I hate my f***ing knees! Where is that bloody knee fairy when you need her? I need a new pair of knees, like, now, not in ten years’ time. Preferably along Cara Delevigne lines, or perhaps Sophia Loren, more age appropriate.
The tooth fairy was pretty reliable I seem to remember. Bang on time, sixpence under the pillow the next morning, or if you were lucky, a shilling. Enough for a liquorice sherbet. (In those days sweets were like drugs and your local confectioner was your local dealer.) But the Knee Fairy is very flaky and I have decided to stop believing in her. So there. That’ll teach her.
By the way hello! I am a bad housewife for many reasons, which will become apparent.
And here’s one of them.
Yes, this week the knees have been giving me extra gyp. Just when you need them to function at max. I’ve just started this fantastic course in Creative Writing at Kingston University. After 30 years of making a living at it, I’ve decided to learn how to do it properly. I’m really excited about it, it is simultaneously scaring me and thrilling me to death. We’re going to be challenged, stretched, jerked out of our writing ruts and comfort zones and ingrained habits and (in my case), smug white middle class assumptions and preconceptions about what we should be doing. And we’re hitting the ground running! Which is not good with bad knees.
I’m going in three times a week. There’s a bit of travelling on trains, up and down stairs, rucksack on back. And there I am, yesterday morning, going down the stairs at Surbiton station and feeling the paaaain and there’s a woman in front of me, also with a heavy rucksack, and a stick. And there’s that nice Film Studies lecturer I met the other day, also walking to the university, with a limp. And later, I’m catching the bus back to Surbiton station with my lovely new bezzie fellow student Alison, discussing what we’re going to write for our first assignments. Suddenly the bus screeches to a stop, and there’s a girl on foot, and with her a girl in a motorised wheelchair, and the ramp is lowered for her, and she zooms onto the bus, and it looks like she hasn’t even got knees. She’s smiling, really brave, just getting on with her life. At least I have knees. And I can walk.
SO STOP MOANING BITCH!
There’s always someone worse off than you and you have to be thankful for what you’ve got.
Talking of walking, I have a dog to walk. She can talk the talk. Did you know border collies have a massive vocabulary? They understand over 240 words of their native language, more than the ape. Hence they seem, spookily, to understand what you’re saying and when you’re talking about them. They are very, very intelligent. And I am hoping she might help me with my assignments. She will no doubt start her own Dog Blog soon, working in Woof for Windows.
She can also walk the walk. She is now glaring at me balefully with that look of doggy reproach, so in a minute I will take her up to the post box. Not to post her in it you understand, to post An Important Letter about cashing in an ancient savings account to help pay for my course.
I went to pilates this morning, a stroll of bucolic splendour up the footpath to my friend’s studio. Everyone in the class has some problem. Neck, knee (that’s me), shoulder, arm, hip, tendonitis, arthritis. But Chris has got cancer and she’s being really brave about it. Yet another reason to feel humbled.
Did I mention that I live in the country? 33 years ago we bought a derelict bungalow in the middle of 10 acres of wasteland, for like, NO MONEY, and we’ve transformed it into a paradise. I say ‘we’ advisedly, since my husband did most of the building work, I just do the housework, laundry, shopping, cooking – oh and gardening. I grow flowers, mostly Mediterranean style, in pots, on top of china elephants and in anything I can find, like old sewage pipes. The herbaceous thing is a bit difficult in heavy clay and everything except shrubby stuff just gives up and slinks away when you’re not looking. I have statues of Buddhas and Greek gods and goddesses all over the place. Why are you not surprised? I am an old hippie. I also grow vegetables now, not very successfully this year, as I forgot to mulch the garden. Loads of runner beans though, so if you’re interested, apply here.
Gardening is a great counterpoint to writing and terribly good for the soul apparently. We farmed sheep for a while, and my daughter watched me deliver twin lambs once from her pushchair. (The lambs came out of the sheep’s bum not the pushchair.) She is now nearly 25, graduated and living mostly near work in London, although she keeps coming home with her laundry. Her place is a bus ride from the university, so I plan to turn up on her doorstep demanding hot meals and sympathy. Payback time! And I do miss her. Anyway, hence the empty nester decision to do this course. She doesn’t remember the woolly nativity scene, but I christened the lambs after her. Annoyingly they were boys, so it had to be Isambard and Florian. Pretentious? Moi?
Do not ask me how we farmed the sheep. Especially if you’re a vegetarian. We did sell the wool however.
Now we have our local farmer friends put their cattle on the fields. They look dead picturesque against that lush green background and they moo a lot when they’re hungry and bash their hooves against the water troughs. At night we hear of lot of murders going on around us, of the wildlife variety. And you get attuned to things like astronomy and birdsong. It’s all very earthy and spiritual. And we’re only an hour or so from London and Brighton.
So yes, I like it here. A lot. It’s the best of all worlds, everything on your doorstep. But a lot to look after.
I am now going to ewalk my dog. That was a spelling mistake but I’ve decided to keep it in. It would be nice to take my dog for e walks, rather than real ones.
So I’m signing off now to stride purposefully around the fields and up the footpath, being brave about my knees because I’m lucky to have them and there’s always someone worse off than you, and post that Important Letter.
This is my first writing assignment on this course. It’s good to be writing again after a self imposed summer Sabbatical and I hope I have hit the ground running, or at least stumbling, in the right direction. I hope I can talk the talk and walk the walk.
Warning: This report/article is long, rambling and rather
ranty. It does not contain nuts, or many jokes.
STOP PRESS: SINCE I STARTED WRITING THIS, THERE HAS BEEN A
FIRE IN THE CAMP. THE CONFLICT WAS CAUSED BY LACK OF FOOD, CAUSING TENSIONS IN
THE COMMUNITY. 250 SHELTERS HAVE BEEN DESTROYED AND 500 PEOPLE ARE WITHOUT
SHELTER. LOOK OUT FOR A DONATION LINK AT THE END OF THIS POST AND NAMES OF
VOLUNTEER GROUPS WHO ARE ALL HELPING WITH THIS NEW CRISIS.
I went to the refugee camp at Calais known as ‘The Jungle’
with Help4Refugee Children, one of the many voluntary organisations trying to
help these people who are trapped there through no fault of their own, and have
been more or less abandoned to their fate. The main purpose of this weekend was
a clean up of the camp after the gruelling winter. The place has been a quagmire
of mud and with no running water or mains electricity, and poor sanitation,
there are attendant health risks to the inhabitants.
We were a group of 7 (name checks later) meeting up with
others down there who were part of other smaller volunteer organisations, all
of us staying in a campsite near the refugee camp. The aid/volunteer status quo
is complex, fragmented and unregulated by state mechanisms, a loose
confederation of small organisations, the mainstream ones being Auberge des
Migrants/Help Refugees and Care4Calais, both of whom have warehouses filled
with donations of food, clothing, equipment and other supplies brought in from
all over Europe, and who run daily task programmes for visiting and resident
volunteers.
Because the Jungle has not been given official refugee status by
either the French State or the EU, there is no Red Cross or similar large
international Aid Organisation out there to co-ordinate things, and the whole operation
relies on crowd funding. It is ad hoc, but there is a logic to it and plenty of
goodwill, energy, effort and organisation on all sides.
