In 2016 I spent a few weeks in Calais volunteering with Help Refugees/L’ Auberge. This page captures some of my thoughts and experiences from that time. Not long afterwards the ‘Jungle’ of Calais was evicted and flattened by the French authorities. The refugees and asylum seekers are of course still there in Calais, living in even more horrendous circumstances and taking even greater risks to leave.
Where house
There is a warehouse, location undisclosed, where humans work, collaborate and live together without financial reward, but with food and a roof over their heads. From where they venture on missions of help, and welcome offered help on behalf of a greater good than themselves.
In a melting pot of those present – some for months, a very few for years, many just for days or weeks – every characteristic, every clique, every diverse politic, every predictable and familiar play out of humans together is there. And also something else I haven’t seen before, at least I can’t recall it, not in my lifetime. In action, expressed goodwill and generous intent, explicit and underpinning. This is a good thing to do. People work relentlessly, don’t take time off. Conscientious. Up early and stay at work late.
Professionalism.
Admire Tiny details of thoughtfulness and words. Being there and being pragmatic about it. “Oh I’ll stay here till the end, till its not needed. And then I’ll go to Greece, or wherever”.
People do a thing just because they believe it is a good thing. Vital and without question.
A Moveable Feast.
Since January
November
October
March
Since Thursday, Monday, A week.
Today
..”Oh, we used to do (such a thing)”.. and you realise they meant only a couple of weeks ago.
How much humans are capable of. How much good things, peaceable-ness. Creation. Care.
This is shit
What i really want to say about the situation of refugees in Calais.
This is shit. It’s so wrong, everything about it. Whoever is out there making the argument against largely white and well resourced (by connection if not actually in their own pocket) donating largesse to poor ‘foreigners’, is right. There has to be another, bigger and more fundamental response to the forced movement of people. How come so many UK people can afford to spend the time and money on going to ‘help’ at Calais but are not just sitting outside the UK Parliament until things are changed? Why have I gone to Calais but not spent all my evenings raising awareness and doing things to make the UK government change the law so that refugees can come here on a temporary asylum visa?
I have brought packed bags to the UK for an Afghan woman whose mother lives near to me. Zarena has not seen her mother for a decade. Zarena is stuck in the jungle at Calais with her husband and boys under ten. She is a teacher. Her English is quite good. Her boys are getting no education at all. All the rest of her family are in the UK now. Zarena and her husband are not trying to get on lorries and trains with the children. It is too dangerous. She is just living in hope of change and collecting a daily ration of baby wipes and shampoo from the ‘Women and Children’s bus’. I watch through the bus window as her husband takes home the family dinner. Lovely food made by the Calais Kitchen people and brought home like a take out dinner. I ask what does he do with his days? He brings home the dinner once a day from the food truck.
Borders are wrong. That’s all, we have to get our heads around it.
Afghanistan is green and beautiful. Zarena doesn’t know what Manchester looks like.
I don’t care how lovely the social experiment of beautiful people collaborating to do a ‘good’ thing is. Its shit.
There is another blog brewing about how beautiful the collaboration and socialism between people trying to help refugees at the camps is. But this is not that blog. This is shit. A huge pile of stinking nauseating waste.
Calais donts and dos
This list will probably grow if you want to check back in…
Don’t, whatever you do, send second hand underwear to people who are refugees, no matter how much you have carefully laundered, and only wore them once anyway. Just don’t do it. Ask yourself, would you like to be offered second hand underwear? It isn’t only embarrassing for the people you are offering items to, it is really embarrassing to find that you have offered someone second hand underwear.
Don’t donate any opened and part-used lotions, shampoo’s, packets of baby wipes. You might be surprised that people do donate these things.
Don’t spend money before you go on an array of things you probably won’t need, including gloves, hi vis, waterproof trousers etc (like I did). You are only in Calais which has supermarkets large and small, buy what you need, if you need it, when you get there. Alternatively you may be able to borrow from the warehouse, with permission of course. See below for what you might use.
Do heavy quality control on goods you send or take over. There is a mountain of discarded goods in the warehouse which will not be delivered because it is stained, torn, dirty, missing buttons, or otherwise unsuitable.
Do stick labels or tape with the size written in big writing on everything, especially shoes, as it can be very hard to read the tiny or worn writing in a hurry. At the distribution station you want everything to be very clearly labeled and clean to avoid any embarrassment or delay in the queues. For most items people will be offered a choice of three different types (of t-shirt for example)and it is all quite hurried.
Do go via Help Refugees/L’Auberge and take your lead from them.
Do send new underwear.
