The Migrant Diaries. Lynne Jones

People will endure the dirt, cold and squalor here in the hope of reaching a country, which they believe will treat them with respect and dignity, as well as giving them the minimum necessities to start their lives. Warnings that life for asylum seekers and refugees in the UK is not a bed of roses, fall on deaf ears.

       The Jungle, Monday 19 October

      I have made friends with two Afghan boys—12-year-old Abdul and his 11-year-old friend Hassan. Abdul is in jeans cut just below the knee and a thin jacket. Hassan is similarly inadequately dressed. They were both at school in their home province of Kunduz in Afghanistan, when their village was shelled, and everyone ran away and got separated. Neither has any idea where their parents are, or if they are alive. They have been travelling together for the last two months.

      – A good man helped us. We walked, took cars, a train. We took a big ship from Turkey to Greece. I want to go to England. I have an uncle there, in Manchester.

      They have been here two days living in a half-collapsed tent. Abdul hasn’t eaten today, so I take him to the ‘Ashram’ tent, one of a number serving free hot food. He tries the porridge but hates it, so he eats some biscuits instead. There is a French Charity trying to help unaccompanied children. They visit regularly and offer them care and support and school in St. Omer, as well as help in the process of applying for French asylum. Abdul begs me not to alert them. He is determined to go to England and find his relatives. He thinks he will try tonight. I ask him to give himself a few days to at least orient himself and eat some proper food.

      –You could even learn better English and get more information about the asylum process.

      This catches his interest. After leaving Abdul at the library, looking at grammar books and dictionaries, and discussing English with a volunteer, I have tea with a Kurdish father and his 8-year-old daughter Samira, in what is called the ‘family camp.’ They both tried the Tunnel last night but got turned back by police with pepper spray and dogs before they even got to the fence. The idea of this little girl trying to jump onto a train fills me with horror. The father tells me this is no life here. They fled from Mosul when ISIS attacked—no life there either. Around me, other families are cooking over open fires. Smoke rises in the sunlight. Children play with donated scooters, an infant charges around unsteadily, watched by his mother, a baby cries. This family camp has only been here a few weeks, springing up in the Kurdish area on the Southern edge of the Jungle, it looks pleasant enough now, but what will happen when temperatures drop and rain puts out the fires around which people warm themselves? I think I have come to grips with the geography of this place. People have mostly camped out next to neighbours of similar ethnicity. There is an Afghan area near the bridge with a large number of established shops and restaurants; a Syrian area on the dunes in the centre; and an Ethiopian and Eritrean area around the Ethiopian Orthodox church whose walled compound emblazons “St. Michael Jungle Church.” It’s constructed out of wood and plastic, carpeted and lit with candles inside, and decorated with paintings. The Sudanese area is along the Eastern border beside a sandy road called Chemin de Dunes. Many of their shelters are large and well-constructed, built around immaculately swept and organised compounds.

      I looked up the history of this site. Asylum seekers and migrants have been camping unofficially in Calais since Sarkozy closed the Red Cross reception centre in 2002, provoking riots. Since then, an ever-growing number of new arrivals have established new encampments in various locations, only to have them bulldozed after a period of time.

      This particular ‘Jungle,’ created on a landfill site that may well contain various forms of toxic waste, has existed since Spring of this year when there were thought to be approximately 1500 people living here. The estimated population is now around 6000–7000. The majority are young men, but there are growing numbers of women and children. Some of these are staying in the Jules Ferry Centre on the Northern border of the dunes, where a French Charity called La Vie Actif provides accommodation for them, along with a very limited number of hot showers and a soup kitchen for the wider community. I tramp about in an amazed rage. How is it possible that on the borders of a north European town, there are some 6000 people living in conditions worse than those I have encountered with Somali refugees on the Ethiopian border, Pakistanis after a devastating earthquake, or Darfuris in the deserts of Northern Chad—one of the poorest countries in the world? I pick my way through rivers of mud and between piles of uncollected garbage, try to help a teenage boy get water out of a blocked faucet—water that is apparently positive for E coli—hold my breath while making use of portacabin loos that no one has cleaned for days, and step over human excrement lying six inches from tent doorways where children play. I can’t answer my question, but I do begin to see that something else is going on.

      In between the muddy footpaths and bursting bin bags, people are building a community. Mosques are being constructed to shelter newcomers at night and create quiet clean warm space for anyone. Some of the Help Calais crowd funding has gone to building an information centre which will explain people’s rights and the asylum process. There is a Women and Children’s Centre, where ex-firewoman Liz and other volunteers provide a warm refuge. And there is an extraordinary flowering of creativity: a theatre space in a Dome, where I sit and watch grown men work delightedly with pastels and paper, while outside paintings cover the plastic walls of the tents. One of my favourite places is a bright blue painted house on the boundary of Chemin de Dunes with a thatched roof and chair perched above it, and stunning pictures on the walls. Alpha was one of the first people to build a shelter in the area. He shows me pictures of himself gathering reeds for the thatch. Alpha left Mauritania, because in that country, black people are slaves. He had been moving around the continent for some ten years without papers before coming to the Jungle. He never trained as an artist, but he had been in jail in Greece when he heard that his mother had died, he was prostrate and could not stop weeping. That night a voice in his ears told him: – If you want to survive, do art. Work hard at it, and every time you are drinking poison if you do art, you will lose all the pain in your life. I opened my eyes and I could not see anyone, so I knew it was a message from God. So, I have to create. I just take everything and create.

      Everything he touches is turned into art; moulded plastic bottles form a sculpture in the garden. Next door he has an art school open to all.

      Meanwhile, in the Jungle Books Library, English and French and other classes are held every day. This week Gil Galasso, a famous Maitre D’ from the Basque area, is running a certified course in the ‘Art of the Table.’ I sit watching Galasso, in immaculate blazer and pressed trousers, show four young Sudanese how to make cocktails, match the right wine with cheese, and hold multiple plates. They all hope it will help them find jobs in France. Galasso’s own family migrated to France from Italy in the thirties to escape hunger and find work, just like his students.

       The Jungle, Tuesday 20 October

      At the Bed and Breakfast this morning I met an Iranian refugee with a blind daughter. He needed children’s clothes, so we took him to the warehouse run by L’Auberge Migrant, a long-established Calais Charity. The warehouse is enormous and piled ceiling high with donations mostly from Britain. Much is useful: warm clothing, tents and sleeping bags, shoes and bicycles, all desperately needed. But I am curious as to the thinking of those who give away smart handbags, high-heeled shoes and dirty underwear. Distributions are getting organised, with van runs to different parts of the camp every day.

      Back at the camp, I play chess at Jungle Books with Abdul and Hassan. They did not go to the Tunnel last night. They said they took my advice to learn more, but they are almost certainly going tonight. It’s a wet, chilly, misty morning—a hint of things to come. I walk across the camp to the Dome. Musicians Against Borders have brought musical instruments, and a crowd of Sudanese boys are banging drums and playing guitars. I ask my new Sudanese friend, Adam, to come and join us. Adam sings us an English pop song in a high tenor voice. He invited me into his tent as I was passing yesterday. He is 16 and left Darfur because of the fighting.

      – I wanted a safe country where I could get an education.

      He spent three months