I tried to go in with an open mind, with the purpose of
seeking the truth about the situation out there, as well as trying to do
something to help. I wanted to see it with my own eyes, meet the people and
hear their stories. Media reports always distort the picture and there is much
suspicion, fear and loathing in the public mind. The tabloid rags are also
helping to fan the flames of the xenophobic hysteria that seems to be sweeping
the nation. I think you can’t really understand what it all means unless you’ve
been there and witnessed it for yourself.
The Jungle is an experience that you don’t forget in a hurry.
In fact most people go back on a regular basis, to do what they can to help.
They are driven by their compassion for people living on the
edge of existence, trapped in a Dante-esque situation of chaos, confusion,
despair but also humanity, hope, camaraderie and kindness. It changes your
whole perspective. It makes you ponder about the human condition, how this situation has come
about and what has led up to it.
To get one thing absolutely clear; ONLY 4% of ALL refugees
currently displaced and migrating across Europe are heading for Britain. Most
of them are going to Norway and Germany and many are going to Canada, where
they are being welcomed with open arms. The 4% heading for Britain are trying
to get here to join existing family members. They are mainly in Calais, and some
of them are also in Dunkerque, and the other smaller camps that have sprung up around
Northern France. Many of the refugees in The Jungle are not heading for Britain
at all, they are looking to gain asylum in France and some of them already
have.
It is a constantly shifting situation, with people coming
and going. Apparently, there are plans to carry out a proper census very soon.
Since the whole situation is unregulated by state mechanisms, it is up to
motivated individuals to take some sort of accountability. Voluntarily and with
no official support.
I heard lots of stories. I can tell you some individual ones
later on. Almost all of those I heard were
tales of families torn apart, people running away from violence, chaos, war and
terror and unthinkable situations that we in the Western world can’t imagine.
Here is an interesting article in Huffpost about the current
situation with rehoming refugees.
Of the Jungle population, 15% are families, women and
children. The rest are young men, who have been separated from their families, looking
for a better life in a safe place. Some
of them are unaccompanied minors, lone young boys under 18, wandering around at
a loose end, with no family and no-one to look after them. Many of them are
orphaned or have been separated from their parents, which happens in war zones.
Or they have been sent off out of danger, only to find themselves in more
danger. There is a woman there called Liz Clegg, a tough lady from what I hear,
who lives in the camp. They started following her around like ducklings after a
mother duck, so she stayed and took them under her wing, rather like Wendy and
the Lost Boys. Legend. I didn’t see her, but she is there somewhere. Oh boy, do
I feel a play coming on.
There are people in the Jungle from all over the 3rd
world. Syrians, Afghans, Eritreans, Libyans, Pakistanis, Iranians, Iraquis,
Darfurians, Lebanese, you name it. All of them what Daily Mail and Daily
Express readers would call ‘bloody foreigners’.
I digress. Anyway, here goes – an impression of the 2 days I
spent there. On the Saturday morning at 8.30 we met up with a group of around
30 volunteers, connected to Help4Refugee Children, under the motorway bridge.
It was cold and windy. Dark clouds scudded across a
glowering sky. On the other side of the motorway, toxic waste pumped out of
tall chimneys and grim structures. Yes, the camp has been deliberately situated
next to an industrial wasteland, an area considered unfit for any other human
beings. Needless to say, respiratory problems are rife in the camp, as is
dysentery and other illnesses common to unsanitary environments.
It is a bleak scene. Around the perimeter edge of the camp
there is an implacable wire fence, curved at the top, with barbed wire, about
20 foot high, designed to stop the refugees who are trying to jump on lorries
at night. Our government has spent £60 million on this fence, including
policing and maintenance. That’s £60 million that could have been spent on aid.
The whole area is dotted with white police vans. Hanging
around them are hatchet-faced, fully armed, black-clad French policemen who
look like something out of Star Wars, or some Orwellian dystopian scenario, with
large exo-skeleton shoulder pads and knee pads reminiscent of Ninja Turtles.
They do not smile. The hostility comes off them in waves. They give you more
than a shiver of unease. They have been
known to launch tear gas and rubber bullets into the crowds. One of my party
has been involved in an attack and you can imagine how scary and unpleasant
that was. These gendarmes are racist thugs who don’t like the refugees and
don’t like the people who are trying to help them, ie the volunteers. They make
everything as difficult as possible.
The camp is relatively safe in daytime, especially if you
stay in a group, and with an organisation, but it is best to get out at
nightfall. The police begin their attacks and random gangs of racist, fascist
thugs come into the camp and start beating people up. There are, inevitably,
inter-racial tensions too within the camp, which can flare up at night. (And
did, sadly, last week, when the fire broke out.) This is a Third World
microcosm of displaced people, the huddled masses, plucked from all over the
world and gathered in the middle of an alien landscape with an alien climate.
However, within this ramshackle sprawl of huts, tents and
caravans lies a community with a heart to it.
It makes you believe there might still be hope for us all. Although this picture says otherwise.
There is a large area to the South, which was bulldozed last
November by the French authorities. The inhabitants of the shelters were given
an hour’s warning and many were forced to leave without their important papers
and belongings. They have been subsumed into the Northern side of the community,
many of them in the container camp, but more of that later. A fearless young UK
woman called Izzy apparently did a sit in on the South camp, right in front of
the bulldozers. A few shacks remain but it is a wide, flat, desolate stretch of
land, littered with tufts of grass and debris.
There were a lot of young men wandering along returning from
their night’s attempt to jump a lorry. They looked sad and hopeless. But they
were friendly and we all said hello. In fact everyone we met was friendly.
We entered the camp and it was still quiet. We walked along
the main street composed mainly of ramshackle makeshift shelters, which
volunteers helped the refugees build with donated materials. Old sleeping bags,
blankets and plastic sheeting are bodged together into structures which seem to
work. The main street was deserted and we started picking litter, working our
way up the street and down the sides. Every kind of refuse imaginable was
there. I saw rats later on, scurrying around, but that’s not surprising.
Gradually the community began to wake up and European
volunteers began to filter in. There are many makeshift cafes and shops in the
Jungle, resourceful people running businesses, trying to make the best of it. The
most popular one apparently is the White Mountain. It’s all wooden benches and
assorted plastic flowered tablecloths. I had some food in a lovely restaurant
decorated with cuddly toys and half inflated balloons hanging from the ceiling
and lots of fairy lights. There are flags and posters on the walls. All of it
is donated by volunteers and visitors. I spotted a Teletubbie and resolved to
take a Paddington Bear if I go again. He was a refugee from darkest Peru. The
owner chatted to us, a good looking, intelligent, cheerful man. He is from
Pakistan.
All the electricity is powered by generators. There are also
dentists, barbers, a medical centre, the main big Calais kitchen, a school for
adults, churches and mosques, a legal centre, a play bus where women and
children can go for a bit of respite, and there are plans with another
organisation called Children of Calais to build a proper school bus to provide
education and resources. There is even a disco!
There are also a lot of caravans in amongst the shelters and
many tents. At the edge of the camp is the new container camp, a cluster of
white soulless square boxes. It is surrounded by a wire fence, with big stern
gates guarded by big stern policemen, all armed. It has strict security.
Inhabitants have to put their hands into a machine for ID to come and go. They
have to agree to apply for French asylum if they want to go into the container
camp. It is dismal and dehumanising, but I guess the families driven from the
South camp when it was demolished were forced to sacrifice the freedom that
others have for Winter refuge. It looked like a concentration camp and sent
another shiver of unease down my spine.
Every day there is the distribution line, a long queue of
men standing waiting for the food and other supplies brought in from the
Auberge warehouse.
