A Morning in the 'Calais Jungle'

The situation in Calais is bad and, putting it mildly, this is only the beginning. The British and French governments, which are the fourth and fifth economic powers of the world, aren’t even pretending to help. You’d think that our civilised, Eton and Oxford educated prime minister, David Cameron, would recognise a humanitarian crisis requiring a long-term solution rather than opting for a quick and dirty approach which panders to a certain anti-immigrant view. Spending millions on higher fences is unlikely to deter desperate people who have already risked life and limb to reach the promised land of western Europe. Modern migration, be it economic or fleeing conflict is a product of our globalised world and the short term foreign policies of France and the UK among others.

Over the past weeks I have felt guilty. I have felt disgusted and embarrassed that both governments that represent me have treated the migrant crisis in Europe and especially in Calais as a marginal local political issue (poor holiday makers) as opposed to a major humanitarian one. So I decided to go there myself to offer my modest help and find out more - not that my nationalities should have anything to do with my desire to help in any way, but you know, the twenty minute drive from my house to Dover also means that I really had no excuse.

It’s 5am on Monday morning. The car is packed with clothes and blankets and the night sky slowly turns from starry black to blue. As we drive down the A2 towards Dover, on the other side of the channel, silhouettes are making their way back to camp after a long night of failed attempts to reach ‘freedom’.

Immigrants, migrants, asylum seekers, refugees, persecuted people, lawyers, doctors, engineers, students, professional football players, farmers, mothers, daughters, scroungers, swarms... whatever you wish to call them, they are human beings and after spending a whole morning with them at their temporary home last week, also known as the Calais Jungle, I can confirm that they are the kindest and most courageous souls. I didn’t want to leave. When I set off that morning, I had no idea what to expect.  Should I go straight to the Jungle to hand out some donations to those who I manage to interview? How do I know who needs what? Should I prioritise the women and children? Should I just drop off the food and blankets to a charity and not even try to find the Jungle? Is it dangerous? Should I go in on my own or find some other journalists?

Sudanese men outside the Secours Catholique

Thankfully, the moment we drove off the ferry, serendipity took control of the situation and the stream of questions soon vanished from my mind. Three minutes into Calais, we noticed the Doctors of the World logo on the van in front of us so we decided to follow it. It stopped at a makeshift office in the town centre so I got out of the car and introduced myself to a healthcare lawyer who gladly took all our hygiene-related donations. “I am actually based in Dunkirk” she tells me, “and we have so many mothers and babies so I will make much use of the baby wipes and sanitary towels.” At the time of writing, the number of migrants in Dunkirk is much lower than in the Calais Jungle. “There are about 250 people in Dunkirk compared to 2500 in Calais – but the number in Calais varies much more as people keep coming and going; those in Dunkirk are more stationary.” This is because Calais provides the migrants with an easier access – or the illusion of one - to the UK through the tunnel.

I ask if I can follow the doctors and nurses around the Jungle as I see that they are filling up the van with medication and provisions; ready to be driven to the notorious site. “It’s going to be difficult” she explains “there are a lot of journalists; too many for us to handle so it’s best if you contact the press service of our organisation.”

I don’t insist and let them head off to the camp. Meanwhile, our mission continues and we find the Secours Catholique charity office. A kind man (with whom I had already spoken on the phone one week earlier) drives us to the donations depot where those living in the Jungle can come to collect clothes and other provisions once a week. There are eight men sitting outside. One is lying on the floor. They seem to be waiting for something. They are calm. My friend and I empty the car with the help of a priest who gratefully puts away the donations we had gathered in the UK. He tells us that they are in need of men’s shoes and clothes as there aren’t enough to go around the whole camp.

The migrants have been taken away from the town centre – that’s why the Jungle was formed. The citizens of Calais were fed up with the reputation that their town was receiving in the media because of the increase of migrants, which is why we saw very few when we were in the town centre. I decide to give all the food that we have to these men as I won’t be able to distribute it evenly once we get to the Jungle.

None of them speak much English or French but I understand that most of them are Sudanese. One of them has been in Calais for eight months. Others only three. I struggle to communicate with them so we wish them good luck and get back into the car. This is a taster for what would be our next few hours in the Jungle. They are desperate human beings who have fled their homes just as any of us would if the UK were to come under attack. And just like them we would expect our neighbours to open their doors to us. Yet, these people are being humiliated. They used to have jobs, prosperous futures, loving families and hope, but their governments back home (and ours), dictatorships, wars and repression have forced them to pursue this life elsewhere. When the Daily Mail dehumanises the people living in the Jungle, as well as those arriving on Greece’s shores, they are dehumanising professors, architects and engineers. And even if they weren’t the aforementioned, why would their life be worth any less?

As I spoke to these eight men, I couldn’t help but imagine the journey they must have made to reach Calais’ dunes, only to be forced to sleep in a run down tent for months and treated with little worth by the French administration, bearing in mind their life was like yours or mine only a year or so ago.

