Dunkirk account by Emily Gibson

It’s hard to know where to start when you’ve been bombarded by so many sights, sounds, smells and experiences in such a short space of time. The refugee camp in Dunkirk is on quite a small strip of land in the middle of a housing estate, and near a small retail park with a garden centre and other shops. If you look out of your window at home, what do you see? The people living on this new looking, middle class housing estate see an unofficial camp site populated by women, men and children.

The volunteers park in the retail park, then it is a short walk down the street of houses, to the camp. Around 2,500 people live there. There is a constant flow of people, mainly men and children, coming out to the vans and cars. Some distribute aid from the car park, some try to carry it onto the camp, with varying levels of success. Within minutes people are coming up to ask what you have. They wanted shoes, track suit bottoms. They smile, say hello. There is often a quiet gentle resignation if you have to say no to what they want, and they move on.

There is a car park barrier at an entrance to the site, with one or two riot squad vans parked next to it, and between 4 and 8, sometimes more, gendarmes or CRS (riot police) police men. They stop everyone before they go in. The first time they told Doug, Mark and I that we needed special paperwork to get in. This is supposed new by-law. Only a handful of the volunteers have this. We told them who we were with, gave the names of long term volunteers that they would know, and somehow were let in. It is random, and many feel it depends which policeman you encounter, and what mood they are in, as to whether you get on site, and what with. A by-law was passed in Dunkirk a few weeks ago forbidding tents and building materials from being brought on site.

It was a dry weekend, and not too cold. I didn’t see the camp at its worst in that sense. Children were playing. Not on swings or slides, but on top of a huge pile of large rubbish bags covered in plastic. The mud is everywhere, deep mud, thick mud, watery mud. The air was thick with smoke from fires outside the tents, a source of heat and somewhere to cook basic meals. There were a few huge skips dotted around, and huge piles of rubbish. I hadn’t expected so much rubbish but its not exactly part of the regular refuse collection route in Dunkirk.

The first half hour or so on site, I had to keep reminding myself to switch off my emotions. I walked past a ‘ Jumperoo’ in the mud. My little boy had one when he was a baby. There was a teddy bear so caked in mud on the ground that you could easily miss it. Cuddly toys tied to branches on trees. Children riding bikes through the deep mud on the main ‘street’. A tiny boy clomping along with muddy men’s boots on. I don’t know if thats because he didn’t have anything else to put on his feet, or was he doing something all children do, clomping around in his daddy’s shoes? Children blowing bubbles. Volunteers blowing up modelling balloons and making a hat for a boy to wear. Children with lollipops. A tiny girl on a tricycle with a handle for adults to push it along with.

You walk past a tent that looks abandoned because it is so tatty and there is so much rubbish outside. And then you realise there is a family living in there. This happened alot. There are slogans dotted around, especially just at the side of the camp - ‘Don’t give up!’ ‘Keep believing‘ ‘I love u UK', ‘Open the Borders’. And someone has put laminated street names up on some trees. The main ‘street’ has one that says ‘David Cameron Street’.

There are a few walkways between tents of varying sizes, to structures that have been built out of plywood, pallets, tarpaulin. These walkways are literally pallets with netting over. Some pallets are broken, some wobble in the mud as you step on them. There is the ‘new arrivals' tent, with tents, blankets, sleeping bags in. Nearby is the women and children’s distribution room. Elsewhere there is a large structure, the kitchen, providing food, with a room attached where men’s clothes and shoes are distributed from.
Elsewhere on site is a small structure, a ‘Maktab’, a school for smaller children to learn through play. A safe, dry place for children to play, run by volunteers with teaching qualifications. Next to that is a tiny room for babies and young toddlers. They are desperate for more volunteers with relevant qualifications. Elsewhere on site is a huge green tent, a school for older children. It’s extremely basic. Some things have been improving, there are showers, a very small amount of chemical toilets, two stations with about six taps in each, a station to charge mobile phones.

A young man offered to carry some of our bags, asked us where we were taking them. He helped us carry aid to the right places to be distributed. Doug managed to get permission to drive the minibus on site. We unloaded clothes and shoes for the men’s distribution room, which was almost empty. Two volunteers and some men helped us, and some asked for items directly from the minibus. They crowded round, but there was no pushing or shoving. One man had shoes on with soles that had almost completely come off.

A little girl came up, she looked about 8. I thought she wanted something so I explained that we were only unloading clothes and shoes for men. She didn’t care, she just wanted to help. She was desperate to carry bin bags of aid down the slippery pallet pathway to the distribution room. She smiled, laughed, skipped. This was fun for her. I asked her name and told her mine. Then another little girl, around 5 years old, stood right behind me and held my hands in her cold hands, and peeped up at me from side to side. A sweet little game if peep-o started. She was a cheeky little thing, with a little backpack on. I gave them some warm ‘Frozen’ hats, bubbles and hair bobbles. They seemed carefree, at that moment in time. They weren’t worrying about the measles outbreak, or the EU deliberations on the refugee crisis, they were just playing. I don’t know their stories, what they have witnessed.

We bumped into our friend again later on, the man who had helped us with our bags. He had a quiet, calm sadness about him, a resignation to his situation that is hard to put into words. Mark and I had mud on our wellies and trousers, yet he had just a small amount on his white trainers, none on his trousers! We told him he must have perfected a way to walk in the mud, and he smiled and shrugged. He offered Mark and I a seat outside three tents that he and about 8 friends live in. They sat on logs, and gave camping chairs to us. They gave us some lamb in bread, and hot, sweet tea. His friends spoke to me in broken English about their experiences. One man kept telling me how living there, and his experiences, had driven him crazy. And how he was beaten by police in Bulgaria on his way to France.

That night it was wet and windy - Storm Imogen passing through – while we stayed in the hotel. To get on the site on Sunday the police looked at our passports and wrote down our passport numbers. We took some oranges, shoes and aftershave for our friend. He was touched by the aftershave, didn’t know what to say. It’s a luxury. We wanted to buy him some more camping chairs but most shops were shut. Afterwards we unloaded the rest of the aid that they had no space for on site at Dunkirk in the Care for Calais warehouse. In amongst the aid I found a camping chair that we didn’t know was in amongst everything, but we had no time to go back.

We drove past one side of the Jungle in Calais. Huge security fences, with a smaller inner security fence. You and I paid for those. Police and riot vans at various points. I glimpsed the small new container camp, details of which the media has been distorting and twisting. Then we got on the ferry back, where border control asked why we had been in France. Our passports were checked at three checkpoints, and they looked inside the minibus. When I got home I made tea for my little boy to have at nursery the next day, and checked on him, asleep in his warm bed.

We have to stop seeing the world through our own eyes, our own frames of reference and experience. You don’t come back feeling good about helping. You come back feeling devastated about having to do it at all. There is an INCREDIBLE international network of people working tirelessly in their own time to improve things for the people in Dunkirk and Calais. The media has told us to be scared. To see the minority as the majority.

People say look after your own? I am. They are us.