t want to claim any real knowledge or understanding of how it must be to live there, to exist in that reality every day, not knowing whether you will leave or not, not knowing if you will ever see your family again.
The 2 days I was there were also unseasonably warm. The sun was shining down on the camp and you could almost imagine you were at some festival in a foreign land: wood-smoke plumes drift upwards; guitars strum; aromatic cooking smells waft on the air; groups of young men play football; feral children run around making mischief; women sit around talking. Yet, there is no home to return to when the festival’s over: when the sun goes in and the biting cold wind blows and icy rain pummels the makeshift shelters, flooding the ground and everything lying in it’s wake creating the kind of mud that swallows entire tents up. You may have lost your shoes somewhere on your journey here too and be making do with an odd pair you’ve salvaged from the rubbish. You may well not have anywhere near enough bedding to keep you warm at night. It’s likely that you haven’t had enough to eat and are reliant of the food parcels that get delivered sporadically to the camp by volunteers like us. Add to that the possibility that you’re already traumatised by the hell you’ve left behind in the country that you once called home, it’s also highly likely you have a medical condition that needs attention.
So how does hope figure in all that? In the humanity, dignity and cooperation of the people living in those conditions. That despite the appalling-ness of that reality becoming your day-to-day existence - you can still smile. My eyes met so many other eyes in real contact, real connection. A thousand stories unraveling in each of those pairs of eyes that meet mine. The willingness of people to connect, to reach out and make contact, to tell their story –yes, but that they also that they want to hear my story too. They tell me why they are here, the journey they endured, about the loved-ones they left behind, or about the family they already have in the UK and the injuries they’ve sustained trying to board the train night-after-night trying to reach their family here. They take out their phones to show me the photos of their children, beaming with love and pride as parents do. Sometimes they have not seen their children for several years, nor heard news of them. Yet, they ask to know about my life – they tell me how they love “England people’ – they have very good hearts so many coming here to help”, they ask to see photos of my children and want to take a ‘selfies’ with me to take back.
There is hope in the coordinated efforts of teams of volunteers made up of a diverse demographic: students on gap years, retired older men and women, a group of Sikh men, young Muslim women, Buddhists, dreadlocked seasoned activists, mum’s, dads, company directors… and refugees themselves - you find a diverse cross section of society here pooling their skills, collaborating without any central organisation that holds them together.
The vast warehouse that takes delivery of much of our 4 van-loads of donations is a seething hub of activity: pallets of donations being moved by donated fork lift trucks, groups of young people in high vis jackets sorting through piles upon piles of boxes, vans being loaded to take to the camp for distribution. The little makeshift camp kitchen at the very back a little hub of meetings and coordination. One of our team decides the kitchen area needs some TLC and a sort-out (it does!) so she dives in to set up an efficient working kitchen complete with signposts for designated areas. This is how it works- you see something that needs doing and you just make it happen.
I’m happy we could bring pre-sorted, labeled donations – we unload the van, a large number of other volunteers jumping in to help us, and the boxes can be taken straight to the right places. We hand over the 100 food parcels we’ve made up to a group that are heading into the camp with a load more from other groups. Ours bring the total up to several thousand that will be distributed from their van.It’s decided that we will take our 250 clothing packs, several hundred jumpers/fleeces and 250 toiletry packs for direct distribution into the camp.
The most common way to distribute en-mass in the camp is the ‘one line’ system. All the refugees know how this works and quite often as soon as you are seen near your van you’ll be approached and asked ‘one line?’ Basically they form an orderly queue. Sometimes it’s a very long queue and they may be waiting for an hour or so. But it works to prevent chaos and ransacking of vehicles and tries to promote dignity and mutual respect for everyone involved. All of our distributions go really well in with this method and we are able to move about the camp and distribute within different areas. The camp is loosely arranged into areas that correlate to the main countries that the refugees come from. We start off in Eritrea, just near the beautiful church and later spend time in Afghanistan, Little Syria and Sudan. The one-line system relies on us working well together as a team and knowing our roles, often a refugee, once they’ve come to the front of the line and received their item, will want to help. So different people along the way join us, and our team grows to include a young man from Syria, a lovely Afghani man and a tall Sudanese guy. It’s interesting listening to them chat to one another, telling each other where they are from and a bit of their story.I’m struck by how much playfulness and laughter there is. So many smiles too.