The Jungle is a compendium edition of the 3rd
world, a limbo settlement, a shantytown of extraordinary diversity and
heterogeneousness. It seems to go on forever. There is even a proper map of the
place now. Many of the shelters have been decorated and painted. There are some
lovely paintings and murals. There are also many messages around, which are
heartbreaking.
‘We are all the flowers of one garden.’ That made me cry. I
can’t remember the others, but all of them were about us all being members of
the human race. And wanting to have some human dignity and safety.
As we cleared litter we put it all into plastic bin liners
which we left on the side of the road for the lorry to pick up. H4RC were
working with Acted, an educational charity. Lorries were coming in to empty the
portaloos, which stank. It was like Glastonbury without the festival bit. But
the place didn’t smell as bad as I expected.
As the day wore on the groups began to disperse. We ended up
at the Ashram Café, a group of shacks in a central clearing. It felt like a
village square. A small army of pretty young volunteer English girls and one or
two guys run this place, the kind you see travelling in far-flung places. There
are several structures, a round yurty thing, all decorated and painted with
murals, a table by a stagnant stream, with makeshift plant pots and tins full
of flowers and a little garden at the back with herbs growing. The food was
free and the herbal tea was delicious.
The sun came out and the Jungle began to feel like a proper
village community, or a town composed of smaller fragmented communities. The Jungle has shaken down into ghetto
quarters, as always happens in an urban community, each one representing the many
nations who have gathered here. Everywhere I looked, people were greeting each
other warmly, with a lot of genuine affection, back slapping and hugging.
Volunteers and inhabitants all mixing in together, people who have obviously
known each other for some time on repeated visits and have built lasting
friendships.
The volunteers are from many different European countries;
Holland, France, Belgium, Germany, Scandinavia, Italy. Apart from those doing general work, there are builders, carpenters, doctors,
midwives, lawyers, teachers, dentists, all of them giving their free time to
come and help. Amazing people.
We had coffee in Mohamed’s caravan, which is just to the
side of the Ashram clearing. He is a lovely man with a kind warm face. Iranian
I think, or Afghan. He’s a friend of Mitch, who has been many times to the
Jungle. Mo is quiet and gentle. He went on a hunger strike in protest at the
demolition, and had his mouth sewn up. They told him that he must eat, or he
would die, and he said
‘I ve already died so many times.’ I can’t imagine his story.
Everywhere we went, people invited us into their shelters or
caravans and offered us food and tea. The Jungle may be chaotic and sad and
dangerous, but it is also warm, friendly and hospitable. The refugees want
human interaction, they want to talk, to share their stories and connect with
the world outside the camp.
They all keep themselves clean and tidy, with clothes and
toiletries donated from the warehouse. They wash their clothes outside and hang
them on the bushes. There are washrooms all over the camp. They take pride in
their appearance. I didn’t see one tramp or vagrant.
After our visit with Mo, we went into the family section,
where the mothers and children are kept away from the main part. Ramshackle
caravans are dotted around a clearing. Rats run across it occasionally. There
is a small wooden play area , which volunteers must have helped to construct.
As we appeared the kids came out and we began to play with them. They were
thrilled to see us. There were babies, toddlers and older teenage kids. All of
them Syrian and so sweet. Their families
are waiting for their asylum cases to come up. There are two pregnant women in this
section who get regular visits from a volunteer midwife. One of our party is Gareth,
a tall, gangly, wild haired, eccentric teaching assistant with amazing people
skills and fantastic clowning skills. The kids loved him. He horsed around with
them for what seemed like hours. We played tag and hide and seek with them, and
swung them on the swings. A German family turned up with two blonde kids, and
it was good to see them joining in the fun. Gareth the clown produced a load of
blow up balls and random game of kickaround football began. A little girl
called Saya drew a beautiful picture of herself on the ball, which I have
pasted in below. I didn’t take a picture of her.
IMPORTANT NOTE! I didn’t take many pictures. Not many people
do. Although friendly and sociable, the inhabitants are very protective of
their privacy for obvious reasons. They are in a precarious situation. It seems
rude and disrespectful to go round gawping like tourists or voyeurs, taking
snaps in a schadenfreude sort of way, so the general rule is to be
discreet.
H4RC do regular art workshop activities with these kids. There are also art and
drumming and musical workshops as many of the inhabitants are musicians. I
heard there was once a makeshift stage here, a lorry with the side cut out, and
Jude Law came and did a Shakespeare performance. Good old Jude Law. That must
have been awesome. However the stage was taken away. Isn’t that nice?
Perhaps it could be re-instated. A regular theatre lorry,
like the mummers of old. These people need culture and music and
art as well as practical help. Apparently the Dunkerque camp has a small cinema for the
kids.
After the break Gareth and I rejoined the litter picking group. The clean up was tough going. It was a gargantuan task. There was litter everywhere, rotting food, bags, clothes, mattresses, metal, pots, pans, etc, some of it all over the scrub and stuck in bushes, much of it lying around in running streams of dirty water and stagnant ponds, a real health hazard. Gareth was doing
brilliantly, along with all the others. Their energy was amazing. By the end of the
weekend they had devised a plan to help the
refugees keep their camp tidier and cleaner. The refugees had begun to get the message about not chucking stuff
away and began to join in the clean up, taking plastic bags and surgical
gloves from the barrow. Plans were being made about laminated notices, more
litter bins etc, setting up an ongoing refuse policy. The word education crept
in. Unavoidable, You’re stuck here so keep the place healthy, it’s in your own
interests, even if you’re going to get out soon.
This brings me to the whole ‘white western saviourism’ issue,
which everyone is very aware of. It was
white supremacist saviourism that was used to justify the European nations’ big
empires during the colonial era. It allowed the Victorians to conjure up their
myth of imperialism with value added altruism, two mutually exclusive things.
We the Brits lived in over 250 other people’s countries during our Empire
reign, we owned and exploited a 3rd of the world, we plundered and
oppressed them, but we pretended we were doing them a big favour by building
roads and schools and hospitals. This myth still prevails today and is used as an
excuse for four centuries of European colonialism, which I believe is part of
the continuum that has led to where we are today. (Along with decades of
interfering foreign policy, arms dealing and so on.) So all the Europeans now going out to help
refugees raises that spectre of white saviourism again. Except it’s very
different this time. It’s a bit of a mind bender and requires much soul
searching. Nobody wants to patronise them. They are educated people, many of
them professionals with useful skills.
Many people came up to me and said how nice it was that all
the volunteers were coming to help, but what about helping them get out to a
better life? They don’t want to be where they are. We said that we couldn’t
personally do anything, it was up to our governments, but we were constantly campaigning
to change things. All we can do is help them deal with their current situation.
I hope they understood. It was difficult to look them in the eyes.
As evening drew on Gareth and I wandered about and chatted
to some volunteers from Hungary who had been working at the Dunkerque camp. It
sounds very dangerous there. Apparently the Kurdish mafia have taken over. It’s
not as well supervised as the Jungle. One of the girls was Hungarian, training
to be a psychologist I think. So we learnt something about the refugee crisis
out in central Europe. Last summer there were multitudes of displaced people
out in the open, no shelter. Whole train stations full of refugees, platforms
jammed with them. What a hellish scenario, like Apocalypse Now. She told us
that despite the government’s merciless attitude, ordinary people were spending
their entire holiday entitlements trying to help the refugees, taking them food
and supplies and shelter. The heroism of ordinary people.
