Personal account

A weekend ferry trip on a Saturday in October might suggest cut-price alcohol in a northern French town. Both Calais and Dover are the tired departure lounges for ongoing travel that barely remain in the memory beyond the call to return to the vehicle deck for the ramp towards land. But the French port has a far more troubling aspect these days - the world within a world that is the Jungle. No amount of hearsay can ever tell the truth about the realness of things. The campsite is a sobering limbo between the danger or poverty in the developing world and the promise of a more secure future in the wealthy western countries of Europe. It has evolved into a desperate waiting room. A generation of people floats between residential and industrial Calais on filthy scrubland with no sanitation to speak of. Believe me, this is no place you want to be, but it is nevertheless home to thousands of people who survive day to day, hand to mouth. I have had conversations with intelligent types who question the wisdom of “encouraging migrants” to be there, by offering them aid. But when you are handing out shoes to children who are walking around in dressing gowns and wet socks, stepping gingerly between rocks and filth, you realise that they need help here and now. I will not accept any ongoing argument that they shouldn’t be there because that just distracts us from the fact that they are and they need help.