The Secours Catholique volunteer kindly offers to drive us to the Zone Industrielle des Dunes, which has become home to 2500, possibly more, migrants who are either waiting for their asylum request to be processed in France or who are trying to reach the UK. As we approach the entrance, the tents become more and more abundant. The volunteer indicates with his hand and drives off. We park the car. It is 9.40 in the morning and the Jungle is already buzzing. As I get out of the car I approach the three men who are closest to me. I press record on my phone and introduce myself. Two of them are Afghan and one is Syrian. The Syrian man doesn’t understand my questions so the Afghans kindly help me out. They tell me that it took them two years to travel to Calais, through Iran, Turkey, Bulgaria and Serbia. For the last two months, they have been in Calais, trying to make it through the channel tunnel.

“How often do you try to go to England?”

“Every night”

One of them shows me a bandage on his hand. I ask how it happened… “the train” he tells me. He saw a doctor (“the doctors are very helpful”). I try to find out more about his injury but we struggle to communicate.

“What did you do in Afghanistan before you had to leave?”

“Driver in a company.”

“Did you come alone?”

“Yes, only me. Everybody dead. My mother, father. All my family dead.”

“Have you managed to make some friends at the camp?”

“Only him” he points to other Afghan and they laugh.

“Do you have a tent here?”

“Yes, this one – three people fit!”

“Can I have a look?” – but before they have time to show me their home a French man jokingly tells me not to waste my time with these two jokers. They all laugh and I introduce myself. The atmosphere is already far different to what I had expected. Companionship seems strong.

The Frenchman’s name is François Guennoc and he works for the Auberge des Migrants association, which is made up of 50 volunteers, 20 of whom are always at the camp. They have been helping with Calais migrants for 6 years. He offers to show us around. Serendipity strikes again. I tell my friend to come along and as we start walking into the heart of the camp, we hear Chiara, an Italian activist screaming as she runs after two young posh British lads. “British media, shit media! You don’t know what you are doing… You are not journalists; you are here for the money. You write only for money. You come from Daily Mail, go!” At this point François joins in, “Don’t come back! Don’t come back! Go, go! You have no honour!” The scene is slightly tense, but it does warm my heart a little. As the two Brits drive off, the migrants cheer in support as Chiara carries on screaming at them to stay away.

François explains that the last three articles written by the Daily Mail were awful, as usual, and heart breaking. He doesn’t need to tell me. I had read them too; and sighed… “They say that all migrants are violent”.

François taking us around the camp

As we walk through the camp, François explains that the migrants can have one meal a day at the Jules Ferry centre. This former children’s play centre, was opened in April by the state – which is progress as it means that the government recognises the existence of the migrants; but it’s more to keep the Calais citizens quiet than to make the migrants’ lives easier. François tells us that although the centre provides them with food, showers, toilets, electricity to charge their phones, and serves as a night time shelter for women and children, his association still donate raw foods, construction material, gas and clothes.

Jules Ferry centre

Before the Jungle existed, the migrants were scattered around Calais in nine different camps and also in squats inside the town. In the early days of April, the police told migrants that they must leave these camps and everybody must regroup in what is now known as the Calais Jungle. The transition was completed in a matter of two or three days. “It was very, very difficult to give tents and blankets and so on” François explains. Too many people came at once.

I ask him if everyone at the camp is aiming for the UK or whether some just can’t find a home in France. “About 70% of the people in the Calais Jungle want to go to England. A lot of them do want to stay in France but it takes a very long time to get asylum in France. If you arrive in mid-summer and you ask for asylum you have to wait until December to have an appointment and then you have to wait weeks and months to have an answer for your asylum request. So that’s one of the reasons why people want to go to England – because it’s too long to get asylum in France. A law was voted just some weeks ago in France to have shorter delays to give the migrants a response but in fact it still takes far too long because there are not enough people to receive the migrants and to file the papers.”

I ask if many migrants make it across the channel each night. He tells me that for the past two days it has been more difficult to cross because there have been more policemen. This is paralleled with the increase in media on site. The migrants say that when the journalists are filming, the French police really do their job and they can be very violent whereas when the cameras aren’t there, the policemen are more compassionate and don’t try to stop the migrants.

Church in the Jungle

We carry on walking. Many of the people living in this part of the Jungle are Eritrean and Ethiopian. François points to the right as we walk through a vast patch of dust circled by hundreds of tents and makeshift huts made from wood, sheets and plastic donated by the Secours Catholique, “in this big tent there are people from Iran, Iraq, Syria. Over there, live the Afghans and Pakistanis. There is no organisation, but naturally people try to be together if they come from the same country.” The reason why they make huts now rather than sleeping in tents is because the migrants know that they are allowed to stay in the Jungle, just like the Sangatte building, which was closed in 2002. François explains that this time, the camp is more permanent. “Maybe in some months, like in Palestine, they are going to build homes with stones and bricks. Every camp is moving and changing and sometimes it ends up being a town. They have schools, a church, many mosques, many shops and three or four restaurants here now.”