We went to the supermarket to buy more supplies. Gas
canisters seem to be the big currency in the jungle, everyone needs them for
cooking, so Amy and Lauren and Monique bought a load of them from their crowd
funded money.
The next day we went to the Auberge des Migrants warehouse which was overwhelming in its
enormity. The size of an aircraft hangar, it is filled with boxes and boxes of
donations, all stacked up the walls. Clothing, toothpaste, toiletries, cooking
implements, mattresses, everything that we use at home. All of it has to be
properly labelled and if items are removed they have to be crossed off. There
are chutes to dispense the donations to be taken and put into the right boxes.
The atmosphere is amazing, with hundreds of volunteers rushing around. Most of
them are there full time, they have devoted their lives to working for the
refugees and live in caravans on the warehouse site. I heard an alarming rumour
that the lease for the warehouse is running out. I hope it’s not true.
Then we went to the family quarter in the camp and
distributed clothes we’d picked up from the warehouse to the pregnant ladies,
who were expanding by the day and needed bigger tunics! The clearing was now a
sorry sight, after the night’s rain, with puddles everywhere and the occasional
rat skittering across. Many people
couldn’t get out of their caravans. The
clearing looked almost jolly the day before, with the sun shining and all the
kids running around playing. No child should have to grow up in this kind of
environment.
We sat with Abdul in his caravan and he made us tea and
offered us lunch. We heard his story. He
needed to talk. Then we visited with more people and heard more stories. Which
brings me to the individual stories, which are probably echoed all over the
camp.
Abdul. Came to the UK as an unaccompanied minor refugee at 9,
I think to join his elder brother. Because of his traumatic past he went off
the rails and when he reached 18 he was deported back to Afghanistan, which was
now considered ‘safe.’ He has since been back and forth to the UK 4 times, each
time getting deported back. He spent 2 days in a lorry with no food, coming
back into Europe. He showed us some of the scars he’d received from knife
wounds in Afghanistan. There are some very dangerous people there and he was
constantly attacked.
His friend, only 15 or so, was captured by a gang in Afghanistan who threatened to cut off his fingers.
Aziz. An Afghan tailor. His father was murdered by the
Taliban, his mother and younger brother and sisters fled to Pakistan. He had
been looking for his brother in camps all over Europe and was now searching for
him in the Jungle. He showed us a photo. His plan was now to try to get to the
UK to find his older brother.
Ali – another Afghan. Also looking for his brother and had
been all over camps in Europe, Belgium, Germany, Holland.
One of the volunteers told me about a Liverpudlian Afghan, a
UK resident, who had come to camp to help and lost his passport. Probably
stolen. (Yes it does happen, these people are desperate.) So he was stuck in
Calais, a Brit, talking in a Liverpudlian accent. A sort of grim humour here.
A pregnant woman tried to jump a lorry and lost her baby.
A young boy, an unaccompanied minor, awaiting asylum, lost
patience, wanting to be re-united with his family in the UK. He jumped a lorry
and got killed.
These are just a sample of the kind of situations these
people have been through. Many of those I spoke to want to return home to their
countries and rebuild them. In the past 6 years 15 new conflicts have broken
out. Refugees can expect 20 years in exile before their countries are
stabilised. This means tackling the root source of the problem, which goes back
a long way. Decades, centuries even. Arms dealing has a lot to answer for.
Finally we took our leave of our friends in the camp and
drove to the ferry port.. Here are some of us on the ferry.
It was an experience of mixed emotions, harrowing and enlightening.
I have met some amazing people, both refugees and volunteers, and made some
like-minded new friends. It has made me realise the enormity of this humanitarian
crisis. It has global, universal significance and we can’t ignore it. There are
millions of desperate, misplaced people running away from desperate situations
where their lives are in constant danger, situations which our governments in
the West have helped create.
However, many people want to turn their backs on the people whose
problems we’ve caused. Fortress Europe is making some efforts, but there is a
need for proper, co-ordinated, international action that balances with the
needs of existing communities where refugees are rehomed. Many are being re-homed in European countries but
it’s not enough. America doesn’t want to know and the Hungarian government is
despicable. And yet, during WW2, thousands of Hungarian refugees were welcomed
here, along with other refugees. It was all very okay then, everyone thought it
a Good Thing to Do. So why not now? What’s the difference?
I am getting tired of hearing the continual excuses about
there being other equally worthy causes, (yes of course there are), and ‘not enough
room’ here. England is too crowded. And there are homeless people here too. I
know I’ve met some of them at the shelters. The answer is you help all of them.
There are a million empty houses in the UK, which would be enough to house the
UK homeless and the 6,000 refugees in Calais who want to come to the UK, mostly
to join their families, that 4% of all refugees displaced in Europe.
Oh of course, now we come to the EU immigration issue. More
fear and loathing as the tabloids warn of hordes of Bulgarians, Albanians and
Turks etc. Here are some facts about EU migration.
* Immigrants represent only 13% of the population. That’s
not a lot.
* EU immigrants contribute £20billion a year into the UK economy
in tax revenues. They come here to work. They help strengthen the economy and
bring new energy in.
* 44% of the NHS workforce are EU immigrants. If they went,
the NHS would fall apart. (Even faster than predicted, what with the public
spending cuts and gradual privatisation and dismantlement this government is
carrying out.)
* Only 7% of the welfare bill goes to immigrants. 50% goes
on pensions, because people are living longer. And 20% goes to in work benefits
because people can’t earn enough and are being exploited.
* There are currently 2 million Brits living in EU countries
alone, 30% of whom are claiming benefits, which are much more generous than
ours. The same number as EU immigrants living here. So the numbers coming in are
balanced by the numbers going out.
* Welfare fraud (any welfare fraud) is a drop in the ocean
compared to the billions we are being cheated out of by the super rich and
global corporate tax avoidance. Tax avoidance is 4 times greater than benefit
fraud, but there are 10 times more DSS employees chasing welfare fraud than
HMRC people chasing tax avoidance. And the government is cutting jobs at HMRC.
Hmmm.. wonder why? But hey, it’s so much easier to go for the smaller targets
and hit the poor.
Oh, and FYI – the Foreign Aid budget is 0.7% of GDP. That’s
0.7%. Small price to pay, after what we’ve done to the 3rd world in
the past.
So – immigrants can be good news to a country. They raise
tax revenues, they help build the economy. And migration is a natural state of
being for the human race. We’ve been doing it for millions of years. There is
not one person on British soil who can call themselves a true Brit. Even the
ancient Britons, the Celts, came from central Europe originally.
My catch all answer to xenophobic schools of thought is that
we had a bloody great empire, we lived in other people’s countries. Empires come home to roost. We do not have a
moral leg to stand on. And no, it’s not irrelevant because it’s in the past. The
European empires collapsed less than 100 years
ago, not long in the grand sweep of chronology. It’s all part of the continuum.
What goes around comes around and the past creates the present.
SO – and it’s a big So. What are we going to do with these
people? Does anyone really think that they would risk their lives in rickety
boats, or jumping on lorries, if the alternative wasn’t even worse? It’s naïve
to think that the problems in their countries can be sorted out any time soon.
If we can’t find room for them, if we think they’re not our problem, where are
they going to go? Will we just leave them in those camps in Europe, to rot?
Or do some people think that Hitler had the right idea and gas chambers should
be re-instated? The Far Right is mobilising right now. Be afraid.
