A donation drop-off for Project Play
I arrived at the L’Auberge Warehouse in Calais with a car full of toys!
Donated by Trish at Farnham Help for Refugees in UK and Overseas, there’s lots of balls and hoops and small noisy instruments, to bring big smiles to precious little faces, in the expert hands of Marwa and the team at Project Play.
Marwa told me that the clearances in Grande Synthe (Dunkirk) last week meant their main play site now has no children so their services are temporarily paused. (They’re still busy though as this week is moving time as everyone vacates the Collective Aid warehouse to move into L’Auberge and the team were still there late last night).
Like everyone else here, Project Play know it’s only a matter of time before everyone bussed to unknown destinations across France a few days’ ago, will be back in Grande-Synthe again soon. For me, the famous quote “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result” comes to mind when it comes to the French authorities and their clearances… It’s been six years now and and countless £millions (I use £ not € on purpose because it’s all largely funded by the U.K. tax payer) and the only thing France and the U.K. Government achieve each time is human cruelty.
Over the summer Project Play could have 30+ children at their play sessions. Children sleeping in fields at night. Children being subject to heavy police actions. Children not allowed to board a ferry so cross the f* Channel in a f* dinghy . Children.
So a huge huge thank you to Activities Coordinator Marwa, and all at Project Play, for remembering the children and always being there for them during childhoods no child should ever have to suffer .
Project Play are part of the new Calais Collaboration Calais Appeal.
water Distribution with Calais food Collective
What’s the intent when the police block access paths with boulders?
What’s the intent when police slash the water tanks charities provide?
Did you know that for Calais Food Collective (CFC) to fill one of their large water tanks twice a day they have to park the van on a busy supermarket access junction because the safer off-road option is now blocked by police-enforced boulders? Which means twice a day they risk the police fining them €130 for bad parking!
Lily and Penny are the young and very committed CFC volunteers who took me out on water distro yesterday morning.
A young man was filling two water bottles when we arrived. Many others walked past as we waited for the tank to fill, all calling out a friendly “good morning” and “how are you” as they passed by. Some saying “thank you”. All young black men, Sudanese or perhaps some Ethiopian or Eritrean.
If these young men don’t get water they “would typically only last three to four days”… Lily and Penny know this. I know this. You know this. So surely the smart, intelligent, clever people in the French police and prefecture know this.
I’m in awe of Lily, Penny and all of the volunteers in Calais, again and again. Not only is it hard work here, but you need nerves of steel to do the right thing. So THANK YOU to everyone bravely doing the right thing to save lives; especially when it means going head-to-head with the police and government every single day.
“At least 60% of the adult body is made of water. A human can go without food for about three weeks but would typically only last three to four days without water.”
— Reuters
FOOD Distribution with Calais food Collective
There’s an unofficial camp the Calais Food Collective volunteers call Unicorn and, mid afternoon, I was asked if I wanted to go on a food distribution there with French volunteers Jade and Leah. The invite came with an apology that there were only two wheel barrows .
I’d helped Penny finish up the packs in the morning – enough for 220 people divided between crates for 5, 10 or 20 people – each with potatoes, onions, pears, rice, tins of tuna, a catering-size tin of kidney beans, and some dessert yoghurts.
The Calais Woodyard had been to this camp earlier in the day and the food distro is done to each fire with the mini-communities around each sharing the crates of food. Even with their fires, I have to wonder how they’ll cook potatoes or rice, but then I also know how ingenious people can be when they need to.
Unicorn was a cold waste ground. Hugging its edge to the left were around 25 small tents and ahead I could see small tarps strung up from a high wall. Up close I could see tents under the tarps I guess giving the people living there a tiny bit more protection and privacy?
Every few tents there was a fire outside and a couple of people sitting around it, often on giant tyres. Surviving on this wasteland those tyres were almost the only resource available to the people and so they were in use all around.
Sometimes there were fires inside the tents and it was so cold I’m sure I’d have done the same.
The ‘camp’ was awful in every way. No one should be living like this. Ever. This is our shame – U.K. and France .
Apart from the lack of everything – toilets, showers, a kitchen, play ground, everything – and the bitter cold, what would get to me the most is living with the hostility and clear knowledge that no one wants me here. I mean, being cleared from scrap land time and again and being stopped from accessing the most essential human needs for life like a roof, food and water, resources that are plentiful and in plain sight, but for everyone else and not for you. It makes me feel sick that we are doing this to people.
And then the boredom. Day after day with nothing to do. I’d go crazy.
We went back and forth van to camp fire with the wheelbarrows giving out the crates of food, laughing and chatting with the people a little as we went. There was always a welcome offer to help push the full heavy wheelbarrows for us and they were all so polite in returning the crates once they’d moved their food.
With the last delivery made, we packed up our wheelbarrows for the day and headed back to the warehouse. The team will be back at unicorn again soon. And so the heart-breaking cycle of Calais continues .
SHOE Distribution with Collective Aid
As the sun set, the Collective Aid team prepared to return to a site called Coquelle (where we filled the water earlier in the day).
They’d been to the site earlier to find those in need of replacement shoes, ask their size and give them a ticket to come back later to collect their shoes. It was now later.
After a half hour drive to site, the team set up in a field by the side of the road in the dark. Chairs were placed on the grass and the men queued in the dark and cold patiently waiting for their turn. Each volunteer brought a pair of shoes from the van in the right size for each man to try on. They quickly realised they’d forgotten to bring socks so I offered to go to neighbouring Auchan (supermarket) to buy some.
No matter what the circumstances, fashion is as important as comfort and some volunteers were returning for a different pair of shoes in the same size 3-4 times until the client was happy. Some clients appeared to settle for shoes in the wrong size because they liked them better – something I remember doing when I was younger too (and usually regretting!).
It was really cold – as it is in Calais more often than not – and some of the guys waiting only wore flip-flops or broken shoes on their feet.
About 20 men got replacement shoes that day (they were second-hand donated shoes, not new). It took six volunteers, two vans, torch light and several hours. The insanity of it all wasn’t lost on me.
