This post has taken me some time to write but I finally feel ready to share a little bit about my experience volunteering at the refugee camp known as the Jungle, located in Calais, France. Because the immigration crisis in general and the status of refugees in Calais in particular has received little media attention in the US, I have put a lot of time into providing an accurate and informative political and historical context to describe what is going on there at the moment. The information I include is based both on my experience volunteering over the course of nine days, and on the many newspaper articles and websites I cite throughout the post. I encourage you to comment or message me if there is anything you find inaccurate or misleading--it's definitely a work in progress, and I had the privilege of meeting people with a much richer understanding of these issues than I have. If you're not particularly interested in the background info, scroll down to where I start talking about volunteering, and stay tuned for a second post! For starters I will answer a few basic questions:
Calais is a mid-size city in Northern France, home to a large chemical refinery, some mediocre seashore, and quite a bit of 1950s-style concrete architecture. Most importantly, Calais is the major port for ferries and trains that cross the English Channel, connecting England and the UK to Continental Europe. A very large volume of commercial and leisure traffic flows between Calais and the UK throughout the day and night. It is for this reason that refugees have gathered in this specific geographic location for at least the past fifteen years. The spontaneous refugee camp that arose in this place has come to be known as the Jungle. For more information on the history of Sangatte, the refugee camp that existed in this area in the early 2000s, read this informative article. Briefly, a camp was opened by the Red Cross in 1999 in response to the flood of Kosovar refugees fleeing attempted genocide in the Balkans. A warehouse that had housed machinery was repurposed to hold 200 asylum seekers. Within two years, there were 2,000 people living in a space that was impossible to heat in the winter and unbearably hot in the summer, and the camp was closed in 2002. This article has a neat little timeline of the history of refugees in the area. A second ad hoc refugee camp formed in Dunkirk, a town about 30 miles northeast of Calais, and the site of a major World War II battle. Conditions in this camp were even worse than those in the Jungle, prompting MSF (Doctors Without Borders) to donate €2.6 million of the €3.1 million needed to build a planned camp in nearby Grande-Synthe. The Dunkirk town hall put up the remainder of the funds, as the national government was strongly opposed to this action as part of its Let's Treat People Like Garbage So They'll Stop Coming official policy. I will write much more about Dunkirk in another post, but wanted to provide a full context of the area.
Who is coming to Calais?
The refugees living in the Calais Jungle are from a variety of places across East and North Africa (Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia), the Middle East (Iraq, Syria, Iran), and South and Central Asia (Afghanistan, Pakistan). Within these groups are subsets of people that you might expect: Muslims from the Darfur region of Sudan, Kurds from Iraq and Iran, Bedouins from Kuwait, people from the tribal regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan. Main spoken languages are Pashto, Urdu, Arabic (spoken by the Middle Easterners, the North Africans, and the Muslim Sudanese), Farsi, Tigrinya, and Kurdish. Some people have picked up bits of European languages from places they passed through on their way to Calais--Italian or German, usually--some speak conversational English, a handful speak basic French, and many speak next to nothing outside of their mother tongue. The vast majority of the camp consists of men between the ages of maybe 17-35, many, if not most, of whom have families in their home country relying on them for income and/or safe passage in the future. According to the most recent census conducted by Help Refugees and published online on May 10, 2016, there are approximately 5,200 people living in the Calais Jungle. This number includes 528 children, of whom 420 (74%) are unaccompanied. I had a brief conversation with one of the census coordinators, who made clear the difficulties inherent in basing statistical analysis on word of mouth. The census is conducted by volunteers who have the whole camp mapped out into sections.
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| The spray painted numbers indicate a makeshift address to aid conductors of the census. 4N35 means the 4th section of the north part of the camp, shelter number 35. |
Each shelter/hovel/tent is marked with a spray painted address of sorts and those carrying out the census systematically approach each shelter to inquire as to its inhabitants. More often than not, however, not all inhabitants are in their homes, so the census requires trusting what people say about themselves and their neighbors. Further complicating this process is the fact that between 40-70 people a day are estimated to be arriving to Calais, while others leave the camp in attempts to smuggle themselves into the UK or seek asylum elsewhere.