What we need to remember most is that these people are HUMAN
BEINGS. It can’t be re-iterated enough. We need to stop using de-humanising
language such as ‘hordes’ and ‘swarms’ and ‘overrun’. We should call refugees refugees not
migrants. We need to make the distinction, but we should remember that even
economic migrants are running away from terrible deprivation.
I think Angelina Jolie
said it succinctly when she spoke at the BBC World on the Move conference
recently. (Link pasted in below) She said that this humanitarian crisis is the biggest
test ever of our humanity. It’s global and it’s urgent. We can’t afford to
ignore it and separate ourselves from it, or it will get worse and impact on
all of us. We need to think in Panavision, not tunnel vision. I’m not religious,
but maybe this is God giving us one last chance to get it right. Otherwise I’m
afraid we’re all doomed. Even us comfy, middle class westerners in our comfy
homes.
So where do we start? By giving a fuck, that’s where. By understanding the global significance of this phenomenon.
There are already hundreds of people who do care, volunteers working down in
Calais full time, and groups going down to help. The volunteer situation is
fragmented, and there is sadly some rivalry, but it’s saving lives. If a large
Aid organisation with a big budget came in to support and oversee them, so much
more could be achieved and the refugees would be living in more humane
conditions.
Here is a list of organisations, most of whom have websites
and facebook pages. If you haven’t already got involved and want to help, here
are the avenues to explore.
Auberge des Migrants/Help Refugees. This is the main
organisation. You register dates with them. They send full welcome packs and
instructions and advise on local
accommodation etc. They have a huge warehouse. You go to a briefing every
morning at 9am and are assigned tasks, either in the warehouse, the warehouse
kitchen, or distributing donations in the camp, or doing activities with
refugees.
Care4Calais – Claire Moseley. A similar organisation.
Help4Refugee Children – run by two amazingly dedicated young
women, Isis Aurora Mera and Daniela Garcia, who work in the UK during the week
and go down most weekends to do activities with the children in the family
section.
Children of Calais, managed by Ali Cersey, who is trying to
set up a school bus project and fundraising.
London to Calais, Brighton to Calais, Bristol to Calais. They
mostly organise donation collections and take them down to the camp.
Calaid – not sure if they’re still going.
Forest Row to the Jungle – on facebook
And many more. There are smaller local groups all over the
country. Just google Calais refugee voluntary organisations and you will find
them.
I can’t finish without mentioning the wonderful Mitch,
Gareth, Amy, Monique and Lauren with whom I spent the weekend. Amazing people and
fun to be with. And of course Isis and
Daniela from Help4RefugeeChildren.
It’s time to take on the global leaders, warmongers, tax
dodging corporate fatcats and arms dealers – not to mention the xenophobes,
cynics and naysayers in our own society. Let’s hope and pray that one day we
can solve the problems the human race has created for itself.
Warning: This report/article is long, rambling and rather
ranty. It does not contain nuts, or many jokes.
STOP PRESS: SINCE I STARTED WRITING THIS, THERE HAS BEEN A
FIRE IN THE CAMP. THE CONFLICT WAS CAUSED BY LACK OF FOOD, CAUSING TENSIONS IN
THE COMMUNITY. 250 SHELTERS HAVE BEEN DESTROYED AND 500 PEOPLE ARE WITHOUT
SHELTER. LOOK OUT FOR A DONATION LINK AT THE END OF THIS POST AND NAMES OF
VOLUNTEER GROUPS WHO ARE ALL HELPING WITH THIS NEW CRISIS.
I went to the refugee camp at Calais known as ‘The Jungle’
with Help4Refugee Children, one of the many voluntary organisations trying to
help these people who are trapped there through no fault of their own, and have
been more or less abandoned to their fate. The main purpose of this weekend was
a clean up of the camp after the gruelling winter. The place has been a quagmire
of mud and with no running water or mains electricity, and poor sanitation,
there are attendant health risks to the inhabitants.
We were a group of 7 (name checks later) meeting up with
others down there who were part of other smaller volunteer organisations, all
of us staying in a campsite near the refugee camp. The aid/volunteer status quo
is complex, fragmented and unregulated by state mechanisms, a loose
confederation of small organisations, the mainstream ones being Auberge des
Migrants/Help Refugees and Care4Calais, both of whom have warehouses filled
with donations of food, clothing, equipment and other supplies brought in from
all over Europe, and who run daily task programmes for visiting and resident
volunteers.
Because the Jungle has not been given official refugee status by
either the French State or the EU, there is no Red Cross or similar large
international Aid Organisation out there to co-ordinate things, and the whole operation
relies on crowd funding. It is ad hoc, but there is a logic to it and plenty of
goodwill, energy, effort and organisation on all sides.
I tried to go in with an open mind, with the purpose of
seeking the truth about the situation out there, as well as trying to do
something to help. I wanted to see it with my own eyes, meet the people and
hear their stories. Media reports always distort the picture and there is much
suspicion, fear and loathing in the public mind. The tabloid rags are also
helping to fan the flames of the xenophobic hysteria that seems to be sweeping
the nation. I think you can’t really understand what it all means unless you’ve
been there and witnessed it for yourself.
The Jungle is an experience that you don’t forget in a hurry.
In fact most people go back on a regular basis, to do what they can to help.
They are driven by their compassion for people living on the
edge of existence, trapped in a Dante-esque situation of chaos, confusion,
despair but also humanity, hope, camaraderie and kindness. It changes your
whole perspective. It makes you ponder about the human condition, how this situation has come
about and what has led up to it.
To get one thing absolutely clear; ONLY 4% of ALL refugees
currently displaced and migrating across Europe are heading for Britain. Most
of them are going to Norway and Germany and many are going to Canada, where
they are being welcomed with open arms. The 4% heading for Britain are trying
to get here to join existing family members. They are mainly in Calais, and some
of them are also in Dunkerque, and the other smaller camps that have sprung up around
Northern France. Many of the refugees in The Jungle are not heading for Britain
at all, they are looking to gain asylum in France and some of them already
have.
It is a constantly shifting situation, with people coming
and going. Apparently, there are plans to carry out a proper census very soon.
Since the whole situation is unregulated by state mechanisms, it is up to
motivated individuals to take some sort of accountability. Voluntarily and with
no official support.
I heard lots of stories. I can tell you some individual ones
later on. Almost all of those I heard were
tales of families torn apart, people running away from violence, chaos, war and
terror and unthinkable situations that we in the Western world can’t imagine.
Here is an interesting article in Huffpost about the current
situation with rehoming refugees.
Of the Jungle population, 15% are families, women and
children. The rest are young men, who have been separated from their families, looking
for a better life in a safe place. Some
of them are unaccompanied minors, lone young boys under 18, wandering around at
a loose end, with no family and no-one to look after them. Many of them are
orphaned or have been separated from their parents, which happens in war zones.
Or they have been sent off out of danger, only to find themselves in more
danger. There is a woman there called Liz Clegg, a tough lady from what I hear,
who lives in the camp. They started following her around like ducklings after a
mother duck, so she stayed and took them under her wing, rather like Wendy and
the Lost Boys. Legend. I didn’t see her, but she is there somewhere. Oh boy, do
I feel a play coming on.
There are people in the Jungle from all over the 3rd
world. Syrians, Afghans, Eritreans, Libyans, Pakistanis, Iranians, Iraquis,
Darfurians, Lebanese, you name it. All of them what Daily Mail and Daily
Express readers would call ‘bloody foreigners’.
