Return to Calais
Anne M Jones reports on a recent visit to ‘the Jungle’
‘Have conditions in “the Jungle” improved since you were there in January?’ asked my son, to which I replied: ‘Just as one gets used to the sight of snails in an English garden, so one quickly becomes acquainted with rats. Everywhere.’
An area that was once tents and shacks is now a field of pale yellow cabbage flowers, and tents are now crammed around the new site of container-like buildings provided by the French authorities. There is an area for caravans, but as more people arrive each day it is difficult to see how the prohibition to not use the fields will be maintained. A line of thriving shops runs up the main street, with cardamom tea and delicious food as well as basic groceries, for those who can buy.
My remit this time was to locate volunteers who were making efforts to help unaccompanied children link up with relatives here in the UK, and I soon made contacts whose work I could contribute to. However, I was quickly enrolled to help where there is immense need – teaching English to young men, some of them unaccompanied minors. An effective programme has been set up with trained volunteer TEFL ESOL [Teaching English as a Foreign Language and English for Speakers of Other Languages] teachers from England and France in the ‘Jungle Books’ – an area of shacks for a library and two schoolrooms. These remained after some fires were set in March. I was quickly enrolled on the basis of my experience in teaching and in mental health with young people.
Each day an effective programme is run by long-term volunteers, French and English, from 11am until after 6pm. I took on the stragglers who wanted less formal lessons. These included some who were illiterate in their own language to those who were almost fluent.
Thoughtful donors have provided a series of books designed for early learners in addition to many classics, and I enjoyed introducing Michael Morpurgo and Lewis Carroll to the near fluent. In these groups the young men shyly opened up about their own stories, and my mental health qualifications came into use. One young man suffers with body dysmorphia, another with recurrent nightmares, and several young men seemed, to me, close to serious depressions.
These reactions are to be expected in such abnormal conditions, and talking about them took away some of the terror – ‘normalising’ them – but continuing support would be preferable to such sporadic input. Another social worker I spoke to told me that he had not been able to source any reliable long-term support from the medical services onsite.
A group of otherwise robust teens showed me the physical scars from attempting to enter England. Falling off lorries or trains is anticipated, albeit something of a hindrance to escape plans. One showed me evidence of a broken leg and elbow; another, a gashed face.
Each night they walk four miles to the ferry port and attempt to hide. My attempts at arranging a lesson for ‘next day’ met with conspiratorial grins – ‘maybe in England’. News quickly spread when one of the youngsters had made it, while others would turn up for a lesson the next day with eyes still watering from being randomly tear-gassed when trying to leave the camp after dark. During one session, a young Iranian asked me why ‘you people come into jungle?’ I replied in the words I had heard from so many volunteers from all over the world: ‘Because we are ashamed of our own government’s response at your situation.’
He looked at me searchingly and said: ‘Thank you, this means a lot.’ Some volunteers have been there for almost six months and burnout is evident. The treadmill nature of their heroic efforts are scattered all around this wasteland, in the form of discarded clothing, thrown away when too dirty to wear because clothes washing and drying through winter was nearly impossible. One young woman volunteer cried at the plight of people as she ferried goods, and me, in her van to and from the warehouse: ‘We are perpetuating a really bad situation. Unless governments get their act together, this camp will go on and on.’
Away from ‘the Jungle’, on meadowland beside the Eurotunnel, tiny amethyst-coloured orchids bloom and thrushes call melodiously. Hope springs eternal.
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