The Migrant Diaries. Lynne Jones

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      The Jungle, Calais, October 2015

       The Jungle, Wednesday 21 October

      Some people at the volunteer meeting asked me to do a session on volunteer self-care. I turn up at 10am at the Ashram tent. Scott undoes the marquee door tape and lets me in. The volunteers are already preparing breakfast, although, at this time, most camp residents are still asleep, having tramped three hours to the tunnel entrance, spent two to three hours climbing fences, evading police and dogs, and another three hours walking back during the night.

      Scott tells me he just came for the day originally, but then he got asked to lay a floor in this tent. Then they started cooking a few meals for volunteers, then it sort of grew, and now they cook twice daily for hundreds of migrants. He stayed and organises. Outside it’s raining a light drizzle, but as the weather worsens, these communal spaces will become vital. That’s if the French allow the camp to stand. Rumours abound. Yesterday’s local paper had a two-page spread on how the mayor was calling in the Army to help deal with security. L’Auberge was quoted as suggesting the French army should learn a lesson from the Germans and help build good facilities.

      And apparently there is a plan for a new camp. But it will only house the most vulnerable 1500, will have fences and security around it, and will mean the eviction of at least 400 camped out in the planned space. Besides, how many will want to move into a new camp if they are not allowed out of it?

      Meanwhile, the Jungle has petty crime, a black market, drugs, alcohol, and violence, as in any community. I was having a coffee with Bahirun in his restaurant in the Afghan area, when he was called, because a young Sudanese man had gone to the MDM tent with a knife. Bahirun got some other Sudanese to mediate and went and sorted it out without any casualties. It is remarkable how quickly fights here can be deescalated.

      Bahirun has spent five years in Europe. He actually got asylum in Italy (after waiting three years), but there was no work. Then he spent a number of years in Norway until they told him there were no problems in Afghanistan, and he should go back.

      – I would love to go back. All I want to do is help my people. It’s impossible at the moment. And this is your fault. You made the problems in my country, not me. Look around you—here are Pashtun, Tajik, Uzbek, we all get on, but in Afghanistan, there are more than forty two countries with their guns, making things worse.

      He came to Calais in July to try and get to the UK to find work. He was in the hospital for three weeks because of a beating. But now, he has stopped trying to cross the Channel and puts his energy into helping his fellow countrymen.

      – At the Voice of Refugees meeting last week, I was discussing ‘how not to die.’ It’s essential they know that if you walk to the tunnel for three hours and your clothes are wet and you are tired, you will go under a train and you will die. If people really want to help, they should provide a bus so that at least people are warm and dry before they make the attempt!

      – I doubt the French would allow it—bussing refugees to the tunnel…

      – Then people will go on dying. Bahirun is not completely happy with volunteers. Some are only here for themselves. We know who needs clothes and shoes.

      – I think that is why they plan to have people like you distribute.

      Bahirun tells me he has a plan of his own, to open a more expensive restaurant with good food, where volunteers will eat, especially the ‘weekend warriors.’ And he will encourage them to buy attractive cards marked up in a particular way. Then he will ask them to visit different areas of the camp and see who really needs help. They should give the card to a vulnerable person who can then return to the restaurant for a free meal. Bahirun has worked out a neat system of assessing needs and providing food to the most vulnerable, while using the time and energy of random volunteers. Brilliant.

      I leave Bahirun and go look for Samira and her father, as I promised a visit. But their neighbour says they did not come back from the train yesterday. Perhaps they have made it? Or taken another route? Or got hurt or detained? I don’t want to think about that. I go and visit Liz at the red and orange Women and Children’s Centre. Three teenage Afghan boys have come in and she is sorting out some stuff for them. One of them has cut his hand and lost his shoes trying to climb the Tunnel fence last night. We clean him up and find him shoes. One of them wants a bicycle, and Liz promises to try and find one in the warehouse.

      – It’s not about the product—she explains. I don’t mind if it’s a bicycle or a woolly hat. If I can use the donations to encourage them to come and spend some time here, that’s less time with the Hashish smokers and other unsavoury types.

      Liz has created one of the most comfortable spaces in the Camp. While we are sitting there, a tearful Sudanese woman comes in. Liz puts the kettle on the small gas ring. Last night, it was a heavily pregnant Kurdish woman, just days away from giving birth. Her husband had already paid $7000 to a lorry driver to take her to the UK, and then discovered it was a scam and the lorry was going South.

      – Liz saved us as well—Susan, a volunteer, tells me. She explains that she was working as a hotel manager.

      – I had guests screaming at me that they did not get a good night’s sleep because the beds were lumpy. I had to do something more useful.

      When the migrant crisis hit the news in August, she started an NGO called Drive to Humanity, and drove to Calais with Tifa and two others, and a van full of donations.

      – Except we hadn’t a clue how to distribute stuff or what to do. We decided we might as well start collecting rubbish with bin bags. We were all fighting amongst ourselves and crying. Then Liz came over and gave us a hug and asked if we wanted to help her. They have been helping her ever since.

       The Jungle, Thursday 22 October

      When I walk into the Camp in the morning, someone asks me to go and see a sick four-year-old who arrived last night. They are a Kurdish family camped inside the Ashram restaurant. In fact, the four-year-old is running around munching biscuits with no evidence of fever or distress, so I prescribe porridge.

      A team have come from Brighton who plan to bring a school bus across. They ask me to introduce them to some children who might benefit from such a project, so I take them to meet Abdul and Hassan, who now live in a caravan with another boy in the family area. Abdul is as friendly as always, if a bit dopey. He explains politely why school is not for him:

      – I have to get to England. I spend all night trying. It takes many hours to walk there, many hours to try and reach a train, and if I fail, many hours СКАЧАТЬ