One of the team roles is to walk up and down the line helping to keep order, although mostly this is done by the refugees themselves anyway – any queue jumpers and quickly dealt with collectively – a communal shout of ‘one line!’ So the team member walking the line is mostly thanking people for waiting patiently and mostly everyone is very relaxed and good-humoured and just wants to chat with you. Women and children will usually want to jump the queue and push in the front. We’ve been told that we should let them know it’s ‘one line’ for everyone- men, women ad children alike, but mostly the men encourage them forward anyway so we go along with that. We see a few chaotic scenes where people have turned up in their car/van not knowing the ‘one line’ system and chaos ensues. It’s horrible. It creates the kind of scene that the media will take photos of and use to spread an inaccurate and incomplete picture of what goes on. Bags get thrown out of vans that drive off quickly, bags full of random, unsorted, many wholly inappropriate useless items that no one here needs. It create a huge waste problem and there are piles of unwanted ‘donations’ strewn around the camp that could have gone to useful homes elsewhere. People don’t want to take what they don’t need – on our distributions things got handed back to us out of toiletry bags if they already had that item so it could be given to someone else, swaps happened amongst the refugees and much good humour trying some of the clothing on.
Having done a few successful distributions we feel like ‘old hands’ and we’re able to intercept two vans that arrived before they opened up and any chaos ensued. Another 600 food parcels in one and 1000 food bags in another with bottles of water and some blankets too – all distributed with ease and great help from some of the refugees who joined us.
Around the camp there is so much building happening: impressive structures created from pallets, large communal spaces, kitchens, medical centres, restaurants, shops and homes, as well as trust and hope being built.
We eat the best meal I have while in France in Afghanistan. We sit inside the Afghan kitchen eating delicious aromatic spiced rice and beans while talking to a French volunteer who’s been helping in the camp for one and half years.
A phone-call with one of our to try and meet up for a distribution goes like this:
“Where are you?”
“We’re in Sudan I think, where are you?”
“I’m in little Syria, just past the Women’s centre”
“Can you meet us in Afghanistan?”
“Where’s that?”
“ Keep going along the main drag till you see the shops and Afghan flag.”
“Is that before you get to Eritrea?”
There is a unique atmosphere of cooperation and collaboration I don’t feel I’ve seen before. There’s a huge reserve of skills among the refugees and slowly those skills are being able to be put to good use. Builders, engineers, medics, lawyers, and chefs: finding ways to use their skills in ways that can improve the daily existence of many.
Of course, not many people want to stay in the camp; it’s not a place to build a home. The ever-present CRS riot Police presence (the Armadillo’s – due to their riot gear look) machine-guns to their chest – adds to an environment of fear and intimidation. Rumours abound about the camp being shutdown and small areas are bulldozed: tents, belongings, essential papers and all on a fairly regular basis. This is no place to settle.
I met many who had applied for asylum status in France already but have a long wait with no support in the meantime. And many others who have friends & family in the UK, and desperately want to join them. The young Eritrean guy with a shy smile who softly spoke fluent English, he was an engineering graduate with a wife and child back home, “French is very difficult for me to learn, I have friends in England and I want to work there and build a life for my family.”
There are many other conversations, meetings, connections: Refugees and the volunteers who came here once and have returned time and time again, unable to stop returning, pulled by the absolute need to ‘do something’ in the face of our impotent, unwilling politicians. They return or stay even despite their own complicated lives.
I like the three-dimensional approach that Joanna Macy describes in her work around ‘the Great Turning’. To meet this crisis well we need:
Action-
Political Lobbying, legal work to support refugees rights and promote changes, as well as direct action – Volunteering, protest and campaigning. Work of this kind buys time. It saves lives and cultures – but it’s insufficient on it’s own.
Analysis and Structural Alternatives-
To create meaningful change to the current unworkable systems and structures, we need to fully understand the current and historic dynamics at play at a systemic level. This can include study groups and developing new ways to self-organise and collaborate.
Awareness- Structural alternatives cannot take root without deeply ingrained values to sustain them. As well as doing the work ‘out there’ we need to look at our own inner conflicts, consciousness and responses. It’s this third dimension that can support us and save us from succumbing to panic or paralysis. The realisations we find here can help us to resist the temptation to stick our heads in the sand or turn on each other, as scapegoats on whom to vent our fear and rage.
Let's do this.
Yes, I am left with hope. Hope for the ones that have made it this far in their perilous journey: hope for compassion and care and support and community. And hope that arises from witnessing the courage and willingness of the many that are already making a stand and doing something. Hope in the midst of the smiles and shining eyes and laughter that not only survive, but also thrive among the refugees.
Hope for the thousands upon thousands of others that are currently stranded beyond these borders on the far side of desperate conditions – even a glimmer of hope there, that there will be enough of a call to action in people’s hearts and we can meet this humanitarian crisis and it’s immensity of suffering.

