Calais — Day 5
I woke up this morning a little earlier to another wet, cold, grey, windy day and my stomach dropped. I now know how miserable and trying that weather can be for the camp and it worries me so much when I see it in the morning, because I know that when we drive to the warehouse through the hurricane wired, securitised section of highway, we are going to see all the remnants of jackets and blankets torn on the wire, and police making repairs where desperate people, fed up with the mud, wet and cold have tried their luck to get to the UK.
At breakfast I bumped in to the Eritrean man I had seen here a couple of nights ago. He is looking for his nephew. I hoped he had news, but I guessed that since he was still here, he probably hadn’t had any. He confirmed that when I asked him this morning. In two days time he has to leave and it is looking less likely he is going to find him.
We made our way to the warehouse and arrived late having been held up at a bridge while a tug boat from Wales came through. On arrival, Hettie was finishing up the morning brief, assigned me to the shoe section once more with a team of 5 people with me and we got stuck in. The roof was leaking from the rain and I heard that some lights in the back section had come down yesterday, thankfully not on top of any volunteers. Let’s just say that OH&S in this place is a nightmare.
Our little team sorted our little hearts out all morning even forgetting to take a tea break. We refined our system and churned through as much as possible. The areas near us — men’s and women’s clothing were so quiet, volunteers are spread so thin here during the week — a stark contrast to the bustling ant hill that it was on the weekend. The warehouse struggled to find vans with drivers to get supplies to the camp, let alone to have a team of workers in every section. I watched as people filtered through (volunteers who come from the camp with particular wish lists for particular people in need) and they struggled to find clothing items. This seems insane given the amount of stock available, but the challenge is to sort it. Everything is in the warehouse, we just don’t have the hands to process it quickly enough to keep up with need.
Lunch today was baguettes with a wide range of fillings and despite feeling so under the weather with “Jungle-Lung”, I wolfed it down. You never know when your next break or meal might be coming so you take it while it is on offer.
After lunch, I was asked to go to the jungle on distribution. So far I had worked on distribution, giving goods out of the back of a van. This time I was assigned with a Swedish girl to a distribution hut in the camp. This is a point that is set up where goods are delivered and refugees who can speak English help us to run it. There I met Samir, Adam, Amin and another man who’s name I can’t remember who were from Sudan, and Afghanistan.
We took the boxes of goods inside the hut, and set up all the boxes ready. We had boxes of my shoes from the morning sorting plus jackets, jumpers, hats, underwear, gloves and socks. The men began lining up outside, an endless line that didn’t ease up for some 3 hours. Everything in the hut except for emergency blankets for new arrivals needs to be distributed to prevent looting. It is not that the refugees are criminals, they are just desperate in the conditions here.
Shoes were the premium item and just like in the women’s centre, from distributing shoes I really began to learn and understand what they are looking for. Waterproof hiking boots are wanted to stay warm and dry, but also can fetch a good trade on the black market that operates in the camp. Trainers need to be lightweight and preferably black with no reflectors (but really any good trainers will do) for running — running after lorries and trains in desperation to get out of this place that can only be described as a miserable, tough parallel universe.
Samir and his team did a great job of trying to share items properly — one item per person and to keep the line moving quickly. Unlike the women, the men cannot “shop” for items, this is not a marketplace — they get what they are given and can try their luck again tomorrow. Hoodies and waterproof jackets along with shoes were the most wanted items but we soon ran out. The men really didn’t want “briefs” when we handed out underwear, calling them “women’s underpants” and despite being warm, woollen coats and jumpers are less desired than fleece, hoodies and rain jackets because once wet, they don’t dry. One of the big challenges of the camp is that once clothing and shoes are wet, drying them is near impossible — they are then thrown away and the line begins again the next day. I now begin to understand how and why we can have a warehouse full of hundreds of thousands of items but there seems to be a continual need. It is because in The Jungle, things need replacing often because of the conditions. The conditions feed so many secondary problems. For example, someone asked “why can’t we get some wheelie rubbish bins in to the camp for the rubbish?” Answer: because the wheelie bins get taken for clothing storage to try and keep things dry. You can see how it goes…
After we finished distributing everything we were invited in to Samir’s caravan and I got the chance to speak to these men who I had just spent 3 hours distributing with. One told me he planned to seek asylum in France, one planned to leave soon to go to Austria. The others plan to try their luck getting to the UK. I asked them if they realised how dangerous that is, and how people die trying and one man said to me “we are dying here in this camp anyway.” I felt my eyes fill with tears as I realised that my new friend might not make it but felt he had no other viable option.
I thought about the conversation I had with someone yesterday. I had asked, why don’t these people seek asylum in France? Why do they want to go to the UK? The answer is (predictably) not simple. Many have been sold a lie about what the UK has to offer them. Some have family there. Some have English language skills but not French and so feel they can start their life over more easily in the UK. Some feel that their job prospects are better in the UK and they know they cannot work in France while they wait for their asylum application to be processed. Some are alone and want to follow their friends. On and on the reasons go, but all of them are based on logic that any rational person would apply if we were in the same situation. All are understandable in light of the conditions here in Calais. Now that I am here and I have seen this place, it frankly makes me want to throttle a person when I read/ hear them trot out some empty argument about the refugees being “in a safe place in Calais” and therefore not needing to seek asylum in the UK, or anywhere else for that matter. The ignorance and privilege that allows a person to make such statements is abhorrent. This place is NOT safe, is not providing basic human needs and is not suitable for anyone to live in whilst politicians in the UK and France squabble amongst themselves.
It was starting to get dark so we made our way out of the camp, stopping at “The Dome” along the way. This is a place where refugees have set up their own art gallery, telling the story of The Jungle in their own words. It was incredibly powerful. We were collected by another volunteer in her van, Amanda) and she took us back to the warehouse. She then was returning to The Jungle to take a woman to hospital who was coughing up blood as the result of a chest infection.
I got back to the warehouse and bumped in to Liz who asked me if I would pack a bag with full sets of clothing for a 13 year old Eritrean boy who was suffering from Scabies. Scabies is an incredibly itchy and highly contagious skin disease caused by mites that burrow in to the skin. There is no treatment for it in the camp other than to burn all bedding and clothing. I scurried around struggling to find items for him amongst the mountain of unsorted children’s donated clothing- unsorted because the key focus with a small amount of people is sorting for the men. I managed to find her everything she needed except underpants and she left to deliver it to him — but not in her truck as it has broken down again.