Reflections on community

Catherine Henderson writes about the refugee crisis

There is a yearning to belong that almost all of us feel from time to time. Perhaps it begins when we first get that sense of being a separate person. I still remember curling up against my mother in my parents’ bed and trying to match my breathing to hers. I couldn’t, of course. On conscious and unconscious levels we try to imitate the rhythms of those closest to us. In music and dance we move to the same beat, temporarily becoming one again. Women’s monthly cycles slip into sync when we live or work together. These patterns underpin our communities, connecting us invisibly.

When we are ‘uprooted’ we are no longer sustained by our community: we are like a tree with its roots torn from the soil. Those torn from their communities instinctively join with others to form new ones. Gulwali Passarlay, who fled Afghanistan when he was twelve, published his story in The Lightless Sky. His lowest point was when, on finally reaching the UK, he was without his companions. Being warm, clean and fed isn’t enough.

Communities of exiles humanise their environments. Nineteenth-century emigrants named the living quarters of their ships after familiar roads and landmarks; soldiers did the same in the trenches. This is the same grim survival humour that gave rise to the Calais ‘jungle’ epithet. In refugee camps like Zaatari in Jordan businesses spring up, people marry, children are born. The average time spent in a refugee camp is seventeen years – too long to suspend the normal patterns of living.

Uninvited communities can mushroom overnight, like the traveller encampment that appeared on a village green near my home after the authorities failed to provide an official site. This is similar, in a way, to what has happened on a much larger scale in Calais. Instead of accommodating people and providing amenities, the French authorities, demonstrating a spectacular failure of empathy and understanding, have done everything they can to crush the community. Cafes and mosques, churches and children’s centres, jointly created by those living in the camp and volunteers, are seen in some way as threatening, and excuses are found to bulldoze them or close them down. Functional ‘containers’ behind high fences are offered as a kind of sterile alternative place to live: I am told there is no ‘sense of community’ there.

‘The jungle’ has been sustained by an extraordinary network of volunteers, in a way that can be summed up by the name of one of the groups: Calais – People to People Solidarity. On both sides of the English Channel people collect and donate food, money, clothing, tents, phones and sleeping bags – many of which are sorted and distributed from a vast warehouse on the outskirts of Calais, staffed by volunteers from all over Europe.

The fragile, vulnerable community in Calais is being disbanded. People have been bussed to centres across France. The surrounding landscape is scarred with fences and punctuated by roadblocks and flashing blue lights. Millions of pounds have been spent on making this place as inhospitable as possible. But people will drift back. Communities of exiles will continue to spring up across northern France, like grass breaking through tarmac.

It is up to us now, whether we allow our own communities to be ‘walled off’ or maintain our openness and connectedness. I think the experience of Calais, bleak as it is, gives us hope that, despite the cold-heartedness of our governments and the periodic bubbling up of xenophobia across Europe, our human connections will endure.

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