Wednesday 25 November 2015

And What A Jungle It is! - by Savannah Simons: November 25th 2015

I’ve just returned from 4 days in Calais at the Refugee camp dubbed “The Jungle”. And a jungle it is. 

Destroyed tents, soaked clothes and shit-stained everything. Standing, dripping, in a queue for over 2 hours in the torrential rain and gale force winds for a jumper, only to return to a flooded tent, with nowhere to dry anything, wet, freezing to death, was the everyday reality. 

The evenings consisted of another run and jump attempt onto the back of a train, fall off or get caught, pepper sprayed and beaten by the police before being locked up for up to 20 days in order to be “taught a lesson”. Some told me it was worth it. Others didn't. A Syrian Social Anthropologist who had been in the camp for 4 months said to me "at least here, I have a chance of survival". Return home and be killed was his alternative.
In the Jungle I was greeted with smiles and warmth. “How are you?” I was asked, “where are you from?", "would you like some tea?", people offering to share what little they had. The spirit of these individuals, in such disgusting circumstances was unbelievable.
During distribution I found myself apologising to everyone for the weather. For the UK and French government. For our inaction. For the fact that we sit at home and go "that's awful!" and then do nothing. "How the hell is this happening", "this makes no sense", "I don't understand", I found myself repeating over and over again. How have we come this far in civilization, how are we this technologically advanced, for people to still be denied food, water and shelter. The fact that this is happening right in front of us, not in some far away land we are told is "inaccessible"/ "not our problem" and still do nothing, when we are all able to, is inexcusable.
We are lucky enough to be born in a peaceful and prosperous country. Not everyone has such luck.
Your political orientation is irrelevant. Your views on border control and immigration policy are irrelevant. Nobody should be living like this Anywhere, and most certainly not in a country as wealthy and as capable as France. Anyone and everyone can do something.
Calaid, the organisation we volunteered with is doing everything it can and is volunteer-run. We spent days sorting clothes, shoes and supplies in the Warehouse, and building and distributing in the Jungle. The piles and piles of unsorted clothes and shoes; and undistributed food and supplies is frustrating: their are simply not enough volunteers or vans. The governments/ the UN are doing NOTHING whatsoever, so it really is down to us. Even volunteering for 1 day can make a huge difference. Its not for someone else to do, its for all of us to do.

I've Returned Safely After Three Days at 'The Jungle' in Calais. By Jape: November 25th 2015


The situation there is staggering. I expected to be taking part in an effective and well mobilised charity operation helping to ensure that vulnerable people were receiving vital aid in their hour of need. I had pictured teams of volunteers professionally funded and coordinated. That is not even close to what is actually happening there. Arriving at the main and only distribution warehouse on day one you learn that it is an otherwise disused and partially derelict building, occupied by no more than around 35 or so volunteers (including the group of 15 I travelled with that day). Among these is a sort of 'hardcore' of maybe seven or eight people (they wear orange fluorescent jackets, the rest of us wear yellow) who on their own untrained initiative do their best to organise the operation. Most of these people came for a day or two some months ago and upon realising how desperate things are they have simply dropped everything else in their lives and moved in. ALL the volunteers who have experienced going 'on site' at the jungle and seen it with their own eyes immediately vow to themselves to make further plans to return to Calais doing a few days or weeks in the future as and when they can.

