LITMIR.BIZ

      The Jungle, Calais, February 2016

      – And forget going to the hospital. They treat you like a bowl of shit. If you come from here, they leave you sitting there for eight hours, then send you away with nothing. I went with a cough and fever. They would not look at me. A friend went with a swollen hand, but as he was not seeking asylum in France, they said they could not see him. He returned with a volunteer and it turned out he had broken his arm. If you go with a volunteer, it might be OK. The ambulances won’t come into the camp. I called them three times. Once for a woman about to deliver a baby, once for a man with a heart attack, another time a man was stabbed. Every time, we had to carry them out of the Jungle ourselves.

      Riyad stares down at his feet. He looks exhausted and very sad. He has tried the train thirteen times.

      – And you ask me why I don’t want to stay in France. He shakes his head. I won’t stay here.

      While we are talking, a man knocks on the door. He is a thin young Afghan in army fatigue trousers. He wants to talk to the Barrister. He was a British army translator. Everyone else he worked with already has asylum in the UK, including a friend who was in Calais.

      – Some army guys helped them. But I was in Germany at the time. The barrister explains that there is no actual law, and it would have been easier if he had applied from Afghanistan.

      – I could not stay, I was facing death threats.

      She says she will try to get in touch with the army officer who helped, if he can give details. He does not have any, just a phone number for the friend of a friend. This is how it goes—tiny painful steps. But for most, these run straight into a brick wall. The barrister says the reality is that there is no legal route for adults from the Jungle to get to the UK, unless they have a husband or wife already there. Nothing else counts.

      This discussion has left all of us tired and depressed. We decide to go and eat in the Kabul café. Tom and Shizuka have just arrived, and in the warmth and light with music on the DVD monitor, and plates of rice and chicken in front of us, it could be an evening out with friends anywhere. I feel completely at home.

       The Jungle, Sunday 7 February

      We wake to hail on the windows and local news that the fascists held their banned demonstration yesterday afternoon in town. Twenty of them were arrested.

      We have our own encounter with the police this afternoon. Maia from L’Auberge wanted to mark the destruction of the Mosque and a Church last week and plant wildflower seeds in the wide muddy strip that makes our new cordon sanitaire. So, a motley little group of refugees and volunteers head out, clutching our plastic cups full of seeds.

      We form a circle. Tom says a few words about remembering all the people who had come through, those who had stayed, and those who had not made it, and we have two minutes of silence. Meanwhile, the sunlight thinks it’s in a Turner painting and lights up the mass of dark grey clouds piling up above the camp, and we all walk across the muddy fields, as our seeds swirl out of the plastic cups in small tornadoes. A cluster of policemen wander down from their spot on the motorway, and, after polite discussion with Maia, tell us we have ten minutes to turn around and walk back whence we came. We do as we are told, while three van loads of police with riot shields form a small cordon to walk behind us. Wildflower seeds, so difficult to deal with, they drift in the wind and spring up anywhere.

      I head off to the Women and Children’s tent where Domdom, a retired French computer engineer from Calais, has set up a cinema. A delighted group of small children are watching Kung Fu Panda, with subtitles in four languages. Unfortunately, four teenage boys are bored and unhappy. One holds a long thin piece of metal; another has a knife. They are not threatening anyone, but they keep messing with the computer to the point where Domdom has had enough and shuts it down, to the distress of the smaller ones watching. They are all unaccompanied boys that Liz has taken under her wing. When she is there, they are contained and happy. She manages to provide affection and security, combined with clear boundaries, and they respect her. But when she is away, they run riot. When I suggest disarming them at the door, one of the volunteers snaps at me.

      – We have no exclusion policy and we have to look after the most vulnerable children.

      – But the most vulnerable are not always the noisiest and most aggressive. These boys are needy in one way, but so are some of the quiet younger ones. It may not be possible to work with them all in one place.

      – You don’t work here day after day!

      Certainly true. I retreat. The good thing is that a Youth Centre is starting this week. Besides indoor activities, Jess, Ben, Johnny and Jake will be organising boxing, football and cricket matches in the muddy space created by the cordon sanitaire. Hopefully, it will be a more attractive place for these teenagers.

      I have found Abdul. After the movie, he and his brother walk me back to his Caravan, untidy as the worst student bedsit, but at least dry and warm. Abdul also has a lawyer trying to track down his relatives in the UK, so he, too, has stopped trying to get onto trains. Just now, he was upset because someone stole his bicycle.

      – And too many people have died. People outside the camp are attacking us!

       The Jungle and Grand Synthe, Monday 8 February

      I am determined to get Adam to school. I find him coming from Salaam carrying breakfast: a carton of milk and a bag with some bread, jam and butter, and we head off to Jungle Books. There is a new sign up: “Didn’t make it to England? Keep calm and come to English lessons.”

      Adam tells me he is absolutely uninterested in stories. We select two horrible histories: one on mediaeval Britain and one on the 20th century—factually accurate and funny with pictures. Perfect.

      We go to see Cath who runs the radio station at Jungle books to see if he might like to help make radio programmes. Can I sing? He asks when she questions what he would like to record. Sarah arrives, and after a quick chat establishing that he completed grade 7 of primary school, tells him that he would be perfect for Class 2.

      Adam says he has to deliver a charger to a friend and promises to come back. I am uncertain whether this is procrastination. I will just keep trying. Rowan and I head off to Dunkirk.

      This camp is different. Just off the motorway into Grand Synthe, there is an upmarket housing development of detached villas with steep tiled roofs and dormer windows. It is surrounded by a forest: a nature reserve between highway and estate. I was admiring the living fence of trees that had been built to contain it, when I looked to ground level and saw that the woods were filled with scrappy tents held down by boulders with piles of rotting garbage and sodden clothes, which were intersected by deep rivers of mud—much worse than Calais.

      Almost

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