‘In the cavernous gloom, he led me to a high mound of what looked like rags – in fact it was clothing with holes, coats and sleeping bags needing new zips...' Photo: Anne M Jones in Calais
Following the thread: Anne M Jones revisits her time in a Calais Jungle warehouse
‘I had somehow been led to a place where I was honing skills I barely recognised in myself.’
I am not really a tailor, but this is a story about tailoring, of sorts, and mostly about the power of the human spirit.
One cold March day in 2017 I trudged to Calais Auberge warehouse. I had learned on the ferry over that the charity I had enrolled with was ‘out of action’. But the warehouse is an hour’s walk from the ferry port, and I had no intention of going back to England.
The manager, Nigel, asked me: ‘Can you sew?’
In the cavernous gloom, he led me to a high mound of what looked like rags – in fact it was clothing with holes, coats and sleeping bags needing new zips, and tents that had been slashed. Since the official démantèlement of the Calais Jungle, these items were abandoned as refugees fled the police. Officers made random overnight raids to move refugees out of the area. Raids were accompanied by tear gas over the fields of the Pas-de-Calais, in line with local policy to ‘rid the area of refugees’. Meanwhile the local mayor and the British government sustained their refusal to offer any humane response to the hundreds of refugees going there daily. Instead, as the French moved them on, the British built more fences.
Refugees simply want to be somewhere safe, and are glad to be offered essential food and clothing. Volunteers want to help as best we can, and sewing clothing is as good as other ways. I found the confidence to say ‘yes’ to Nigel, in spite of faded memories of school days fifty-five years earlier, when I had been thrown out of sewing lessons because I preferred to read.
‘Why not?’ I thought, as I picked over the pile. I discovered several more piles too, mostly sleeping bags needing new zips. They were grubby and smelly, but a few warm winter jackets hung optimistically on clothes racks, awaiting yet more zips. On a shelf was an electric sewing machine and a box of threads. Someone else who could sew had been here already.
Thence began my love-hate relationship with sewing machines – good, bad, and broken, or recalcitrant when the weather was very cold – and with the mounds of stuff awaiting repair. This did appeal to me on several levels: eco-friendly, conserving instead of chucking away, purposeful and satisfying.
The sewing corner grew from one rickety table to several, then a few months later a wit named it ‘Sew Ho’ and put up a decorated banner bearing this name in colourful appliqué. Chairs were added, and kitchen volunteers would wander up and offer to help, as a break from peeling endless vegetables. Most were young people who did not know how to sew on a button and were hoping I would teach them. But many were skilled, older people, glad to spend a day putting a new zip into a good coat. There was a surgeon from Berlin who had given up her weekend to volunteer, and an engineer, Phillip, from Singapore, who was there with his wife for their summer holiday. He figured out new ways of fixing the hardest types of zips. Then there was the bus driver from Tokyo, also there for a holiday of three days. In that corner, bonds were forged as everyone exchanged tales of happiness and sorrows, and a shared vision of equal human rights. During the winter that followed it became ‘rat corner’ after a very dead rat plopped out of a sleeping bag I had just picked up to sew.
An energetic student put on a fundraiser at her university and more sewing machines appeared. The corner became a friendly sweatshop of eager sewing men and woman from all over the world. We communicated as best we could in Portuguese, Italian, German, and broken English. The main topic of conversation in that summer of 2017 was: ‘Why is Britain leaving Europe? Has your country gone mad?’ This was usually asked in very hurt tones.
More sewing machines appeared, including an industrial one. Getting this up and running took some research, but eventually – thanks to an enterprising man from Kent, Phil Kerton – spare parts were found and Phil (a Catholic) and two women (Quakers), got it going. This meant many sleeping bags were made fit for use, aided by salvaging zips from tents that were beyond repair.
One day Nigel asked me if I could take-in the legs of all jeans and turn them into ‘skinnies’. Surmising that refugees are entitled as any of us to be fashion conscious, I was chastened when he explained that wide-legged jeans made running at night from the police very difficult. Next I was asked if I could reduce jeans by several sizes, ‘because most refugees are small and we have too many large pairs’. So, working from principles gleaned from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (which essentially meant figuring out how something was put together and then working backwards), I was able to cut my way through dozens of large designer jeans, getting a grim satisfaction as I sliced along, musing on the absurdities of fashion with all its ephemera and snobbery and exploitation of workers. I remembered my own past idiocy, blithely prepared to pay exorbitantly.
I have to add a rider here, because the results of all this devoted work were, by the nature of the situation, ephemeral. With nowhere suitable for washing clothes, scabies can quickly develop, and many clothes got dumped at roadsides, dangled from hedgerows like sad puppets, or chucked into rivers, creating more pollution.