The warehouse contains six or seven bays of sorted items in boxes on shelves and a pile of unsorted donations roughly the size of a small bungalow. There are two people working on this pile today. I will later learn that a vast quantity of "aid" in this pile is in fact non useful and non usable items, which will be sold to 'cash for clothes' at a price of one Euro per Kilo. First, though, everything in the huge pile will have to be sorted through by hand, then further sorted into individual boxes - medium t shirts, large t shirts, children's clothes, scarves, gloves, the many different types and sizes of shoe that exist, hygiene products, tents, the list goes on.

I spend my first morning making up what they call 'Lucky bags' - a thin black bin liner tied at the top containing two t shirts, a jumper, socks, gloves and a hat. Sometimes they include underwear or scarves too but often not since, like today, these items are in very short supply. Four of us really going for it make up around 300-400 bags over the course of a morning - during distribution at the camp these will disappear within just a few minutes.

I didn't do the distributions but I later witnessed them whilst I was doing other things at the camp. There were many more people in the queue than there were bags; it was raining and freezing cold so people were shivering; sometimes a queue will break down and chaos ensues; sometimes the distribution has to be abandoned to avoid people getting hurt. I only made two brief trips to The Jungle on day one to drop off wood and a rickety gazebo and spent the rest of the day doing jobs at the warehouse.

Day two involved getting to know the camp itself in much more detail. When you work at The Jungle you are one of perhaps a dozen (more on weekend days) from the warehouse in a camp containing approximately 6500 refugees (estimates range on how many new ones arrive per day, between 100 and 150 perhaps). There is nobody else on site except the odd car coming to donate things. 12 untrained volunteers on a site of over 6500 people.

I stand with three of my friends near the wooden shack distribution center - all of us are trying to work out just where to even begin or what to do. The fluorescent jackets make us stand out from a mile away. We are approached by refugees constantly and relentlessly with questions we have no answers to. There is deep wet mud and litter all around us and large pools of murky brown water. People have no tents, most have only the wet clothes they stand in, no blankets, nowhere to sleep, some of them are wearing flip flops, some have missing limbs, there are men, women, families, parentless children, everybody is sick.

An Iraqi man tells me he arrived yesterday and has been out all night in the cold. He is desperate for a tent and begs for information about where to find one. I point in a gesture of pure guess work at at the distribution shack in front of us where there are a crowd of people climbing over each other to get to the tiny window where items are handed through periodically. He tells me "I didn't come here to fight, I can't fight like that". I can't help him -he quietly walks away.

I soon learn from walking around that tents in the Jungle generally have a very short life. The wind sweeps in over the sand dunes, the rain keeps falling, economy tents like you or I might abandon at a music festival are over crowded and invariably soon broken or flooded. Tent pegs are unusable in the sand, rock and litter. Instead the edges of tents have to be buried. Everywhere you dig reveals layer upon layer of rubbish and untold filth. A tarpaulin stretched over the top of each tent is essential even to make it last 48 hours. There are not enough bits of tarpaulin - there are virtually no tools.

We try our best to distribute tents from the warehouse one at a time so as not to cause a panic, everybody is desperate for a shack made from scrap wood instead. Around ten percent of the refugees get them eventually, either building them themselves or with help from the volunteers. There isn't enough scrap wood for most, let alone the hammer or nails to build anything. The rest keep trying to find more tents that aren't broken or flooded yet.
We spend our time at the camp digging, making up sand bags, rushing around trying to save tents in the wind and rain, trying to erect more. We try to fill them with only the very most 'deserving' and desperate people. BUT everybody is deserving and desperate;nobody has anything. Each tent takes us forever put up. It seems at any given point like maybe about a quarter of the people there don't have one.

Whilst I'm working I am approached non stop by people pleading with me to help them too. They are begging in foreign languages. I have no idea what they are asking me for. I constantly reassure them I will try to get to them soon but they often don't understand what I am saying. I will not get to any of them them soon, if at all.
Simultaneously, there are refugees rushing to help me work. They insist that I give them the shovel and let them dig. They bring us packets of biscuits, bottled water, cigarettes for the smokers; they will not take no for an answer. Everybody wants to help everybody else before themselves. Everybody wants us to accept their gifts for our trouble. Some of the refugees choose to miss rare meal hand-outs in favour of helping us work.

