Calais

Anne M Jones reflects on Calais and the refugee crisis

At the end of 2015 I went to Calais to offer support to the estimated 6,000-8,000 refugees who were camped out on sand dunes. I subsequently returned several times, teaching English to the young people there, such was the overwhelming need for help.

The ‘Jungle’ camp was razed in October 2016 by the French authorities. It was a rapid and callously executed event, not helped by the fact that Britain was dragging its administrative feet over accepting children and young people who had a legal right to come to the UK. Meanwhile, the French authorities housed many of these children in reception centres (CAOs), pending constructive action from the UK, or applications for asylum in France. However, it became clear after October that many refugees were still living rough in and around Calais, some children were running away from the CAOs and help was still needed there. So, I returned as soon as Christmas was over.

The camp has gone

Calais is an attractive, conventional small town with its own civic pride. When the camp was razed the local newspaper reported that the local tourist board hoped that trade and tourism would now pick up to former levels. It is a town where seasonal decorations hold pride of place, such as giant plastic birds in red, blue and green along the sea front in summer, and after Christmas, with kitsch Christmas decorations.

This year a golden teddy bear with angel’s wings sits behind the solemn statue of General de Gaulle in the Place d’Armes, and live sheep graze in a tiny pen in front of the gothic Hôtel de Ville, surrounded by pine branches interspersed with a Disneyland Goofy and a reindeer sledge. A hoarse sound system plays French carols and Hollywood songs. A diorama of a nativity scene has life-size effigies of all the main players, waving their arms in slow motion at tempos at variance with each other. Again, the stunning sunsets, even more crimson in the freezing air – but the nature of the work in Calais is different because the camp has gone. The gaping space of empty fields sits where the camp once was. There are plans to turn it into a nature reserve.

Perfidious Albion

‘Perfidious Albion’ is the header in the regional newspaper, La Voix du Nord, in its ‘events of 2016’ section on 30 December. In commenting on the English government’s poor response to admitting lone child migrants it points out how our government promised to take 1,000 children but stopped at 350.

A strong police presence is notable around the railway station. The police are looking out for refugees to turn away to somewhere unspecified. These are young adults hopeful of jumping on to the back of a lorry (despite at least three reported deaths in the past three months caused by falls onto the road). There are many who have remained in the area or are returning to Calais, and some who have recently arrived from their long trudge from war-torn places and are unaware of latest news. They have nowhere to return to.

These desperate refugees sleep out every night and by day they huddle together, stunned by the cold, intimidated by the police until a volunteer intercepts. The volunteers come from Care4Calais and also from a sympathetic group attached to the Prefecture. The work now for volunteers, like me, is about taking hats, gloves, extra trousers, and food to all these migrants, and help with the fare to Dunkirk, where at least there is shelter – and to take supplies to the young people in CAOs waiting to be granted asylum in France, or those rejected who are in detention centres until returning back whence they once trekked so hopefully.

Care4Calais has two huge warehouses in Sangatte, approximately three miles south west of the town. One warehouse is for collecting and sorting donations, the other for storing everything until the stuff is needed for distribution.

In sub-zero temperatures we sorted box after box of clothing: coats, T-shirts, fleeces, underwear, trousers, and socks. We were a cheerful bunch of people – English, Irish and French, young and old – working against a background of raucous sounds that I understand pass for today’s pop ‘music’. Box after box was then labeled and taken over to the other warehouse for sending out to the refugees camping out, or in the detention centres and CAOs, and some will go to Greece.

Like a mantra, over and over I rummage – small, medium, large, women’s, children, warm and not over worn – until I realise I am frozen to the bone in this sub-zero place and wander over to the tea table, where there is an abundance of coffee and mince pies and sweets. In the kitchen area a sunny-faced woman is using her chef skills to concoct a delicious curry lunch for us all from local vegetables and the mountains of rice that have been donated.

Friendships

Sorting through some of the donations, I could imagine someone lovingly gathering up second-hand stuff, even buying new, and carefully packing it up, but other bags had things like flimsy evening dresses or someone’s dirty underwear or incompetently bagged rice.

A mound of unsuitable items is either thrown away or returned to the UK to be bought back through an exchange arrangement with charity shops. Apparently, the arrangement makes economic sense, but I do wonder at the additional freight costs of this new rag trade.

Another group goes to Dunkirk each day, where the containers set up by the French authorities for refugees to live in are already becoming unfit, with large growths of black mould. These volunteers go into each container, ask the inhabitants to remove their things for a few hours, remove mould from the walls and put up extra damp-proofing panels. Other groups go to the CAOs and detention centres, where they reported that young people were comfortable and well cared for, though with few activities such as existed in the ‘Jungle’, like the language lessons, football matches, and films in the ‘Kids Café’.

Each morning I enjoy the two-mile walk along the beach to Sangatte as the sun rose over the Opal Coast, then a return in glorious sunset. Friendships are made as we walk, a motley group united in simply wanting to contribute their own drop of compassion in the face of the awful desperation for so many people that has been unleashed by wars and their aftermath.

Auld Lang Syne

It is not all cold fingers and sad stories as we meet up each evening and the week also coincides with New Year’s Eve. Someone suggests we celebrate in a nearby French bar. We are welcomed there and joined in the dancing to a riotous mixture of French pop, classics from the nineteen-eighties and, inevitably, Abba. The atmosphere is warm and there is no hint of the antagonisms reported in the local newspaper.

At French midnight we all embrace, French and English, and then at ‘England’s midnight’ we embrace again and sang ‘Auld Lang Syne’.

Events of 2016 mean that the refugee crisis is not going to disappear – it will, rather, increase. At the root of the tragedy is the sale of armaments that have assisted wicked regimes in their brutality against their own citizens, be it Syria, Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia and now Yemen.

Politicians wring their hands and ordinary people make their individual protest, whether it is rag trading in a freezing French warehouse or demonstrating against sales of armaments. Protest and help must both continue.

---

Comments

Please login to add a comment