Why are people coming to Calais right now?
The answer to this question is complex and varies widely depending on both whom you ask and where the migrant is coming from. From the people I spoke with, many people are coming from parts of the world that have been enmeshed in violent conflicts for decades. I spoke with a man from Afghanistan who had served as a translator for US Special Forces and was subsequently denied any US support in leaving the country after the Taliban targeted his family for his cooperation with the Americans. After his father and brother were killed by the Taliban for this reason, he knew that he remained in Afghanistan on borrowed time. "Our country has been at war for as long as I have been alive," he said. "I have no memory of my country before there was war. There is no future there. I went many times to the American Embassy in Kabul, I said, 'Look at what I have done for you. I am not safe, my family is not safe.' They said there was nothing they could do." I had heard stories like this before I went to Calais, most notably in an episode of This American Life, but to hear it spoken to me from the mouth of a human being standing in front of me was heartbreaking. I felt a tremendous sense of shame on behalf of the US, not that I'm patriotic in the first place, and told him so. "I know that you are not your country," he said, and again I felt embarrassed, both by the fact that he was in the position of consoling me and because his attitude, despite everything he has been through, bears a nuanced understanding of global identity that is completely absent in the widespread American attitude that we shouldn't admit refugees because WHAT IF THEY'RE IN ISIS AND ARE TRYING TO DESTROY AMERICA???!!!
Most of the Sudanese people I met are from the Darfur region, and many of them had spent the last few years living elsewhere in Africa or the Middle East. I met a completely charming sixteen-year-old who is lucky enough to be in the Jungle with his twin brother, two younger siblings and mother. In impeccable English, he explained to me that although he was born in Darfur, he spent most of his life in Libya after fleeing the conflict. Now that the situation in Libya was going belly up, his mother decided it was time to try their luck seeking asylum in Europe. I bumped into him again on my last night in Calais, and he told me his family had been granted asylum in France and would be relocated the following week.
I should mention that everything I relate that was told to me should be taken with a grain of salt, to the extent that it is impossible for me to know the truth behind these stories. It is of course possible that the guy from Afghanistan had not served in the Special Forces, that this kid and his family were not granted asylum in France, that the true ages and identities of the people I met are entirely different from what they told me. I can only relate what I was told and am happy to be corrected and confronted by those more knowledgable than me.
How are European countries responding to this intensified migration crisis?
Responses to the influx of refugees from the Middle East, South Asia and Africa vary widely across Europe. The main points of entry to the continent are Italy, Greece and Turkey. While an average of 1,000-2,000 refugees are crossing from Turkey into Greece every day, countries including Austria, Macedonia, Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia have effectively closed their borders to all incoming migrants, trapping asylum seekers in Greece and, according to the Human Rights Watch Greece specialist Eva Cossé, risking "turning Greece into a giant refugee camp." This figure of arriving migrants is down significantly from 2015, during which the daily average was 2,000-3,000. In an attempt to stem the flow of human migration, the EU signed a deal with Turkey in March, stipulating that Turkey will "take back all migrants and refugees who enter Greece illegally, including Syrians, in return for the EU taking in thousands of Syrian refugees directly from Turkey and rewarding it with more money, early visa-free travel and progress in its EU membership negotiations" (Guardian). That this deal may be entirely illegal according to international law is besides the point.