The camp has designated areas, Afghanistan, Sudan, Syria, Iraq, Kurdistan, Eritrea, but everybody mixes. The cold and wet are invited into strangers' tents though they are over crowded already. People take turns where there are dry places to sleep. I work hurriedly in the rain with a man called Mohammed to dig drainage gulleys so that the growing pools of stagnant water don't run into the group of tents he is living amongst. Every job you do there is an emergency. Mohammed is funny and charming, we laugh together constantly. When I tell him my name is James he says 'James Bond!' and i shush him jokingly. I learn fast that human bonding has little to do with speaking the same language. I bump into Mohammed several times while I'm at The Jungle. He greets me with a warm smile each time. Mohammed is just one of several friends I made among the refugees. Many of them showed me photos of family holidays on their camera phones, pictures of their children, pictures of themselves in smart clothes, pictures of home in better times, I feel like they are trying to show me that they were just normal people like me, but it's already obvious.

Day three brings a storm; it is windier and wetter than ever. I volunteer to work in the kitchen marquee after chatting to another volunteer who was going there. Watery porridge is served up with a mug of Chai. There is a guitar with a string missing and the call goes out for anyone who can play to keep morale up while the food is being served and eaten. I churn out the same ten or twelve songs that seem plausible with my sore throat on repeat and I'm treated like a celebrity for it by the refugees.

There is a newly arrived Syrian man with two boys of around fifteen or sixteen in the food tent. They are all smartly dressed and clean. The man has been granted asylum in the UK, but it is for him alone. I watch as he tightens the scarves of the boys and seemingly gives them a sort of 'You be careful, I'll come back for you soon' type pep talk. The boys look cold and frightened; I know full well by now that they are right to be.

I spend the afternoon outside again rushing around trying to save tents. People thank you for a square inch of gaffer tape as if you have given them your life savings. Conditions are the worst I have seen so far, the wind is unbelievable and there is debris flying everywhere. Tarpaulins and tents are ripped from the ground by the dozen whilst people continue to arrive. As darkness falls, we leave the camp as we had been advised to do each evening, but we all feel an overwhelming sense that we haven't done enough.

I'm going to go out there again and do more when I can arrange it - to not do so seems inconceivable. They really badly need more volunteers and more money to make any kind of dent at all. Right now despite the best efforts of all the amazing people involved I'm afraid that there is woefully inadequate help for these people - they are literally dying only 200 miles away from Norwich. Whatever, your political opinions are I'm asking you to please get involved and not stand by letting this happen. We can make a difference but we NEED numbers. They need builders, plumbers, wood workers, medical people, people who can put up ordinary tents, people who can use a shovel, people who can sort clothes at the warehouse. They need absolutely anybody they can get to help in any way they can. This is an absolutely horrendous emergency that is not going away any time soon. I don't think I know a single person who wouldn't be rushing to help if they truly realised how bad things are. I'm asking you in the strongest possible terms to please realise it now.

Monday 23 November 2015

A GPs Journey to the Calais Jungle Where The suffering is Beyond Belief. By Morven Telling - via Facebook: November 23rd 2105

I have just returned from volunteering at the Calais and Dunkurk refugee camps as a doctor. The suffering is beyond belief. I have never encountered anything like this before, utterly appalling conditions and so little medical aid. 


My cousin - a psychiatric doctor - recently visited the camp at Calais and found out that there is very little medical provision for the refugees there and none at all at the Dunkirk camp. This means that there are over 7000 men, women and children who have little or no access to medical care. Most of them are exhausted, malnourished and many have a wide range of medical problems. Some are severely ill or injured. All are deeply traumatised by the life they have fled from, the horror of their journey and the desperate conditions they now survive in.
Over the next few days I could not stop thinking about this and so I decided to join my cousin and her family on their trip to the Calais camp.
We travelled on the Eurotunnel on Saturday morning and on arrival at Calais, drove past fence after enormous, barbed wire fence to the huge, bustling warehouse where all the donations are sorted. There my cousin and I, along with another doctor and four final year medical students assembled a make-shift set of medical kits from shelves packed with a completely random selection of supplies.
We packed everything into large rucksacks and drove to the camp at Dunkirk. Sleeting rain, driving winds. I put on thermals, waterproofs, wellies, a high visibility vest and walked into the camp.

