Personal account

A week on then from my first experience in the Jungle and things couldn’t be more different. Back to a midnight Dover last Sunday with an empty transit van, sleep deprived and mildly elated for some reason, it seemed all over. It might have been the end of some odd jolly. Then, a standard week back in the UK, which for most of us includes work, rest and play in some manner, was to follow. You keep trying to put Calais to the back of your mind, but it creeps in again when you least expect it to. My silent wanderings through the camp were perhaps the most memorable moments of my time last weekend. Ferrying food items and tents to different organisations afforded me the chance to watch people in that place. I never felt threatened or anxious wherever I was. Trailing a wheelbarrow of oranges through a small copse of trees to a satellite camp of Afghans allowed me to meet these new residents more directly. Their ages varied between 25 and 50 I would guess, and they were timid but very appreciative of the chance to eat fruit. I took a photo of one man while another refused to be my muse, but relations were friendly although they seemed genuinely at a loss to know how to engage. Everything that they once had in terms of possessions and sense of self have been stripped away here. They live in woodland in Northern France under donated plastic tents. They do not exist. But they came here because they want to exist, and that was their stark choice at the start of the journey. Hope is all they have now. I wonder how long that will last. Back in the centre of the Jungle were streams of people in a high street like no other. Two huge waste skips have been placed there for rubbish, and rubbish there certainly is now. But the French, despite promises to the contrary, do not remove it. This hub, which might be deemed the face of the camp, now has to have its nose rubbed in its own trash. I then set eyes on the stores that form the crossroads in the middle, made of sturdier infrastructure. With meshing to protect the sundry items which might be found in any suburban sweetshop, trade goes on even here.