In speaking with some of the volunteers who have either been to Greece recently or have contacts in the humanitarian aid sector there, many Greek citizens are highly activated in favor of welcoming refugees, as evident in the success of projects like Refugees Welcome, a group that initially began in Berlin to match incoming refugees with citizens willing to share their home. However, the combination of Greece's continually dire financial situation and a longstanding, active fascist party, is causing the Greek welcoming of refugees to wear thin. One video, taken by the Turkish Coast Guard. appears to show a Greek Coast Guardsman trying to spike an inflatable boat carrying dozens of refugees in order to sink it. Another video, seemingly taken from within a boat, shows a similarly hostile interaction between migrants and Turkish authorities. According to the New York Times, "The absence of functioning government institutions in Greece — and the total lack of a collective European Union policy to address the crisis — have created the conditions that hateful ideologies need in order to grow." The shift towards isolationist nationalism is occurring throughout Europe and the US (Trump, anyone?) and should not be taken lightly. One of the first rules I was told at the Help Refugees warehouse was not to take any photos of the outside of the facility, as there were active fascist groups in the area whom organizers fear may attack aid workers and resources. Meanwhile, in the UK, lots of misconceptions exist about just how many refugees are seeking asylum and remaining in the country, in addition to why and how many people want to enter in the first place. Britain has committed to accepting 20,000 Syrian refugees over the next four years, representing 0.03% of the overall population and 0.4% of the migrant population. The graphics in this article make clear the seriously low proportion of asylum seekers the UK is accepting, relative to other European countries such as Germany, Hungary, France, Italy, Sweden and Austria. The US plans to accept only 10,000 Syrians out of the 4 million who have been displaced by the ongoing civil war.
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| Southern part of the camp, post-eviction |
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| Notice that this pole is completely charred |
The Evictions
In February of this year, a court in Lille granted the city of Calais legal permission to evict inhabitants of the southern half of the camp. These evictions were no joke and occurred over a very short period of time. Authorities said the evictions would take three weeks; it took them just over two. Authorities said force would not be used to remove people. But the volunteers and refugees I met told a different story, in which police in full riot gear entered the camp and systematically went through section by section, throwing tear gas into shelters to force people out, beating them with batons and setting fire to the cleared homes. One of the chefs I worked with, who has been volunteering for the better part of the last six months, described pulling people out of burning buildings--sometimes refugees, sometimes riot police. Multiple people described French police and firefighters not only refusing to intervene and extinguish fires in the camp, both during the evictions and on a regular basis, but actively preventing both residents and volunteers from doing so. Another long-termer told me that in the Ashram Kitchen, a community-run restaurant staffed by volunteers and camp residents, people were constantly forced to run outside because of the tear gas. At one point they threw away all the food they had prepared, as they were worried it had been contaminated by so much gas. The population of the camp, as estimated by Help Refugees, went from roughly 5,500 to under 5,000, and results of the most recent census predict that the current population of the camp will reach 5,500 within a month's time, only now the refugees inhabit half the space they once had. French authorities are reinforcing their policy that any top-down approach to improve conditions will encourage even more people to migrate; the justification for evictions was that conditions were so awful. As one volunteer was quoted in the Guardian,
“We agree about the Jungle not being a suitable place for people to live, and we’d totally support the local authorities to sort this out,” she said. “But we thought people would get a week to consider their options. And it would have worked. But wade in with gas canisters and you’re going to scatter people and cause fear and resentment.”
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| Empty tear gas canisters as art |
Refugees were given the option to move to the container camp built by the government, in which cooking is banned and fingerprints are required for entry, despite the fact that at the time of the eviction there were less than 150 of 1,500 total spaces left. They were also offered transportation to a refugee camp in Montpelier, a small city in the South of France, though it's easy to understand why they would be apprehensive about following the same people who just tear gassed them onto a bus to an unknown location. In the wake of the evictions, several smaller "jungles" have sprung up in wooded areas between Calais and Dunkirk. In addition, 129 unaccompanied minors remain unaccounted for.
