Adrian's visit to Grande Synthe camp in Dunkirk

After several weeks of aid being restricted to the camp, on the 8th of January Aid Box Convoy, The Bristol Based Group negotiated with the local Mayor to allow supplies of replacement tents and blankets to be allowed into the Grande Synthe Camp. Authorisation was given to bring supplies in on the 11th January- for one day only! The deliveries to the camp were to be supervised by council workers representing the Mayor's office to ensure that tents were replacements only as they don't want the camp to grow. The land is privately owned and has permission for development; the owners are also putting pressure on the Mayor's office.

There are currently approximately 3000 people in the camp. Three months ago there were approximately 700. More people are still arriving every day, despite the horrendous muddy waterlogged conditions.

Wyesham Scouts donated a number of large scout tents and some smaller tents. Ross for Refugees donated plastic sheeting to protect tents, insulation and plywood panels.

On arrival on the camp on Monday morning ABC had decided to get as much into the camp as possible, as they didn't know if they were going to be allowed to bring this type of aid in again. A large marquee was erected to store the materials, spare tents, blankets and lots of pallets. The pallets are used to raise tents out of the mud and also to make walkways across muddy and waterlogged areas.
There were a large number of volunteers who helped put up the marquee and fill it with supplies.

I worked with the French council workers for the early part of the day, removing damaged and disused tents. I asked Philip, the head of the group when the camp was going to be moved to the new site? He told me 5 weeks. He also told me the numbers were going to be restricted to 3000, the population of the area is about 7000, so they feel that's the maximum they can cope with.

The new camp is going to be within a few miles of the current site; it is being organised by Medecins Sans Frontiers. They have been given a subsidy of 1.5 million Euros by the French Government. The British Government is pressurising the French not to build the camp, as it is very close to the British Border

Most of the people in the camp are there because they escaping from conflict in the Middle East. Nearly all of them are Kurds, from Iraq, Iran and Syria. They are trying to get to Britain to claim political asylum. The people from Iraq in particular are escaping ISIS, where they have lost family members and live in constant threat to their lives. People are risking their lives to try to get onto lorries at the Channel Ports to get to the UK. I met a man, Kevius, from Iran, who spoke very good English, whom I'd met six weeks ago. He told me he'd tried to get onto a lorry 3 days before, and failed to get through. He will try again, as will countless others.

There are currently over 1 million refugees in Europe.  Approximately 10 000 of those are trying to get to Britain, that's about 1%. I am basing that on the numbers of people currently in Calais and Dunkirk.

Adrian Worgan
11th January 2016

Jane's experience sorting and distributing food in Calais

Last week I went over to Calais to drop off 100 food parcels which my brother in law had generously donated for the refugees in the camp. He sourced the food from a Aytac foods in London who import food from Turkey who generously gave the food at cost price.The food included oil, tins of vegetables, tomatoes, fish, apricots, dates and Turkish delight. Also, a big thanks to my dad who paid for me to transport the food to the warehouse.Whilst there, I met up again with Tina who I had worked with as a volunteer last December. She set up and runs the food distribution area in the warehouse which distributes food directly to the refugees in the camp and also supplies the community kitchens.I had a brief chat with her about her work and what the situation is like at the moment and below is a transcript of our conversation.She also recommended a great little film about the kitchens on YouTube called Calais Kitchens - gives a real insight into the camp and the work going on there, well worth watching.

Here is the transcript of my chat with Tina who runs the food distribution area in the warehouse in Calais on 7th January:






Me: So can you tell me a little bit about what you’re doing here?

Tina: So, what we are trying to do is have regularity and predictability when we send food out, so that these people know on a Monday we always get food, other people know on a Wednesday we always get food so having that commitment and that promise to people, but obviously we can only sustain that if we have enough food coming in to do that, so my biggest worry is that we have built up this expectation, rightly so, that we are accountable for what we start delivering but unless we have food coming in we can’t keep sustaining it, so that’s my massive worry.

And also numbers are growing, so for example, we were doing a big drop for 300 people two weeks ago, last week that group grew to 500 people and today we have now sent out food for 800 people in one drop, so that’s 45 groups sending their representative to a single drop off point to where we are and they collect their food for their group and take it back across the camp.