I digress. Anyway, here goes – an impression of the 2 days I
spent there. On the Saturday morning at 8.30 we met up with a group of around
30 volunteers, connected to Help4Refugee Children, under the motorway bridge.
It was cold and windy. Dark clouds scudded across a
glowering sky. On the other side of the motorway, toxic waste pumped out of
tall chimneys and grim structures. Yes, the camp has been deliberately situated
next to an industrial wasteland, an area considered unfit for any other human
beings. Needless to say, respiratory problems are rife in the camp, as is
dysentery and other illnesses common to unsanitary environments.
It is a bleak scene. Around the perimeter edge of the camp
there is an implacable wire fence, curved at the top, with barbed wire, about
20 foot high, designed to stop the refugees who are trying to jump on lorries
at night. Our government has spent £60 million on this fence, including
policing and maintenance. That’s £60 million that could have been spent on aid.
The whole area is dotted with white police vans. Hanging
around them are hatchet-faced, fully armed, black-clad French policemen who
look like something out of Star Wars, or some Orwellian dystopian scenario, with
large exo-skeleton shoulder pads and knee pads reminiscent of Ninja Turtles.
They do not smile. The hostility comes off them in waves. They give you more
than a shiver of unease. They have been
known to launch tear gas and rubber bullets into the crowds. One of my party
has been involved in an attack and you can imagine how scary and unpleasant
that was. These gendarmes are racist thugs who don’t like the refugees and
don’t like the people who are trying to help them, ie the volunteers. They make
everything as difficult as possible.
The camp is relatively safe in daytime, especially if you
stay in a group, and with an organisation, but it is best to get out at
nightfall. The police begin their attacks and random gangs of racist, fascist
thugs come into the camp and start beating people up. There are, inevitably,
inter-racial tensions too within the camp, which can flare up at night. (And
did, sadly, last week, when the fire broke out.) This is a Third World
microcosm of displaced people, the huddled masses, plucked from all over the
world and gathered in the middle of an alien landscape with an alien climate.
However, within this ramshackle sprawl of huts, tents and
caravans lies a community with a heart to it.
It makes you believe there might still be hope for us all. Although this picture says otherwise.
There is a large area to the South, which was bulldozed last
November by the French authorities. The inhabitants of the shelters were given
an hour’s warning and many were forced to leave without their important papers
and belongings. They have been subsumed into the Northern side of the community,
many of them in the container camp, but more of that later. A fearless young UK
woman called Izzy apparently did a sit in on the South camp, right in front of
the bulldozers. A few shacks remain but it is a wide, flat, desolate stretch of
land, littered with tufts of grass and debris.
There were a lot of young men wandering along returning from
their night’s attempt to jump a lorry. They looked sad and hopeless. But they
were friendly and we all said hello. In fact everyone we met was friendly.
We entered the camp and it was still quiet. We walked along
the main street composed mainly of ramshackle makeshift shelters, which
volunteers helped the refugees build with donated materials. Old sleeping bags,
blankets and plastic sheeting are bodged together into structures which seem to
work. The main street was deserted and we started picking litter, working our
way up the street and down the sides. Every kind of refuse imaginable was
there. I saw rats later on, scurrying around, but that’s not surprising.
Gradually the community began to wake up and European
volunteers began to filter in. There are many makeshift cafes and shops in the
Jungle, resourceful people running businesses, trying to make the best of it. The
most popular one apparently is the White Mountain. It’s all wooden benches and
assorted plastic flowered tablecloths. I had some food in a lovely restaurant
decorated with cuddly toys and half inflated balloons hanging from the ceiling
and lots of fairy lights. There are flags and posters on the walls. All of it
is donated by volunteers and visitors. I spotted a Teletubbie and resolved to
take a Paddington Bear if I go again. He was a refugee from darkest Peru. The
owner chatted to us, a good looking, intelligent, cheerful man. He is from
Pakistan.
All the electricity is powered by generators. There are also
dentists, barbers, a medical centre, the main big Calais kitchen, a school for
adults, churches and mosques, a legal centre, a play bus where women and
children can go for a bit of respite, and there are plans with another
organisation called Children of Calais to build a proper school bus to provide
education and resources. There is even a disco!
There are also a lot of caravans in amongst the shelters and
many tents. At the edge of the camp is the new container camp, a cluster of
white soulless square boxes. It is surrounded by a wire fence, with big stern
gates guarded by big stern policemen, all armed. It has strict security.
Inhabitants have to put their hands into a machine for ID to come and go. They
have to agree to apply for French asylum if they want to go into the container
camp. It is dismal and dehumanising, but I guess the families driven from the
South camp when it was demolished were forced to sacrifice the freedom that
others have for Winter refuge. It looked like a concentration camp and sent
another shiver of unease down my spine.
Every day there is the distribution line, a long queue of
men standing waiting for the food and other supplies brought in from the
Auberge warehouse.
The Jungle is a compendium edition of the 3rd
world, a limbo settlement, a shantytown of extraordinary diversity and
heterogeneousness. It seems to go on forever. There is even a proper map of the
place now. Many of the shelters have been decorated and painted. There are some
lovely paintings and murals. There are also many messages around, which are
heartbreaking.
‘We are all the flowers of one garden.’ That made me cry. I
can’t remember the others, but all of them were about us all being members of
the human race. And wanting to have some human dignity and safety.
As we cleared litter we put it all into plastic bin liners
which we left on the side of the road for the lorry to pick up. H4RC were
working with Acted, an educational charity. Lorries were coming in to empty the
portaloos, which stank. It was like Glastonbury without the festival bit. But
the place didn’t smell as bad as I expected.
As the day wore on the groups began to disperse. We ended up
at the Ashram Café, a group of shacks in a central clearing. It felt like a
village square. A small army of pretty young volunteer English girls and one or
two guys run this place, the kind you see travelling in far-flung places. There
are several structures, a round yurty thing, all decorated and painted with
murals, a table by a stagnant stream, with makeshift plant pots and tins full
of flowers and a little garden at the back with herbs growing. The food was
free and the herbal tea was delicious.
The sun came out and the Jungle began to feel like a proper
village community, or a town composed of smaller fragmented communities. The Jungle has shaken down into ghetto
quarters, as always happens in an urban community, each one representing the many
nations who have gathered here. Everywhere I looked, people were greeting each
other warmly, with a lot of genuine affection, back slapping and hugging.
Volunteers and inhabitants all mixing in together, people who have obviously
known each other for some time on repeated visits and have built lasting
friendships.
The volunteers are from many different European countries;
Holland, France, Belgium, Germany, Scandinavia, Italy. Apart from those doing general work, there are builders, carpenters, doctors,
midwives, lawyers, teachers, dentists, all of them giving their free time to
come and help. Amazing people.
We had coffee in Mohamed’s caravan, which is just to the
side of the Ashram clearing. He is a lovely man with a kind warm face. Iranian
I think, or Afghan. He’s a friend of Mitch, who has been many times to the
Jungle. Mo is quiet and gentle. He went on a hunger strike in protest at the
demolition, and had his mouth sewn up. They told him that he must eat, or he
would die, and he said
‘I ve already died so many times.’ I can’t imagine his story.
Everywhere we went, people invited us into their shelters or
caravans and offered us food and tea. The Jungle may be chaotic and sad and
dangerous, but it is also warm, friendly and hospitable. The refugees want
human interaction, they want to talk, to share their stories and connect with
the world outside the camp.