I looked around in despair - so many tents, where to begin? A volunteer from Lancaster asked me to go to the tents with babies and young children first. So I crawled inside filthy damp tents to examine a tiny coughing baby, a sobbing 3 year-old little girl who had been crying in pain for 2 days, a 15 month old with profuse diarrhea, a young mother with toothache, a man with abdominal pain lying huddled under grubby blankets. As I went around the camp, sliding in the mud, trying to protect my medical kit from the rain, I was stopped wherever I went by people asking me to examine their throats, teeth, eyes or chests. So we stood there, in the mud and the rain and I did my best to assess and treat. Called out to passers by to help with translating. Handed out paracetamol, ibuprofen, rehydration sachets, strepsils, dressings applied to wounds and whatever else could be done. Smiles and thanks from everyone despite their desperate conditions.
A sea of mud, ankle deep, hundreds of tents being buffeted by the strong winds - many destroyed and lying in the foul smelling mud. Grim faced men, crying toddlers, everything wet, sodden, caked in mud. Tents hunkered down between trees, desperate people looking for shelter from the howling wind and freezing rain.

Overnight a devastating fire in the jungle, severe burns, a badly injured man had to be carried by other refugees to an ambulance outside the camp. Many tents destroyed, 250 people including several families with small children and babies rendered completely homeless in the pouring rain.
We worked in the Calais camp today - The Jungle. Tents and mud as far as the eye could see, overflowing portable toilets, burst water pipes creating muddy lakes, cooking smells mixed with the stench of waste and sewage.
We went to the camp medical center - four small caravans stocked with very limited medical supplies. Surrounding these caravans was ankle deep water, mud and waste that the fast-growing queue of refugees had to stand in and wait to be seen.

I could not do enough. 
Over the next hours my skills and experience were stretched to their limits. Trying to assess and treat so many ill people with such limited facilities. No antibiotics, no effective medication to treat the serious infections and illnesses that we saw, no translator other than fellow refugees who spoke broken English, no access to running water. It was the hardest, most challenging experience of my life. Leaving the camp to catch our train was almost harder still; we just could not get to the end of the ever growing queue of sick people desperate to see a doctor.

Friday 6 November 2015

MAB CONVOY TO CALAIS - OCTOBER 2015: November 6th 2015:

“What compels me to fight this society is, of course, outrage over injustice, a love of freedom, and a feeling of responsibility for perpetuating and enlarging the human spirit - its beauty, creativity, and latent capacity to improve the world. I do not care to come to terms with an irrational society that corrodes all that is valuable in humanity, that eats away at all that is beautiful and noble in the human experience.” - Murray Bookchin Our first venture to Calais was done with the aims of delivering instruments that had been donated from people all over the UK and of being a fact-finding mission to see how best we could provide support to the music and musicians in the Jungle camp.

We successfully delivered many musical instruments, including a piano to the school run by Alpha; an accordion to a musician from Kuwait; several violins given to violinists from Iran and some left in the Library; lots of children’s instruments given to children in the families field; two djembe, an electro-acoustic guitar and a small amp given to Sudanese musicians; guitars, drums and ukes were left with the library and the Good Chance Calais.


On most mornings we went to the One Spirit Ashram Kitchen, which does an amazing job of feeding people. We would bring instruments and play until musicians who lived in the camp stepped in and treated everyone to some amazing performances of Iranian, Kurdish and Iraqi music. Here we made friendships with many musicians and heard how censorship and oppression of culture had been defining factors for many in leaving their homelands.


We also spent a lot of time in the Good Chance Theatre, where we found a project that shares our ideas about culture and creativity; it is an amazing space to have in a situation like that of Calais. It provides a truly unified space, which is accessed by people from all the cultural backgrounds represented in the camp. It is welcoming, inclusive and built not on sand, but on solidarity. On our final afternoon, the Good Chance hosted MAB and the musicians we had met throughout the week for a gig and it was a truly joyous event. We are hoping very much to collaborate further with the Good Chance so watch this space. It was our decision very early on not to visually document MAB’s time in Calais. Instead we made field recordings of the music we encountered and interviewed musicians we met, to create an aural record of the importance music has to people during migration. To hear our field recordings visit: https://soundcloud.com/user-640137335


Without doubt the trip achieved many things and we saw that music comforts, empowers and unifies people even in the horrendous situations faced by all those who live in the jungle. We will continue our work and plan to return in December, this time