Me: So you’re not doing line distributions anymore?

Tina: No more line distributions. It’s more deliveries now to different groups or to communities. So what we’ve done instead is go out and ask people what are you eating, how are you eating – individually, as a family, as a community…? and then we deliver food in the way that they are naturally, socially, culturally eating.

We are trying to do it more respectfully and in a more dignified way, and also as part of that, finding out who has gas, who has fire wood, and who doesn’t, for example the Syrian guys have no gas or firewood, so there’s no point us sending anything that needs cooking. And with that information, we’re trying to plot where we build new community kitchens so that we can give those people some kind of facilities so that they can cook hot meals, and with the weather this last week, it just got horrendous. I did a 7am food drop yesterday morning and the whole camp was underwater, it had been raining all night, and in that, some people don’t even have any gas or fire wood to make a hot drink. So we are trying to map all of that and use all of that information to structure how we send food out so we are doing it in a much more respectful and dignified way.

Me: So is it better now to bring food not parcelled up but in trays and boxes?

Tina: Yes, we still do some parcels. Some areas still ask for it in one person or two people packs. What we are finding is that different nationalities do it differently for example, the Sudanese mainly eat together in groups so we send more bulk food out to Sudanese areas; the Kurdish people eat much more in families or individually so we send out one people or family packs to those areas.

Me: So when you want it delivered, you prefer it now in bulk and you can sort it from there?

Tina: Absolutely.



Me: What’s the worst thing about this job?

Tina: The worst thing about this job is like the other day when I realised we didn’t have enough food for people the next day, like the shelves were empty.

Me: What did you do, did you just not go out?

Tina: I wanted to hide under my duvet, then you think there are 7000 people living in tents in the mud and we have built up this relationship and I am responsible to them for delivering what we have set up. So we made a little film which we put on you tube and in a day we got £10,000, which is phenomenal, but that’s only 5 day’s worth of food because it costs us £2000 a day to send out food just to sustain what we are doing.



Me: Is the easiest thing for you to receive money or to receive food?

Tina: Either. If people want to get money to the food distribution area, they look for Calais kitchen on the Calaid-ipedia website and donate through that. We can’t do it without everyone at home doing their bit. Unless we have the back up from the UK we can’t do it, nothing would happen if we didn’t have the stuff sent, so thank you everyone in the UK for all your amazing support.

'Home from Dunkirk' by Kate Verney

Relief
That I have not slipped from my current dimension
That I have found my way back home:
a door to close
behind which I have rights
to heat and light
and clean, soft, silent space,
to privacy, authority, control over my own destiny,
a trade, an identity


I notice my community has structure
like a jigsaw
however ill-fitting a piece I feel at times,
I am a part of that,
held securely in its web.


All this is revealed to me in stark contrast
to the story of the People of Grande Synthe Refugee camp
who march doggedly through my sleeping and waking thoughts now,
hoods up, eyes down, shoulders hunched, hands in pockets,
ever trudging through the endless mud,


in search of anything, everything.


And in the chaos, shifting, sticking sands…
frustration at the waste of mindless distribution,
welcome to the west, we have too much of everything,
and here it is, disgorged from well-meaning vehicles,
and lying useless in the mud.


The inevitable natural order within the camp:
a few receiving much,
and many getting very little of use.


The harsh, cold winds destroying badly pitched tents
in ill-advised exposed spots.
I realise the years it took to learn to camp successfully in inclement conditions.
with people who speak Kurdish, but tolerate my broken Arabic,
I try to share my knowledge gleaned from parenting and performing at countless Glastonburys and circus grounds:
the cooker must go in the middle of the tent,
under the highest point of the roof –
away from the flammable nylon sides.

Best not smoke in the tent.

Pull the tent out tight to peg it down,
tighten and check the guy ropes daily,
don’t let the wind start flapping it, keep it tight and low.

Nothing must touch the sides of the tent when it’s raining.

Your tent will never stay up if you pitch it
on this rocky ground
on this windy corner…

They humour me,
polite and charming,
and mostly continue regardless,
with the same dogged determination and inner strength
that has brought them this far.

