Crammed in the back of a small van, perched awkwardly amongst bags and bags of donated food, we wait. The road surface changes and we lurch side to side, aware that we are now in the ‘’Jungle’’. A feeling of trepidation pervades. This is our first trip to Calais to distribute aid. Despite other volunteers’ stories, we have popular media images and clichés running through our minds. Most volunteer are young students, hoping to change the world, or at least give one hungry person the chance for one meal, for one day. We want to help; to bring hope. The doors open. A makeshift stone covered “road” opens out into a space surrounded by plastic covered “huts” or tents. There are no desperate crowds thronging the van. There is no fevered pawing at us. No emotional pleas. Instead, an orderly que quickly forms. Quiet, humbled people file forward to accept a supermarket carrier bag of foreign food to them. Some smile and some practise their few words of English. Most exclude a grim determination to survive, to keep intact their dignity. A few months ago perhaps, If we had been strangers in their country we would have been greeted with their legendary eastern hospitality, made to talk over endless tea, shared their meals. We try to smile. They try to smile. The last bag is passed out. “finished”. One English word that is definitely understood. Resigned, weary, they slide away empty handed, absorbed by the sea of rough dwellings. The space is easily empty again - as if we had never been there. There is a feeling of anti-climax as we pile back into the van, desperately hoping that our tiny contribution has meant something. Eager to do it again. And again.
It is hard to make sense of coming back. Hours earlier we had been surrounded by some of the most desperately poor and grimly determined people currently on the planet. “Displaced”, ”migrants”, ”refugees’ - words used to describe these people are not adequate. Clichés tumble through my mind as I try to make any kind of sense of it all. There is no precedent in my experience; only historical images and faded and 2nd hand accounts of oppression begin to suffice. Can this be the same world I live in? A few kilometres out of the camp, in the centre of Calais we are in a typical out of season seaside town. It is empty, wet, bleak but familiar. A few locals and tourists brave the high winds and constant rain to venture into the town square where a handful of pubs and restaurants totter through the winter season. Was it like this in the town next to Sobibor? Treblinka? Did people have to shut down their conscience in order to survive that knowledge? The knowledge that in your town, your backyard, other people - people just like you - were surviving. Not living, barely existing but consciously surviving. Hanging onto whatever tiny thread of dignity and endurance they could muster? Yes, we still have to eat, sleep, to work. But somewhere in the back of our minds is the awareness that but for the unearned good fortune of being born here, we would be in their ill fitting, donated, leaking, shoes.
It is hard to make sense of coming back. Hours earlier we had been surrounded by some of the most desperately poor and grimly determined people currently on the planet. “Displaced”, ”migrants”, ”refugees’ - words used to describe these people are not adequate. Clichés tumble through my mind as I try to make any kind of sense of it all. There is no precedent in my experience; only historical images and faded and 2nd hand accounts of oppression begin to suffice. Can this be the same world I live in? A few kilometres out of the camp, in the centre of Calais we are in a typical out of season seaside town. It is empty, wet, bleak but familiar. A few locals and tourists brave the high winds and constant rain to venture into the town square where a handful of pubs and restaurants totter through the winter season. Was it like this in the town next to Sobibor? Treblinka? Did people have to shut down their conscience in order to survive that knowledge? The knowledge that in your town, your backyard, other people - people just like you - were surviving. Not living, barely existing but consciously surviving. Hanging onto whatever tiny thread of dignity and endurance they could muster? Yes, we still have to eat, sleep, to work. But somewhere in the back of our minds is the awareness that but for the unearned good fortune of being born here, we would be in their ill fitting, donated, leaking, shoes.
- Account written by Alison Hunt
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