He now points to a marquee on our left, “this is a place for meeting. It has just been built – it was finished a few days ago. We try to meet every week with a representative of the migrants to try to better organise the camp as there are so many people.”

Everyone along the way smiles at us and says hello. Some even invite us into their tents for a cup of tea. As we get closer to the Jules Ferry centre, we walk past some nurses from Doctors of the World. François explains that they have been coming to the Jungle daily for the past month examining the migrants, giving them medication and sending those who need further treatment to hospital.

A Secours Catholique van overtakes us and the driver stops to talk to François. He explains that there is urgent need for some wood for one of the larger gathering tents and a mosque that are being built. “The order is already on its way. It should be at the camp by tomorrow for them to use”. The more we walk through the Jungle, observing the work of the volunteers, the more I regain faith in humanity. Although the camp lacks coordination, all the charities manage to work together and things are slowly falling into place. Each association focuses on a different area of the Jungle; health, food, shelter. François tells us that some charities actually bring meals but most of them provide the camp with sugar, flour and oil. “The migrants prefer to cook, rather than have a meal cooked for them. Especially the Afghans. The Eritreans aren’t so organised when it comes to cooking, so we also provide them with burning wood.”

Secours Catholique handing out blankets

“Where do they get money from?” I ask.

“Some migrants have money from their families or friends who are in Sweden, the UK or in their own country. They send money. But some migrants have no money at all – they just collect their free meal from the centre once a day. Sometimes they try to earn money by selling things to one another. It depends.”

We are running out of time so we keep the questions coming. “Do you have any problems at all with the migrants? Does everyone get on? Is there any crime?”

“Sometimes they are angry because we don’t have enough for them or they think that we are paid, when in fact, most of us are volunteers. Two days ago, a migrant told me that a friend of his had heard that the British government had given 13 million euros for the Jungle. He was shouting at me, asking me where that money was and accusing us of keeping it so we had to explain that 10 million of those were for the fences and 3 million for Jules Ferry.” He goes on to explain that the smugglers in Italy or in Serbia tell the migrants that when they arrive in Calais, they will get food and tents that have already paid for but this is not true. “They also get angry because they have to queue for everything and they feel humiliated. But generally they are so kind and when they understand that we just want to help them, they really appreciate what we do.”

There are about 200 French people helping in the Jungle, individually or with associations.

As we make our way back to the car, we meet two men living at the camp. One of them is Alpha, an artist from Mauritania. His home is much bigger than anyone else’s we have walked past because he was one of the first to arrive at this camp over a year ago. Bright colours and hopeful messages are pouring out from every angle. He also has two chickens, one is called Loulou and the other is Jeanne. He plays us a melody on his keyboard as he talks to us about how he ended up in Calais.

Alpha's home

“I have been travelling for ten years. I went to Syria, 6 years in Turkey, one year in Greece and I also went to Belgium, Bulgaria and then France. And everywhere I go, I don’t have papers!”

“And every time you settle somewhere you set up your own art camp like this?”

“Yes, I am used to it.”

“Have you always been an artist?”

“Yeah, people give me the paints and the canvases.”

We are cut short by François, who introduces us to his Pakistani friend Riaz, who offers to walk us back to the car. Riaz used to be a migrant in the camp but he managed to obtain asylum in France and now works for Auberge des Migrants. He was forced to flee his hometown in Bajaur in 2011 due to political problems and has been in Calais for 8 months. Back home, he worked for Community Motivation & Development Organisation (CMDO), an NGO that works towards sustainable human development through health, education, human rights, poverty alleviation and more. When I asked him if his plan was to reach the UK he tells me that things got complicated. He made it through Iran, Turkey, Greece and Italy in two and a half years but when he tried to reach the UK, he broke his leg falling from a truck. Since he could no longer walk, he decided to stay and seek asylum in France instead of risking his life again. This story is true for many of the people living in the Calais Jungle.

I am not trying to romanticise the situation. It is desperate, heart-breaking and demoralising but the picture that is painted of the migrants needs to change. They are not violent. They are not coming to steal your money. They are polite, ambitious and welcoming. Alas, they have been forced to flee their homes. We forget how lucky we are to have a passport that saves our skin. 10 people from the camp have died since the beginning of the summer. 10 innocent people trying to cross the UK’s Iron Curtain, that is being built with your tax money.

Riaz walking us back to the car

Mustafa selling us dates and cola (we paid them in pounds so that they have change when they make it through the tunnel to keep Cameron's economy growing.)

We are all migrants. In the words of Nick Cohen "Human beings move. We are restless species. If you have never moved to a new country to find work, your forebears certainly did. Go back far enough in your family and you will find that our common ancestors were migrants."

Photos: my own