And I help, as best I can
and hold my tongue
(except about the fire risks!)

As volunteers in our high viz jackets,
we arrive in the morning,
shiny from our hot showers and warm beds,
willing and able.

As the day goes on, a tiny flavour of the reality of life at Grande Synthe trickles through…
we get separated from our friends,
some days we achieve nothing.
Coming back with precious items to distribute – the right shoes / clothing / camping gear,
we can’t find the people that we promised it to,
trudging all over site through the mud,
it rains
wet carpets / sleeping bags / clothes, so desperately needed
become useless gifts
there are no washing or drying facilities here,
so everything is de-valued to single use, creating a black hole of need that can never be filled.

The fierce, proud young men sort frantically through boxes of shoes and clothes to find the right labels,
heaps of discarded items piled useless in the mud.

New shoes and clothes are needed every day,
the pavement at the entrance to the camp littered withcast-off, muddy shoes and socks.
I met one enterprising French lady gathering a wheelbarrow load of muddy clothes from the ground, to take home to wash and dry, and re-distribute.

Feeling helpless, useless, under siege, and inadequate,
tiny victories spur me on.

A home created by a multi-languaged team pitching a large tent against the wind and rain,

friendships formed

mutual respect

the rich sound of children’s delighted laughter round the fire
as we walk away, having given out our activity / toy packs

seeing a child playing with the same hoop or ball I gave them yesterday
as yet still recognisable and intact despite the mud

connecting with the women,
who mostly hold back inside their tents,
so gracious, grateful, and pragmatic in their sorting of items offered

the smiles and delight on faces young and old,
fanning the flickering flame of hope in their eyes
as the zany, jazzy parade of Cirque sans Frontiers meanders through the mud on Sunday afternoon,
residents and volunteers dancing and leaping for joy in red noses

As the weather worsens,
structures which have not blown away become more elaborate and creative,
porches, canopies, chairs are added.
The volunteer-built wooden structures eventually go up,
after returning to the workshop for re-design
to comply with planning permission which allows them only two fixed sides, to avoid permanence.

As night falls on my last day
I resist the strong pull to remain submerged.
I walk away, back to my van.
Hot food is being served on Styrofoam plates from the back of a lorry.
People, mostly men at this hour, bustle on the ‘main drag’
Perpetual motion
in search of anything, everything.
Business continues as usual.
As I leave a piece of my heart in this magical world
dedicated to the strength of the human spirit
an accordion starts up in a nearby tent.



Kate Verney

An introduction

Ross for Refugees is a small group of volunteers from a rural town in the west of England who came together to support those in crisis. It started off with a Facebook post and quickly gathered many supporters who started to collect donations (mostly clothing and camping supplies) which were sent to the refugee camp in Calais, often referred to as 'The Jungle'. Since then, Ross for Refugees have been to camps in Calais and Dunkirk to provide practical support, including building shelters and a school as well as sorting and distributing donations. We have worked alongside several excellent and well established groups on the ground in France including Aid Box Convoy and Ecole Laïque du Chemin des Dunes. These trips were made possible by donations from supporters and fundraising events held here in Ross-on-Wye: volunteers ran a tombola at a local Halloween event and a cake and produce stall at a Christmas fair and are still coming up with creative ways to raise much needed funds (a 'design a cupcake' competition, for example!) So far, we have raised roughly £3400 which has allowed us to provide practical support in Calais and Dunkirk, including funding and building shelters for vulnerable people living in the camp. We have continued to collect donations which have been sent further afield to Syria.

In the near future, Ross for Refugees are planning a trip to Dunkirk to build shelters before the weather gets much colder as many people living there only have low quality tents, whilst some have nothing. The conditions in Dunkirk are already very poor and it is essential that people have access to better shelter before the cold really sets in. We have also shifted the focus of our collections from clothing to food as this is something that is always needed.

This blog has been set up to keep a record of our work and to share the stories and experiences of volunteers, so there will be regular updates on the group's activities from different volunteers' perspectives.  If you would like to find out more about Ross for Refugees, or get involved, please visit the facebook, twitter, or watch a short video on our work. If you would like to donate, please visit our YouCaring page.