They all keep themselves clean and tidy, with clothes and
toiletries donated from the warehouse. They wash their clothes outside and hang
them on the bushes. There are washrooms all over the camp. They take pride in
their appearance. I didn’t see one tramp or vagrant.
After our visit with Mo, we went into the family section,
where the mothers and children are kept away from the main part. Ramshackle
caravans are dotted around a clearing. Rats run across it occasionally. There
is a small wooden play area , which volunteers must have helped to construct.
As we appeared the kids came out and we began to play with them. They were
thrilled to see us. There were babies, toddlers and older teenage kids. All of
them Syrian and so sweet. Their families
are waiting for their asylum cases to come up. There are two pregnant women in this
section who get regular visits from a volunteer midwife. One of our party is Gareth,
a tall, gangly, wild haired, eccentric teaching assistant with amazing people
skills and fantastic clowning skills. The kids loved him. He horsed around with
them for what seemed like hours. We played tag and hide and seek with them, and
swung them on the swings. A German family turned up with two blonde kids, and
it was good to see them joining in the fun. Gareth the clown produced a load of
blow up balls and random game of kickaround football began. A little girl
called Saya drew a beautiful picture of herself on the ball, which I have
pasted in below. I didn’t take a picture of her.
IMPORTANT NOTE! I didn’t take many pictures. Not many people
do. Although friendly and sociable, the inhabitants are very protective of
their privacy for obvious reasons. They are in a precarious situation. It seems
rude and disrespectful to go round gawping like tourists or voyeurs, taking
snaps in a schadenfreude sort of way, so the general rule is to be
discreet.
H4RC do regular art workshop activities with these kids. There are also art and
drumming and musical workshops as many of the inhabitants are musicians. I
heard there was once a makeshift stage here, a lorry with the side cut out, and
Jude Law came and did a Shakespeare performance. Good old Jude Law. That must
have been awesome. However the stage was taken away. Isn’t that nice?
Perhaps it could be re-instated. A regular theatre lorry,
like the mummers of old. These people need culture and music and
art as well as practical help. Apparently the Dunkerque camp has a small cinema for the
kids.
After the break Gareth and I rejoined the litter picking group. The clean up was tough going. It was a gargantuan task. There was litter everywhere, rotting food, bags, clothes, mattresses, metal, pots, pans, etc, some of it all over the scrub and stuck in bushes, much of it lying around in running streams of dirty water and stagnant ponds, a real health hazard. Gareth was doing
brilliantly, along with all the others. Their energy was amazing. By the end of the
weekend they had devised a plan to help the
refugees keep their camp tidier and cleaner. The refugees had begun to get the message about not chucking stuff
away and began to join in the clean up, taking plastic bags and surgical
gloves from the barrow. Plans were being made about laminated notices, more
litter bins etc, setting up an ongoing refuse policy. The word education crept
in. Unavoidable, You’re stuck here so keep the place healthy, it’s in your own
interests, even if you’re going to get out soon.
This brings me to the whole ‘white western saviourism’ issue,
which everyone is very aware of. It was
white supremacist saviourism that was used to justify the European nations’ big
empires during the colonial era. It allowed the Victorians to conjure up their
myth of imperialism with value added altruism, two mutually exclusive things.
We the Brits lived in over 250 other people’s countries during our Empire
reign, we owned and exploited a 3rd of the world, we plundered and
oppressed them, but we pretended we were doing them a big favour by building
roads and schools and hospitals. This myth still prevails today and is used as an
excuse for four centuries of European colonialism, which I believe is part of
the continuum that has led to where we are today. (Along with decades of
interfering foreign policy, arms dealing and so on.) So all the Europeans now going out to help
refugees raises that spectre of white saviourism again. Except it’s very
different this time. It’s a bit of a mind bender and requires much soul
searching. Nobody wants to patronise them. They are educated people, many of
them professionals with useful skills.
Many people came up to me and said how nice it was that all
the volunteers were coming to help, but what about helping them get out to a
better life? They don’t want to be where they are. We said that we couldn’t
personally do anything, it was up to our governments, but we were constantly campaigning
to change things. All we can do is help them deal with their current situation.
I hope they understood. It was difficult to look them in the eyes.
As evening drew on Gareth and I wandered about and chatted
to some volunteers from Hungary who had been working at the Dunkerque camp. It
sounds very dangerous there. Apparently the Kurdish mafia have taken over. It’s
not as well supervised as the Jungle. One of the girls was Hungarian, training
to be a psychologist I think. So we learnt something about the refugee crisis
out in central Europe. Last summer there were multitudes of displaced people
out in the open, no shelter. Whole train stations full of refugees, platforms
jammed with them. What a hellish scenario, like Apocalypse Now. She told us
that despite the government’s merciless attitude, ordinary people were spending
their entire holiday entitlements trying to help the refugees, taking them food
and supplies and shelter. The heroism of ordinary people.
We went to the supermarket to buy more supplies. Gas
canisters seem to be the big currency in the jungle, everyone needs them for
cooking, so Amy and Lauren and Monique bought a load of them from their crowd
funded money.
The next day we went to the Auberge des Migrants warehouse which was overwhelming in its
enormity. The size of an aircraft hangar, it is filled with boxes and boxes of
donations, all stacked up the walls. Clothing, toothpaste, toiletries, cooking
implements, mattresses, everything that we use at home. All of it has to be
properly labelled and if items are removed they have to be crossed off. There
are chutes to dispense the donations to be taken and put into the right boxes.
The atmosphere is amazing, with hundreds of volunteers rushing around. Most of
them are there full time, they have devoted their lives to working for the
refugees and live in caravans on the warehouse site. I heard an alarming rumour
that the lease for the warehouse is running out. I hope it’s not true.
Then we went to the family quarter in the camp and
distributed clothes we’d picked up from the warehouse to the pregnant ladies,
who were expanding by the day and needed bigger tunics! The clearing was now a
sorry sight, after the night’s rain, with puddles everywhere and the occasional
rat skittering across. Many people
couldn’t get out of their caravans. The
clearing looked almost jolly the day before, with the sun shining and all the
kids running around playing. No child should have to grow up in this kind of
environment.
We sat with Abdul in his caravan and he made us tea and
offered us lunch. We heard his story. He
needed to talk. Then we visited with more people and heard more stories. Which
brings me to the individual stories, which are probably echoed all over the
camp.
Abdul. Came to the UK as an unaccompanied minor refugee at 9,
I think to join his elder brother. Because of his traumatic past he went off
the rails and when he reached 18 he was deported back to Afghanistan, which was
now considered ‘safe.’ He has since been back and forth to the UK 4 times, each
time getting deported back. He spent 2 days in a lorry with no food, coming
back into Europe. He showed us some of the scars he’d received from knife
wounds in Afghanistan. There are some very dangerous people there and he was
constantly attacked.
His friend, only 15 or so, was captured by a gang in Afghanistan who threatened to cut off his fingers.
Aziz. An Afghan tailor. His father was murdered by the
Taliban, his mother and younger brother and sisters fled to Pakistan. He had
been looking for his brother in camps all over Europe and was now searching for
him in the Jungle. He showed us a photo. His plan was now to try to get to the
UK to find his older brother.
Ali – another Afghan. Also looking for his brother and had
been all over camps in Europe, Belgium, Germany, Holland.
One of the volunteers told me about a Liverpudlian Afghan, a
UK resident, who had come to camp to help and lost his passport. Probably
stolen. (Yes it does happen, these people are desperate.) So he was stuck in
Calais, a Brit, talking in a Liverpudlian accent. A sort of grim humour here.
