The Migrant Diaries. Lynne Jones

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СКАЧАТЬ could argue that professional humanitarians are better able to rapidly assess needs, work efficiently, and avoid duplication and danger. But, having watched the Pakistani Army and UNHCR argue over the best kind of heating stove to use in camps for the displaced after the 2005 earthquake in Pakistan, while those displaced took matters into their own hands, and lit open fires that burnt down tents, I am not sure this is true. Nor do the big NGOs have the flexibility to respond to the rapidly changing political situation.

      L’Auberge Migrant now sends out 2500 hot meals to both Calais and Dunkirk every day. They also distribute raw ingredients to a further 1200 people, enabling them to cook for themselves. Their ability to do all this depends on the material and financial donations from all over Europe, as well as the manpower provided by a variably skilled, constantly changing, volunteer workforce.

      In response to the threatened eviction, Ben, working with a team of volunteers and refugees, has engaged in the building and distribution of 1700 shelters to rehouse people in the northern half of the camp. Tents are no longer being given out from the back of a pink caravan, or people driving up with shelter material and building at random.

      – It’s taken us a while to learn on the job. We’ve been through seven different designs. The simple wooden frame is made up in the warehouse and taken to the camp with pallets and plastic, where volunteer building crews and refugees construct it together.

      This continues to be another extraordinary aspect of the Jungle: the absence of the rigid boundaries between the helper and the helped. Some of the most impressive volunteers are refugees themselves, like Bahirun and Alpha. Yesterday, I met Nahida, a professor of pedagogy from Afghanistan, who teaches women and children in a small dome-like structure opposite the Caravan where she lives with her four children.

      – They built this dome for me—Nahida told me. I translate and I teach in the evenings and two afternoons. All the Sudanese people call me ‘Mama,’ they respect me, and we find words in common.

      Nahida trained teachers at Kabul University. Her marriage to a foreigner made her children stateless and the Taliban threatened her. Separated from her husband, she fled Afghanistan in search of a nationality for her children, giving up a good job and home and paying 40,000 dollars to people smugglers. The five of them had travelled by foot, horseback, boat, car and bus through Pakistan, Iran and the Balkans.

      – Why England?

      – My brother is there, and twenty family members.

      – I have tried the truck twice. Mary was crying, ‘Don’t take your children, something could happen.’ You know, I grew up in a war, I lived in a war and grew old in a war. Sometimes I want to go back to Afghanistan. Muslim people believe it’s up to God, but I know this Afghanistan is a football, the Russians come, the Americans come, the Taliban come, Daesh comes… There is a boy who comes to me who has seen the Taliban execute someone in his family with an axe, he cannot sleep.

      She looks at me in angry despair, and I think of my conversation with Tawab last year.

      – All I want is for my children to have a nationality. How long can my children stay here without education? They are really intelligent. So how long?

      I don’t have an answer, but I tell her that the Jungle is lucky to have her help.

      In Haiti, after the 2010 Earthquake, while the dispossessed clustered in makeshift camps on roundabouts and in garbage-filled canyons— not dissimilar to this one—the UN administered the aid effort from a compound at the airport that was closed to all but those with international NGO accreditation. Even local charities were entirely absent from the coordination meetings that were supposedly going to rebuild the lives of the devastated Haitians. That failure to empower local people to restore their own lives may have contributed to the homelessness and impoverishment that continues six years later. Here in Calais, I have not heard the word ‘beneficiary’ used once. Coordination meetings are open to all. Besides establishing and running restaurants, schools and libraries, refugees volunteer in the warehouse, work in the clean-up squads, translate for each other and the volunteers, organise, and assist in the distribution points across the camp.

      Coordination with the French has improved since last year. There is now a weekly coordination meeting led by ACTED, a French NGO contracted by the French government to provide water and clear the rubbish. The main topic today is the three people who have disappeared and the apparent reluctance of the French police to investigate. The woman from ACTED explains that in order to address the issue, the police need statements from those who actually knew the missing persons. Bahirun makes another passionate, angry speech about how many times they have been to the police to make reports.

      – This is not about tickets or distributions, it’s about missing people, they should come to us. Why do we have to go there?

      An older Afghan in a Pashtun hat starts speaking.

      – We came from Afghanistan and Syria because it is dangerous. But it is dangerous here. Europe is dangerous. It is dangerous to go to the City, even the volunteers are scared. Why does no one care?

      – Look—says a volunteer—let’s get the right group together, people who can do the identifying with translators, with transport. It is tedious, but we have to keep trying.

      Bahirun is asking what happened to the idea of a camp taxi to take someone to hospital at night. It needs a trusted volunteer who knows Calais. Meanwhile, fifteen beds have been arranged in a convalescence facility for men with traumatic injuries, but Bahirun wants to see more space for tired and sick people. The containers at Salaam are only for the women and children. Someone wants the ambulance extraction points explained. A Frenchman suggests that there should be a communication person in each community to spread correct information.

      A psychotherapist comes up to me after the meeting. He is planning to pop over once a week from Britain and was wondering how I thought he could help. Perhaps he could do some psychological debriefing?⁸

      – Umm, I am not sure debriefing is what is needed here.

      – What do you recommend?

      – Hanging out, sitting and listening to people wherever they are, whenever they want. Not forcing people to talk or sitting in a ‘counselling tent’. Being as well-informed as possible about where everything is, including relevant asylum information, the nearest free food, activities. Actually, I think the most useful things I do are drive a car, carry a thermos flask of warm tea at all times, and be able to stand on my head.

      I am not joking. Burnt out volunteers don’t have time to come to sessions on self-care, but they do need lifts to get petrol for generators, travel between meetings in warehouse and camp, and then get back to wherever they are sleeping. A warm car is as good a place as any to ventilate about the latest idiotic suggestion made by a new volunteer or the behaviour of the CRS.

      These lessons were reinforced this morning. I had driven over to Dunkirk early to meet Lydia at the school. Maddie had walked me in and sat on the bench outside. She was still exhausted, saying she needed a good weep really, so I poured out some hot tea and we had a natter. Apparently, the fight settled down. The problem is that the refugees have a love-hate relationship with the people smugglers, which is now the main route to the UK. A few weeks ago, some Albanians turned up and started trying to muscle in on the Kurdish patch. It was that conflict that led to gun shots. The refugees were saying—give us a break, we fled from all of this.

      Then I went to meet Lydia for the planned developmental movement session for children. СКАЧАТЬ