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| The container camp, built by the French government |
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| Cooking is not allowed in the container camp and 10-12 people sleep in bunk beds within each unit |
Volunteering
My days began each morning at breakfast in the hostel, where I would meet other volunteers and people would ask for and solicit lifts to the warehouse and camp. My first few days, I traveled with Bertrand, a super nice French dude from Marseille who lives in Bristol and runs a small theater company. We ended up spending a lot of time together, as he worked in the kitchen also and we went twice to the library in the camp after working to participate in the conversation group for refugees interested in practicing their skills. He had spent several days volunteering in October, and it was good for me to have someone to bounce my reactions and feelings off of.
I would arrive at the warehouse by 9AM and head straight to the kitchen, though the first few days I went to the daily briefing for volunteers in which long-termers go over the suggested etiquette for being in camp--women shouldn't wear leggings and should put up their hair, no one should be going to camp unless they're doing a specific job which requires it, no one should be in the camp after dark, period. This meeting was my first real introduction to the unique ecosystem between volunteers and refugees, which involves dynamics between long term volunteers and short term volunteers, the types of people that are drawn to this work, and the standard dynamics between lots of people with both great intentions and personal agendas. Most of the long term volunteers live onsite in caravans next to the warehouse.
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| Donations in the warehouse need to be sorted |
The caravans are unheated--I can only imagine how absolutely freezing they must have been in the winter, considering the fact that I was there in May wearing a short-sleeved shirt, a long-sleeved shirt, a fleece, a down jacket and a rain jacket in the middle of the day. There are portapotties and an outdoor sink, as well as a shower in a caravan that seems to never have hot water (not that I know from experience). People there long term, meaning a month or more, generally work seven days a week, taking a day or two off every few weeks to go home or earn money for a few days. Though I definitely don't have what it takes to be so cold for so long, (honestly that is hands down the condition I would find most difficult to tolerate), I understand and empathize with the drive to stay and contribute as long as possible. When you're part of a team that is feeding 1700 people per day, people who have been objectified and marginalized in a way that is hard to imagine prior to seeing it in person, actively participating in a movement to restore a semblance of comfort or dignity by nourishing people with hot, healthy food--that's a feeling that is hard to walk away from. Please don't misunderstand what I am saying as giving myself a pat on the back. On the contrary, I feel tremendously uncomfortable when people congratulate me for "doing such a good thing," as I feel so tiny and so insignificant and contributing so little in relation to so many of the other people I met over the course of my time there. I won't pretend that I went to volunteer for any reason other than that it made me feel good and useful and valued after a year of feeling needy and listless. I am lucky that I was raised by people who taught me that serving others was the highest and most honorable pursuit, and in some ways to evaluate my own self-worth on the positive contributions I made to people and communities around me.
I constantly feared I was contributing to the sense of voyeurism that is hard to avoid as a white, non-migrant volunteer. A reporter from the Atlantic articulates this feeling in a thoughtful article on Syrians in Calais:
"The place, to use British Prime Minister David Cameron’s dehumanizing rhetoric, was 'swarming' alright—but with journalists looking for a story, not with migrants. Within minutes of me striking up a conversation with a refugee from Afghanistan, an irate and imperious reporter intervened to commandeer her “subject” for further probing. I was taken aback. And yet, not five minutes later, I was asking my guide where I could find the camp’s Syrian inhabitants, and who among them might speak English."
I found myself frequently judging other volunteers for doing the exact thing I was, and justifying to myself why the way in which I was behaving was somehow different, better, more considerate, less patronizing. I was particularly frustrated by a woman who was distributing food with us one day, a pensioner from Ireland who made no effort to converse with the people she was serving and insisted on having her photo taken during the busiest moment of distribution. After we packed up at the end of the afternoon, we were invited for a cup of chai in the Sudanese tent, an enormous canvas structure in which maybe seventy cots and sleeping bags are crammed next to one another to provide warmth and security for the men that live there.
