Volunteering in the Jungle

This past Saturday, I had the privilege of going to Calais, France to volunteer in the Jungle Refugee camp. I was one of five women who traveled down from St. Albans to Calais. We left at 3:30am to arrive at 5:30am and meet our group. The night before we packed my car completely full with donated clothes for men and teenage boys including new socks and underwear as well as winter gear etc. My car was so full, there was not even as much as an air pocket of space left. (My car is a 7 seater.) My friend and I climbed in the two front seats (the other three women drove in a different car)and while driving bags of clothes kept falling down on us, but we made it to the tunnel where we met up with our group and transferred the donations to a van. We went through the Eurotunnel and made our way to the Calais warehouse where we unloaded several vans of food and clothes. It was quite an impressive haul. We spent several hours unloading the vans and moving pallets of food into the warehouse. People are always rushing around all over the warehouse. On the far left side is the kitchens where they provide one meal per day for as many refugees as they can. The camp now has 10,000 refugees including 1,000 unaccompanied children. That is a lot of people to feed. As you move away from the kitchens, there are shelves, pallets and stacks of all food waiting to be used as well as long tables for assembling food parcels etc. They had a lot more food this time than they had last time. I was glad to see it since they also have several thousand more refugees this time than they did back in June. Moving toward the middle of the warehouse is the area where all the clothes are sorted and then further along is where shelter building materials are stored including tents and tarpaulin etc. It is a big production. Everyone who works there are volunteers. There are no official NGOs in this camp either. The organizations providing aid were started by volunteers and are kept running completely by volunteers.  It is quite amazing.



Our group also brought down knitted squares from Utah as well as from our stake. Others brought knitted squares from all over England, France and Germany. We had three huge bin bags full of squares that we brought. All the squares were brought to the Dunkirk camp where they were used to make blankets. Two of the women from our group went to the Dunkirk camp Women's centre to help the refugee women and children put together the squares to make blankets. There were very positive comments about how it went. One woman was so pleased to see an Iraqi Kurdish woman leave the Women's centre with a blanket she had put together over her arm and a big proud smile on her face.

Here is my friend Jenn back at the warehouse in Calais packing shelves with tinned fish.

Men from Gravesend and Northampton unloading pallets of food in the warehouse.

A volunteer from Northampton helping a young girl put together squares in Dunkirk.

An action shot of me and my friend Raj taking a cart of pre-assembled hygiene kits into the warehouse. Raj patiently taught me how to make shutters last time I came. He is an incredibly skilled man but extremely patient. I very much appreciated his patience when I was getting the hang of the nail guns and drills.  

Volunteers from Northampton taking in finished blankets made of knitted squares they had pre-assembled.

Unloading the vans. I wish people in the States and elsewhere who feel helpless and want to do something to help would get on the British grocery store websites and order groceries for the camp. It could all be done from the comfort of their home and computer. This is what was done by many synagogues, mosques, churches and universities all over the UK. They simply got on Tesco.com and ordered stacks of flour and sugar etc. and had it delivered to our group in Kent. They then loaded all the food into our vans and we took it to Calais. It was amazing how much food we were able to take over. It felt so good unloading it all knowing there is 10,000 people to feed but sobering knowing how fast it all would go.  

After unloading all the vans at the warehouse, we joined our teams to set off to do our work for the day. I was part of the "shelter repair" team. We drove to the Jungle where we quickly realized the enormity of the camp. We drove through winding, narrow dirt roads lined with tents and shacks and while walking wondered how we would ever find our way back to the car. Fortunately, we were paired up with a South African volunteer named Callum who had been helping build shelters for about two months. He knew his way around so we just followed him everywhere. Above is part of my team taking a rest after hours of work.

On our way out of the camp, I took a few photos with my phone.

We worked behind a restaurant that looked similar to this one where we put together a make-shift shelter that used the rear all of the restaurant for one of its walls. The other end was held up by two other shelters making a rectangle which was covered with tarps for a shelter. It was going to house about 9 people in half of it to start but I am sure it will fill up with even more than that in no time. Before covering the walls and ceiling with tarps however, we had to get wood. We disassembled several old pallets with very brittle wood to make strips going across the ceiling and walls to hold up the tarps.  The French CRS (police) do not allow any wood to be brought into the camp so the residents have to be creative and use anything they can find. We nailed the brittle wood across from the back of the restaurant to the two shelters behind for the ceiling and then laid the tarps across. My friend Jenn had the awful task of being on the roof to nail the tarps and wood in place. I kept thinking she would fall through if she put any weight on this wood. Fortunately, she was able to sit on the roof of the restaurant which was sturdy and stretch across to nail the tarps in place. While we worked, the people we were building the shelter for, kept bringing us tea to thank us. We were in the Afghani section of the camp. They were so grateful for our help and supplies. They were so patient with our work too and did not try to butt in or take over.  They patiently let the women do things and were happy to help where they could. I never felt threatened or in any kind of danger. I only felt the utmost respect from them. After we finished the walls and ceiling we laid more pallets down as a floor for them to sleep on to get them off the dirt. It didn't look comfortable. It was a pretty hot day so I had to leave the shelter to get some air. However, I couldn't help but think how cold the shelter would be in a matter of a few weeks with winter coming.  Also in the back of my mind, I kept thinking what a shame this all was, it seemed our work was almost in vain since in a few short weeks, (31 October) the French government has announced their intention to dismantle and demolish the entire camp. They want to disburse all residents to asylum centres all over France. This plan has been criticized for not really dealing with the problem but instead creating little jungle camps all over France. Besides, the last time the northern portion of the camp was demolished, hundreds of unaccompanied children simply vanished most likely to human traffickers.

Here is Jenn on the roof of the shelter.

Another photo from the car on the way out.

 

This is a shot of "main street"

It was a sobering day. At one point when we first arrived at the camp, we got out of our cars with piles of tarpaulin (tarps) to take to specific jobs we had been assigned. All of a sudden, we were bombarded by about 10 men pleading for a tarp to fix a leaky roof or build a shelter. We almost started giving the tarps away but were quickly told to stop since we would cause a riot or stampede. People were so desperate. We had to turn them all away. That was difficult.