You would expect someone to return from the ‘Jungle,’ camp at Calais full of emotion. Sadness and anger for the needs of the people who are there and abhorrence towards the way they’re being treated, the heart raging at the lack of an official response to the situation. But after visiting Calais over the weekend all I feel is this odd emptiness. Wave after wave of different feelings and reactions to the things we saw and did there.

Certainly seeing the ‘Jungle,’ for the first time was a shock. One minute you’re driving over the usual motorways in France and the next minute you turn away to face a police car and come over the crest of a hill to see a town of tents in front of you; stepping straight from France to the third world. It’s an experience that scares you, and the hordes of people that wander the streets outside the camps look, on first glance, to be threatening. But this is judgemental. As you approach you see that these are smiling faces. Arms raised in welcome. Happy whooping. Thumbs up.

Panic

The intention was to meet the Auberge des Migrants charity to help sort the food and contribute the care packages from North Wales to the distribution. But it was soon evident that the ‘Jungle’ isn’t somewhere where you can make and stick to plans. After a smooth distribution from the experienced charity, we then tried to move the que (which was hundreds if not thousands of people long) towards our van.

I don’t know if it was the panic of the van closing its doors or the glimpse of the care packages that were prepared in Bethesda that did it, but we almost lost control and the Van doors had to be shut in case the situation turned into a riot. I loathe to use heated words like these. Suggesting a riot makes the people sound wild, uncivilised and ungrateful. But this wasn’t the people we met. We saw kind, affable and moral people. People who wanted to share with us the little they had to share. I was offered a valuable banana from a man from Sudan, and after refusing it by saying I’d had a good breakfast, he responded by saying it was his breakfast…it was 15.00 in the afternoon.

Completely unfair

There’s no denying that the ‘Jungle,’ is completely uncivilised, but it’s the situation not the people. You have to take a step back and think when you see a food bag – there wasn’t much more than a bottle of oil a bag of rice and about two or three tins of tomatoes or vegetables that can make a crowd of hundreds almost lose control?

What kind of situation do these people live in that we had to hide the fact that we had tens of standard tents in case we started a riot? A completely unfair situation that’s what. But there is hope. Even though there isn’t a large charity working in this camp (why not I can’t answer) there is hope. Local individuals such as the Auberge des Migrants charity meet in their homes to prepare food parcels twice a week. This isn’t a large, formal group, but rather loyal individuals in their sixties or older, that can’t let such suffering and lack of respect towards their fellow man happen on their door step. In their home, in a barn next to their caravan tents, blankets and essential goods are kept.

Hope comes also in the form of individuals like Zimaco, a refugee himself, who has built a school in the ‘Jungle,’ not Unicef, not Save the Children, but a refugee who is trying to make a better life for his fellow man under very difficult circumstances. And there is hope from all the people across North Wales who have contributed their time and goods to try and respond to this emergency.

A chain of kindness

Maybe this is why I’m not breaking my heart after returning from Calais. Because I can now see that people, albeit the shortcomings of authorities, are kind and want to help their fellow man. This is the image that will stay with me from the visit; walking away from Zimaco’s delightful school to smell the perfume of a meal being cooked in the ‘Jungle.’

An eye opener to think about the chain of kindness that is being formed; how the food from North Wales that is being passed today to the refugees through the kind hands of Auberge will be transformed into a feast to those who really need it. Whilst there are good people in the world and whilst these people can work together, indeed, even in the face of a huge human catastrophe like this, there is hope.