In the jungle: what the migrant crisis really looks like in Calais

Since Holly Hughes' arrival in Calais she has witnessed a consistent increase in evictions by France’s riot police, the CRS

Holly and her fellow Care4Calais volunteers prepare to distribute emergency clothing to those recently evicted in Calais. Picture: Matt Payne

Life on the ground at the notorious Calais jungle refugee camp has never been more bleak, and the situation looks set to worsen.

The desolate car park of the BP gas station on the outskirts of Calais is almost unrecognisable. What once was a place for refugees to gather to avail of the NGO services operating in the area has, overnight and thanks to the latest police eviction, become a new refugee settlement; yet another fragmented spin-off of the notorious Calais jungle.

As we unload phone charging units and urns of hot water from our volunteer van, we estimate that roughly 100 men must be sleeping here, out in the open and unprotected from the elements on patches of tarmac, parched grass and soil cracked from the summer heat. Sleeping bags or blankets are a luxury; tents are non-existent.

The luckiest among them hang tarps from the chain-linked fence, creating an improvised tunnel of shelter on the kerb that is no more than a metre in length. 

These are little more than awnings, with both ends exposed and open to the torrential rain and gale-force winds that have lambasted Northern France in the past weeks.

Washing hangs from the top of the fence.

The scene is depressing, desperate but unremarkable for anyone acquainted with the grim landscape of Calais. 

It is the reality – visceral and worsening – of the 1,200-1,500 refugees estimated to be living on the margins of industrial estates, in the hedgerows of dual carriageways, and underneath railway bridges.

Five kilometres away, the rest of the men evicted have congregated in copses near the hospital, turning what was a small settlement of approximately 80 Afghans into a volatile melting pot of 500 people.

These numbers are, of course, estimates. It is impossible to know just how many people pass through this strange holiday town on France’s Northern Coast: some are here for a matter of weeks before making it to the UK; some have been here for years.

It has been two months since I began volunteering with UK-based charity Care4Calais, an organisation established to deliver essential services and advocate for the safe arrival and welcoming of refugees to the UK.

Requests for shoes, reading glasses, and underwear for the children who all speak half a dozen European languages; for the heavily pregnant women living in bushes; for new fathers whose wives have just given birth and have nothing to clothe their newborn with are the unrelenting soundtrack of these distributions. They echo around the walls of my AirBnB each evening.

Since my arrival, I have witnessed a consistent increase in evacuations by France’s riot police, the CRS, here in Calais and Dunkirk, turning our work into an almost constant emergency response. 

Every 48 hours, CRS descend on communities armed with tear gas, batons and buses that bundle men, young families and unaccompanied minors off to centres dispersed throughout France.

Attempts to reach the UK by boat have risen in tandem with these evictions, with numbers crossing thus far in 2020 already exceeding the whole of 2019. 

On surfboards, in inflatable boats and ill-equipped dinghies, and using paddles or even shovels as oars, people are taking to the world’s busiest seaway with the reckless desperation of the choiceless. The name Abdulfatah Hamdallah is the only reference needed to know how too many of these odysseys end.

Holly prepares food packs, filled with tinned and fresh food, in the Care4Calais warehouse.

According to the prefecture, "the aim of these operations is to put an end to illegal occupations and to avoid the reconstitution of lawless areas and unhealthy camps." 

In truth, these evacuations seem designed not to eradicate lawlessness but to further eradicate any trace of the lives international law has abandoned and to extinguish, down to the last tent pole, any remaining shred of hope.

I often hear of the psychological warfare of these operations: a friend living in a Dunkirk camp tells me of police taking only one shoe from men to augment their indignity; another speaks of boats circling refugee dinghies with floodlights to disorient the drivers so that they no longer know where they’re going and sail blindly in circles, until they run out of fuel and are forced to call for help.

Hamada, a 19-year-old Eritrean who lived in the Calais jungle as a teenager before safely making it to the UK, is proof that this psychological abuse leaves an indelible scar. 

Walking with friends one night in London, safe and far from the trauma of Calais, a police car slowed down beside them. Without thinking, he began sprinting, believing himself back in France and once more at the mercy of police brutality.

Hamada, a beacon of hope and joyful antidote to every argument for securitisation, has returned to Calais as a volunteer. To the refugees who feel “empty, like dead bodies walking”, his presence here, his story, renew their fortitude: he made it, he is happy, he is due to start university this month.

To me, he is a reminder of the humanity, generosity, and boundless warmth of the kaleidoscopic people whose ebullient ‘thank you’s for the tea and coffee I serve show our shared belief that manners matter. 

Who, despite being lost to reductive headlines or political hyperbole that seek to only vilify or victimise, are individuals exactly like you and I, with decided preferences on how much sugar they like in their coffee (a lot) and exactly how skinny they want their jeans (the answer is almost always VERY skinny). All that separates us is circumstance…and the peril of an inflatable boat.