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| A safe place for toothbrushes in the Sudanese tent |
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| Inside the Sudanese tent |
We sat on the edge of the cots, sipping sweet chai and meeting some of the guys, one of them joking, "Here in Sudanese tent, everyone is Ahmad or Muhammad!" The other volunteer turned to me, clicking her tongue and saying, "These poor, poor Sudanese boys." In processing why this statement and its accompanying attitude made me so angry, I realize that what bothers me most about it was the reinforcement of volunteers and refugees as a mutually exclusive dichotomy. Part of what I interpret as being most damaging about the emergence of these refugee camps, as opposed to concerted efforts at resettlement, is that it sends the message that we are not the same, that some lives are worth more than other lives, that refugees are objectified as pitiable "souls" (another term I heard used to describe people in the camp), rather than people with whom we stand in solidarity. If this all sounds trite and cliché, I apologize. But seeing with my own eyes what 5,000 individuals, desperate for safety, fair choices and the most basic human rights of food, shelter and dignity, was a shattering and deeply devastating experience. Volunteering in Calais has left me with many contradictory feelings, knowledge of truths that are both opposite and coexisting.
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| Food for 1,700 people |
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| I spent the better part of two days peeling tiny onions. |
My presence there was both important and meaningful, while being completely insignificant and lacking an impact in any larger sense. I was filled with disgust and shame at the ways in which my government and tax dollars support the economic and physical violence that has driven people from their homes to this place, and experienced a profound hopelessness in the face of the enormity of this crisis. Yet I also met the most beautiful, giving and kind people that spend every day working towards a better future. Interacting with these people--volunteers and refugees alike--filled me with a sense of optimism and faith in human potential. These impressions, opposite and equally true, make it difficult for me to speak about my experience in a coherent manner.
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| Me and the Robot Coupe: A Love Affair Chefs needed six trays of sliced onions every day. |
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| HELLA garlic. Just imagine how long it took to peel these. |
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| Food distribution |
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| Salad mixin' |
There were many times when I was reminded of Corrymeela, the peace and reconciliation residential center in Northern Ireland where I volunteered for a year. Both places draw a somewhat self-selecting crowd of young people, hippies, activists, retired do-gooders, and non-normative people who live their lives off the beaten path. I think this type of work and service tends to attract people who volunteer to feel part of the solution rather than the problem, and who tend to have poor boundaries when it comes to giving too much of themselves (thought maybe I am just projecting). It's clear that many people burn out volunteering, yet also fear that if they leave, things will fall apart. To be sure, at least in the kitchen, every volunteer does matter. As was evident in my conversations with an awesome Aussie who has been coming regularly since October, there are many tasks and functions that fall through the cracks and don't get done when certain people are not around. It's also easy to imagine how egos could easily interfere with the day-to-day business of providing for so many people in need.
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| Formerly the southern part of the Jungle |
At the end of my first day, I went with Bert to Jungle Books, a library that was established by volunteers where English and French classes are offered, wifi is (sometimes) available, and a generator allows people to charge their phones. In the evenings, volunteers come after working in the warehouse to help people practice their language skills. For many, if not most, volunteers, this is their only opportunity to actually interact with people who live in the camp and to see it. Jungle Books is one of the only structures on the south side of the camp that the police agreed not to destroy during the evictions, so it now lies outside the main camp area (though it used to be right in the middle of the busiest part of the camp). This area is now a veritable wasteland--a garbage-strewn dirt lot covered with bulldozer tracks.
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| Outside Jungle Books |
Bert and I were the first volunteers to arrive and it took us a few minutes to find the right place. The makeshift building was dark inside but warm, with a few young men huddled around the power strip charging their phones and a more formal English lesson taking place in the corner. I started to chat to a few guys from Afghanistan, including a sixteen-year-old who made the journey completely on his own and was applying for asylum in the UK to join his uncles in Lewisham. I asked if they spoke Urdu (they did), and when I busted out my basic Hindi, they went nuts, calling their friends over to hear this white lady from Amreeka say in their language that she prefers Amir Khan to Salman and Shah Rukh. They brought me tea and couldn't get enough of hearing my broken speech; it was a little overwhelming but it felt good to have an interaction that was less tired and scripted than simply me asking them to tell me their sob stories. At some point I looked over to see a Syrian guy, whom I had met a few minutes prior, stamping on a plastic milk crate to break it into smaller pieces. My confusion only lasted a few seconds, as he then began shoving the pieces into the wood-burning stove. Horrified, I cried out for him to stop, saying, "It's poison to burn that! Please don't!" He just looked at me with a side smile and said, "This? This is wood, made from trees. It burns very well." As the small, dark space filled with the choking smell and smoke from burned plastic, I reflected on this place, so set apart from the city and the European outside world.
