Personal account

I was heartened by many “do gooders” I met in the Jungle last weekend, a band of decent people who want to improve the lives of strangers simply because they can and they feel they should. Like the Muslim builder guys from the midlands who saw my team unloading an articulated lorry of pallets to make shelters who immediately got involved by ferrying them to a church and a mosque. And then there are the refugees themselves. The Iraqi man who saw us handing out oranges before explaining in good English that we needed to be rationing it out evenly to lots of people, rather than letting individuals help themselves. He then came walking around with the wheelbarrow to do just that. And the humility and generosity of the Sudanese residents that welcome you into their spaces, offering sweet coffee and stories because that is all they have. The Eritreans who were too proud to let you saw the wood to make shelves in a storage building, begging you to let them do it themselves. When you are here, you realise the basic human wants of these people have been let down in their own societies. This problem is complex, but by waiting for the French to sort it out we make it worse. And winter is coming.