A pregnant woman tried to jump a lorry and lost her baby.
A young boy, an unaccompanied minor, awaiting asylum, lost
patience, wanting to be re-united with his family in the UK. He jumped a lorry
and got killed.
These are just a sample of the kind of situations these
people have been through. Many of those I spoke to want to return home to their
countries and rebuild them. In the past 6 years 15 new conflicts have broken
out. Refugees can expect 20 years in exile before their countries are
stabilised. This means tackling the root source of the problem, which goes back
a long way. Decades, centuries even. Arms dealing has a lot to answer for.
Finally we took our leave of our friends in the camp and
drove to the ferry port.. Here are some of us on the ferry.
It was an experience of mixed emotions, harrowing and enlightening.
I have met some amazing people, both refugees and volunteers, and made some
like-minded new friends. It has made me realise the enormity of this humanitarian
crisis. It has global, universal significance and we can’t ignore it. There are
millions of desperate, misplaced people running away from desperate situations
where their lives are in constant danger, situations which our governments in
the West have helped create.
However, many people want to turn their backs on the people whose
problems we’ve caused. Fortress Europe is making some efforts, but there is a
need for proper, co-ordinated, international action that balances with the
needs of existing communities where refugees are rehomed. Many are being re-homed in European countries but
it’s not enough. America doesn’t want to know and the Hungarian government is
despicable. And yet, during WW2, thousands of Hungarian refugees were welcomed
here, along with other refugees. It was all very okay then, everyone thought it
a Good Thing to Do. So why not now? What’s the difference?
I am getting tired of hearing the continual excuses about
there being other equally worthy causes, (yes of course there are), and ‘not enough
room’ here. England is too crowded. And there are homeless people here too. I
know I’ve met some of them at the shelters. The answer is you help all of them.
There are a million empty houses in the UK, which would be enough to house the
UK homeless and the 6,000 refugees in Calais who want to come to the UK, mostly
to join their families, that 4% of all refugees displaced in Europe.
Oh of course, now we come to the EU immigration issue. More
fear and loathing as the tabloids warn of hordes of Bulgarians, Albanians and
Turks etc. Here are some facts about EU migration.
* Immigrants represent only 13% of the population. That’s
not a lot.
* EU immigrants contribute £20billion a year into the UK economy
in tax revenues. They come here to work. They help strengthen the economy and
bring new energy in.
* 44% of the NHS workforce are EU immigrants. If they went,
the NHS would fall apart. (Even faster than predicted, what with the public
spending cuts and gradual privatisation and dismantlement this government is
carrying out.)
* Only 7% of the welfare bill goes to immigrants. 50% goes
on pensions, because people are living longer. And 20% goes to in work benefits
because people can’t earn enough and are being exploited.
* There are currently 2 million Brits living in EU countries
alone, 30% of whom are claiming benefits, which are much more generous than
ours. The same number as EU immigrants living here. So the numbers coming in are
balanced by the numbers going out.
* Welfare fraud (any welfare fraud) is a drop in the ocean
compared to the billions we are being cheated out of by the super rich and
global corporate tax avoidance. Tax avoidance is 4 times greater than benefit
fraud, but there are 10 times more DSS employees chasing welfare fraud than
HMRC people chasing tax avoidance. And the government is cutting jobs at HMRC.
Hmmm.. wonder why? But hey, it’s so much easier to go for the smaller targets
and hit the poor.
Oh, and FYI – the Foreign Aid budget is 0.7% of GDP. That’s
0.7%. Small price to pay, after what we’ve done to the 3rd world in
the past.
So – immigrants can be good news to a country. They raise
tax revenues, they help build the economy. And migration is a natural state of
being for the human race. We’ve been doing it for millions of years. There is
not one person on British soil who can call themselves a true Brit. Even the
ancient Britons, the Celts, came from central Europe originally.
My catch all answer to xenophobic schools of thought is that
we had a bloody great empire, we lived in other people’s countries. Empires come home to roost. We do not have a
moral leg to stand on. And no, it’s not irrelevant because it’s in the past. The
European empires collapsed less than 100 years
ago, not long in the grand sweep of chronology. It’s all part of the continuum.
What goes around comes around and the past creates the present.
SO – and it’s a big So. What are we going to do with these
people? Does anyone really think that they would risk their lives in rickety
boats, or jumping on lorries, if the alternative wasn’t even worse? It’s naïve
to think that the problems in their countries can be sorted out any time soon.
If we can’t find room for them, if we think they’re not our problem, where are
they going to go? Will we just leave them in those camps in Europe, to rot?
Or do some people think that Hitler had the right idea and gas chambers should
be re-instated? The Far Right is mobilising right now. Be afraid.
What we need to remember most is that these people are HUMAN
BEINGS. It can’t be re-iterated enough. We need to stop using de-humanising
language such as ‘hordes’ and ‘swarms’ and ‘overrun’. We should call refugees refugees not
migrants. We need to make the distinction, but we should remember that even
economic migrants are running away from terrible deprivation.
I think Angelina Jolie
said it succinctly when she spoke at the BBC World on the Move conference
recently. (Link pasted in below) She said that this humanitarian crisis is the biggest
test ever of our humanity. It’s global and it’s urgent. We can’t afford to
ignore it and separate ourselves from it, or it will get worse and impact on
all of us. We need to think in Panavision, not tunnel vision. I’m not religious,
but maybe this is God giving us one last chance to get it right. Otherwise I’m
afraid we’re all doomed. Even us comfy, middle class westerners in our comfy
homes.
So where do we start? By giving a fuck, that’s where. By understanding the global significance of this phenomenon.
There are already hundreds of people who do care, volunteers working down in
Calais full time, and groups going down to help. The volunteer situation is
fragmented, and there is sadly some rivalry, but it’s saving lives. If a large
Aid organisation with a big budget came in to support and oversee them, so much
more could be achieved and the refugees would be living in more humane
conditions.
Here is a list of organisations, most of whom have websites
and facebook pages. If you haven’t already got involved and want to help, here
are the avenues to explore.
Auberge des Migrants/Help Refugees. This is the main
organisation. You register dates with them. They send full welcome packs and
instructions and advise on local
accommodation etc. They have a huge warehouse. You go to a briefing every
morning at 9am and are assigned tasks, either in the warehouse, the warehouse
kitchen, or distributing donations in the camp, or doing activities with
refugees.
Care4Calais – Claire Moseley. A similar organisation.
Help4Refugee Children – run by two amazingly dedicated young
women, Isis Aurora Mera and Daniela Garcia, who work in the UK during the week
and go down most weekends to do activities with the children in the family
section.
Children of Calais, managed by Ali Cersey, who is trying to
set up a school bus project and fundraising.
London to Calais, Brighton to Calais, Bristol to Calais. They
mostly organise donation collections and take them down to the camp.
Calaid – not sure if they’re still going.
Forest Row to the Jungle – on facebook
And many more. There are smaller local groups all over the
country. Just google Calais refugee voluntary organisations and you will find
them.
I can’t finish without mentioning the wonderful Mitch,
Gareth, Amy, Monique and Lauren with whom I spent the weekend. Amazing people and
fun to be with. And of course Isis and
Daniela from Help4RefugeeChildren.
It’s time to take on the global leaders, warmongers, tax
dodging corporate fatcats and arms dealers – not to mention the xenophobes,
cynics and naysayers in our own society. Let’s hope and pray that one day we
can solve the problems the human race has created for itself.