Do send money to Help Refugees. What they most need changes on a day to day basis. Cash enables them to purchase what they need when they need it and avoids things sitting in the warehouse, where they may get damp.
Do buy goods direct from leisure-fayre to be delivered direct to L’Auberge/Help Refugees
Do volunteer. If you are there for only a day or so you might not go to the camps but you can see the jungle from the road as you drive in or out to the ferry port. I don’t think you should go any closer unless you are doing a helpful activity, it is not a tourist destination.
Do volunteer especially if you can speak a relevant language including Pashtun, Farsi, Kurdish, or Arabic, or French. I think this is one of the most important things, that more volunteers need to be able to understand what refugee people are saying and to be able to share that with non language speaking colleagues.
Do take your own parcel tape and marker pens.
Do keep up to date via the Help Refugees website and facebook pages.
Do admit that this must be a temporary response. Do think about how we can stop this situation from happening at all. Do contact your MP regularly.
Slow drip
A slow day on the Women and Children’s bus after the excitement of yesterday’s VIPs. They missed today’s miserable rain. It was slow because there was a distribution of shoes and clothes for women happening in the government place called Salam I was told.
Because I wasn’t busy I got to watch the play ladies going in and out, up and down to the top deck of the bus. I haven’t been anywhere else on the camp so I haven’t seen any of the other community spaces. I really admire the efforts of parents, workers and the children to make things be ok, minute by minute. But we are all normalising something that just isn’t ok.
I don’t know what to say.
I heard about a riot at Idomeni today.
Is aiding refugees in danger of being the new Marakesh for English people, a road to better karma? A new hippy trail. What does saying that even mean?
Hippies have a bit of a track record of being an embarrassment to the state. And coming off worst. And changing the world. What will be the story?
The refugees are systematically obstructed (by almost every other party, with notable exceptions) from acting in their own interests, from providing for themselves, and acting collectively, although they do somehow.
An asset based response to this crisis? Don’t ask. Treating anything about this as an asset threatens to acknowledge, to legitimise the people.
Despite being scratched out of nearly nothing the scale of waste of human and physical assets, and environment is monstrous. My brain can’t scale that up. The waste across our beautiful planet.
head fuckery
You know what a political person I am. So my head is buzzing with the politics of it all. On whose behalf am I working? If it is for people who have become refugees? Is it for myself? Is it doing the dirty work of the state? I am quite mind-boggled about it and getting a bit over worn by my concience demanding that I explain myself to it all the time.
Sure it’s the right thing to do in a crisis but when does a crisis become a status quo and who gets most out of the status quo?
It is a crisis, sitting and mulling endlessly over the rights and wrongs just promotes inertia. Pragmatic action is a good thing right? Especially if you are fleet of foot and prepared to change direction if a better action becomes possible or desirable.
I met my friend who’s presence here was one of the prompts that finally brought me here. Happily she expressed thoughts about it all that I was very comfortable with.
The small p politics of people collaborating. We’ve seen it all before.
Birds of a feather do flock together, comfortable cultural norms quickly asserting themselves. Tbh it’s pretty white around here. Especially among the longer term people.
It’s a lot better than some similar environments though and I wonder if a constant flow of new short term volunteers makes a difference.
T-shirts
Went to Dunkirk again. Similar but with t-shirts.
Lovely to see a friendly face from long ago.
sport shoes please.
We went to Dunkirk in a small gang and played at being shop people out of two different containers with hatches cut into them. Lightweight trainers in middle sizes ran out quickest. It’s warm and dry but very breezy atm.
Dunkirk is all regular huts made out of ship board or chip board. Mostly men were there but a few children and even fewer women to be seen. I was told most of the people are Kurdish. They were mostly nice and polite to us. Feel like a total pratt with no languages.
Nice beans and rice lunch out of a van which we queued for with everyone else, well just men.
Dunkirk is legal cos the mayor allowed it. Before that it was worser than Calais for being a muddy puddle. So I am told. We are Volunteers so that is a new label to add to my collection of labels. I have had worse. People tell you stuff very freely and guide and encourage you a lot. Which is nice.
We have been allowed to park at night in the yard which is better than the road outside the warehouse, although we had a quiet enough night out there last night. Except you can’t have a fire in the yard (or on the road!) and it is a bit cold. Wish I had bought more gas for hot water bottles.
An English man (resident in Calais as he quuckly stated) accosted me and himself in the supermarket and said it’s our governments fault (mine and himself’s), and that everyone there wishes the refugees would go to England. We boldly stated we would like the refugees to come to England too. He removed his self without further comment.
HxNell 