Life in the camp in some ways seemed shockingly normal, especially after being there for a few days.
There are churches and mosques throughout the camp, as well as a library, a youth center, restaurants, shops. several schools, medical clinics, and spaces designated for games like dominoes, where people watch as actively as they play.
Shops like this dot the camp, often stocked with cheaper goods bought in Belgium.
Restaurants such as this one, the Three Idiots, cater largely to the European volunteers who can afford to buy food.
This fantastic meal cost €5 per person. The fried chicken was DELISH.
One of the Idiots. The proprietors are Pakistani and took great pleasure at my feeble Hindi.
Two British women run this community space which provides daily yoga and acupuncture,
as well as a quiet area in which to congregate
as well as a quiet area in which to congregate
British actress Juliet Stevenson visited the Jungle and was disturbed by the lack of resources and public spaces designated for women. She bought this double decker bus and had it repurposed to house a school on the top floor and a women's center on the lower deck. Afterwards, people crowdfunded to pay her back.
Artistic graffiti peeks out in unexpected places
The underpass below the notorious road leading to the port. It is from this road that migrants attempt to stow away on trucks that board the ferries. Dozens of people have died attempting to cross the English channel this way, as well as on foot through the Channel Tunnel.
The UK government paid for the double layer of barbed wire fencing that lines the road.
Banksy mural, of course. I assume Steve Jobs was chosen as the subject because his father was a Syrian immigrant.
A friend told me that the Arabic text says "I miss you," transliterated.
Ten gold stars to whoever can translate the Arabic text.
"Maybe this whole situation will just sort itself out."
How strange to be back in a world where my back isn't sore, where I spend money on things I don't really need, where my travel is uninhibited by my citizenship (well, mostly). It's hard to believe I spent such a short amount of time there, considering how much of my thoughts are currently occupied by the experience. A friend I made who spends pretty much all of her days off volunteering there explained how useless she feels when not in Calais, how her sense of purpose has become intimately tied to her voluntary work with refugees. And as much as I believe in the work being done there by smart, highly capable, kind people, it breaks my heart how short term this solution is, how little concern there is for the people in the camp among those with power to change the situation. I think of the smaller shantytowns I see every day in Oakland under the freeways, of the countless undocumented children that have been migrating to the US from Central America over the past several decades, jumping on trains north and enduring the cruelest of conditions in a desperate search for basic safety. The scale of what is happening in Calais and throughout Europe cannot be denied and should not be ignored. But in the grand scheme of things, is it really so different from what has been happening all along?
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| Eritrean church that was left standing during the evictions |
What you can do
For information and to hear testimonies collected by a friend of mine and other volunteers in Vial, a camp on Chios in Greece that serves as a first point of entry, visit:
To donate money, time, or food to the Refugee Community Kitchen, where I volunteered, visit:
To donate money to Calais Kitchens, which supplies refugees in Calais and Dunkirk with nonperishable ingredients so they can cook for themselves, visit:
To donate money or to learn more about the umbrella organization that coordinates the majority of humanitarian operations in the Jungle, visit:
The random nature of good fortune was never so starkly apparent to me as when I returned by car across the French border into England, after barely two minutes of examination by border control, onto a train that crosses the Channel in half an hour. This is the world we live in, where for reasons rooted in history, racism, privilege and power, I have the physical freedom to cross almost any border I please while so many others cannot.