I became committed (addicted even) to regularly going to the warehouse for up to a week most months, until March 2020 when the Covid lockdown descended. Those sewing days took on a gentle rhythm. While I felt happy to be part of the counter-culture, among the younger generation, supporting refugees against the casual official cruelties, I realised that I had somehow been led to a place where I was honing skills I barely recognised in myself, feeling grateful each time, and seeing a tenuous link with Francis of Assisi. He also opposed all forms of social injustice, and his own father was, after all, a tailor.
These days – icy cold in winter, balmy in summer – were punctuated by lunches of delicious curries made in the warehouse. Recipes came from Somalia one day, Afghanistan the next, or Syria; each chef taking special care to pay proper attention to the mix of herbs, spices and nutrients.
Each time I went to France, waiting for me might be two to four hoppers, full to the brim with sleeping bags and tents, while coats hung forlornly on rails. From time to time there were volunteers to cheerfully assist. Back home I scoured the east end of London to find zips at affordable prices, taking back over a hundred. I set myself a goal of completing everything before returning. One September day in 2019 I managed forty sleeping bags and ten coats. I often took coats home to fix, returning them on my next visit. In between I described the situation in a series of articles here in the Friend (see, for example, ‘Pick of the litter’, 16 September 2022). It was a delightful surprise when, in response, some kind people sent gifts such as seam unpickers, or money.
Over time, I became acquainted with Calais’ provincial pride, charmingly expressed in garish lamppost decorations, sensitive flower displays, and street events – not forgetting Bastille Day, when fireworks erupt over the sea at sunset. But there is also an entrenched nimbyism that ignores geographic realities.
During that Covid lockdown of 2020, in common with everyone else, I had to adjust – no travel, of course. But within eighteen months some movement became possible and I gleefully went to buy new scissors, zips and essential threads, and I booked my crossing to Calais. It was an over-enthusiastic, unthought-through plan, because laws in France meant I might get stuck there if a Covid test indicated any kind of infection. After a further six months I was able to cross freely. On the way I chatted with a tourist who could not grasp my explanation for travel. Why was I going to work in a warehouse, and why did tents and sleeping bags get abandoned in fields?
‘Camping? In Calais?’, she asked. ‘Why don’t they go somewhere pretty like Provence. They could even plant flowers around their tents.’
In the chaos of those missing eighteen months, funding had been pulled. Only a very rudimentary system for clothes distribution was ongoing: most of the sewing machines had been dispersed somewhere, including the beloved industrial one that had saved so much time. I was, however, able to resurrect a notion of repair, and a system cranked into action with only my own personal kit to hand. Gone, it seemed, were the rainbow threads, the array of needles, the reinforcing tapes, and other paraphernalia that comprise an effective sewing workshop. Then, up a flight of dusty stairs, once a fire escape, I uncovered most of ‘Sew Ho’, all but two machines.
In summer 2022 I found myself a new place to stay. The owner took enthusiastically to the idea of repairs, letting me borrow her machine, and I happily repaired about thirty coats that week. Gone were any ideas that tents might be repaired, but I managed to demonstrate ways of salvaging broken zips on sleeping bags.
More changes – more funding disappearing – meant that some dots stopped getting dotted. Everything got tidied away and the focus – after food, of course – had to be on basics like shoes. I did discover some coats stashed in a giant hopper, but by this point I had no sewing machine – the two I discovered on the fire escape did not have the necessary power leads. Determined to get these last ten coats done, I carried them back to England and, enlisting the help of Phil once more, I put out an appeal for anyone who might be keen on sewing and interested in putting zips in coats.
Two people came forward, one a ninety-year-old nun, the other a young woman who works with a very well known couturier. This led to more adventures as I hurried around London to divide the coats between the three of us, exchanging coffee and clothing on Blackfriars station, and discovering more good will and shared values.
Now that the coats have been collected and taken back, I find myself wondering who might be the thin young man (they are all thin) swamped in an over-large coat. Hopefully he was warm as he trudged round that hostile town, before going back to a damp field to spend the night.
Recently, even more funding has been pulled, and I have no idea what is happening about clothes distribution. Elsewhere, rightly, the world is preoccupied by international conflict, but the situation in Calais remains the same. It is itself a by-product of war and, along with the organisational chaos, I have experienced much inhumanity. But throughout the eight years I have been going to Calais, numerous people of good will have carried on working, preparing meals and sewing clothes, supporting refugees as best they can with limited time and even more limited resources.
Maybe this is how it has always been. Blinkered, cruel leaders make the wars and the policies, and ordinary people have to manage the absence of compassion, while harnessing their own. Somehow, from this a wellspring of good constantly emerges. The spirit endures.
Comments
This is so sad and so inspiring. I feel great love reading it.
By suehampton@btinternet.com on 11th May 2024 - 7:18
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