A queue for meals at the Refugee Community Kitchen in Calais, with a volunteer in an RCK hoodie in the foreground. Photo: By RCK (Refugee Community Kitchen).
Food for thought: Anne M Jones returns to the refugee camp at Calais
‘I cannot shake my frustrations at the unchanged – no, worsening – politics.’
When faced with ten kilogrammes of tomatoes for chopping, time seems to stand still. But it’s Friday already, and I have been in Calais for four days.
‘When we look towards the future we see it is also concentrated in the present moment,’ wrote the Belgian monk Wilfrid Stinissen. Certainly I can see the future meal in the moment, when I carefully position a slippery tomato under the knife. All the while I am reflecting on how quickly the four days have passed.
When I arrived, those days seemed to stretch limitlessly into the future. Where did the time go? It has vanished in chopping tomatoes and courgettes and broccoli, and in peeling onions, and in mending clothes, and in talking with the good-natured people who are so typical of the volunteers here.
It has been nine years now, chopping veg, mending clothes, swapping stories, hearing tales of tragedy, and teaching English. Thousands of us have come in that time, in flurries of earnestness, and in the hope that we will not have to keep coming. In hope that the ‘problem of refugees in Calais’ will be solved.
The Refugee Community Kitchen (RCK) was set up over ten years ago, and many volunteers have been attending regularly. For others, it is their first time. On my own first occasion, December 2015, I asked myself what I was doing. Now, I have come to agree with Wilfrid Stinisson that ‘inner growth’ happens. That focusing upon work, however tedious, in the moment ‘touches eternity in God’. Unwittingly, this work has enhanced my own life. I have felt enriched from so many sources, not only the good natures of fellow volunteers, and the dogged determination against hostile environments on each side of the Channel, but above all the faith and determination of the refugees, which is totally humbling.
Even so, I cannot shake my frustrations at the unchanged – no, worsening – politics. The closed borders that contribute to the sales of tickets for unsafe boats. The increased callousness from Calais town hall, which now resorts to placing large boulders in areas that were once used for sleeping, offering shelter from the rain. In August, Rue Courgain, an area previously used for food distribution, was blocked with rocks, preventing meals being reliably delivered.
Expenditure on border control has increased. The overall situation is a war of attrition.
Numbers of refugees in the area fluctuate. Currently there are around 500 in the Pas-de-Calais region, including thirty or so families, raising children in tents in fields, from which they expect imminent eviction, simply shifting to another field when it happens. Thankfully there is a well-established group of play leaders who go out every day to offer support to children.
At the day centre run by Secours Catholique, the same services are on offer: cups of sweet mint tea, bread and jam, washing machines and showers, and clothing repairs. But the centre is now only open three days a week, because volunteers were showing signs of extreme exhaustion. Today, I can sense a different atmosphere from when I was last here, six months ago.
‘The dream must seem preferable to sleeping in the rain under a hedge until a policeman wakes you up and chases you into the night, or tear-gases you.’
Rasta, a volunteer with Secours Catholique for over twelve years, speaks of his disillusion: ‘The youngsters are different now. They are all getting into drugs and are not serious any more.’
I sat in the sun beside a man who asked me where I was from. I asked the same in return. ‘Sudan,’ he told me. I asked how long he had been here.
‘Many years. I am from Lille.’ His reply confused me. He noticed and added, ‘I am French.’
He wore a heavy gold chain around his neck, a gold bracelet, several silver rings, and expensive perfume. They felt incongruous in that setting.
He added, ‘I have come here to see friends.’ Another young man, similarly dressed, approached and they laughed at a private joke.
I could not help wondering what ulterior motives were at play under the noses of the kindly nuns and volunteers who run the centre. I surmised much later that there is a proliferation of boat ticket sales. A pyramid scheme?
Invariably I am reminded of the words of Mother Courage in Berthold Brecht’s powerful play: ‘What else is war but competition. A profit-building enterprise?’
As best I could, in the usual mixture of French and halting Arabic, I talked with a number of young men, clearly refugees, each in possession of a boat ticket. All of them are confident about reaching England soon, despite the warnings of danger that are written in different languages and reiterated by staff – and me, too.
‘England a good place,’ said one, with the certainty typical of young people. The dream must seem preferable to sleeping in the rain under a hedge until a policeman wakes you up and chases you into the night, or tear-gases you. England looks so close, those cliffs looming enticingly across a calm blue sea.
And so, next evening, as I waited patiently in Lille for my reliable Eurostar home, another group of hopeful people were crossing the dunes to a boat. It was to capsize soon after midnight, killing anther six betrayed people.
This is a journey that might cost thirty pounds on a safe vessel, where applications for asylum could be processed. What could be simpler, and safer?
I think of Wilfrid Stinissen again: ‘Time is eternity when working for others… God is in that moment.’ These are beautiful words. I cannot take comfort in them, but I know I cannot stop returning.
To read more about the work of the RCK, visit https://refugeecommunitykitchen.org
