The background to our visit to the Jungle unofficial camp this summer was the news that the French authorities had decided in their wisdom to close all the shops and cafes in the bustling main street of the camp.
A few days previously the heavily-armed CRS Police had marched in number along the street, entering every business there, confiscating food and water. It was a hot day and they enjoyed cracking open bottles of water and drinking them in front of the refugees who were powerless to stop them.
For me, though, the greatest insult was to the unaccompanied kids that use the Jungle Books Kids Café. Here the kids, who are fed and cared for by a dedicated group of volunteers and supported by donations from voluntary organisations and individuals, were about to sit down to a meal. The police decided this was not going to happen and emptied the cooked food into bin bags in front of the hungry kids and dismayed volunteers.
So I spent the 48 hours before we left drafting a letter to The Guardian newspaper and begging people to sign it.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/08/calais-cafe-closure-puts-children-in-peril
The plight of the kids meant we were lucky and some important people were prepared to put their names to the letter, like Michael Rosen and Christine Blower. Which was great. But felt like a drop in the ocean.
Some people would criticise a mother for bringing her child into such a brutal place, but having been there before we were aware of how many children are there already and that for white volunteers with a British passport The Jungle is a pretty safe place. You are more likely to be killed by kindness with offers of cups of tea than attacked. The residents of The Jungle know that volunteers are there wanting to help and that without them their treatment at the hands of the CRS would be even more unrelentingly violent than it already is.
To be entirely honest we were not hopeful about the way things would play out with the shops and cafes, but felt that fighting hard for the Kids Café was essential. So, arriving in Calais on the evening of the 10th, we headed straight for the Care 4 Calais warehouse to deliver a moses basket, baby clothes and two huge boxes of the packs given to new mothers in the maternity ward with a few nappies, wipes and bum cream in each pack for the brand new baby boy who had been born a few days before and the baby who was due any day.
It was nice to have something so hopeful to think about when we arrived in the camp next morning. It was wet and dull and the camp was waking up after another hard night of chasing lorries. Walking down main street, all the shops empty was depressing, quite frankly.
But already the school was full. More chairs and tables were being set up for conversational groups as a French class was in full swing in the compound. It was noticeable that many more of the refugees were choosing to learn French than when I visited previously.
But before long Yusuf and Lucy were team teaching a group of Sudanese guys, no interactive smartboard, no flashy resources. Just a black board, chalk and the students’ exercise books. These students are amazing, they were picking up new vocabulary really fast and wanted to keep practicing it.
As a teacher it was really exciting work. No OFSTED, no management ‘learning walks’ just learning and lots of it. At one point one of the students bent his head forward and rested it on the edge of the table, and I was reminded that he had probably been up most of the night and returned to sleep in damp, cold conditions.
But he gave himself a little shudder and refocused on the lesson. In the afternoons on week days, volunteers from the school put on high-vis jackets and trekked through the waste land into the part of the camp set aside for families. The Salaam centre houses women and kids, but if they have a dad they have to live in the caravans.
These are not the nice holiday lets you might have seen lined up at the seaside. They are decrepit. Most have holes in the side, windows boarded up with cardboard and the afternoon heat was cooking the contents of the chemical toilets. The smell was awful.
The gaggle of kids are walked back to the school, a few lucky ones racing ahead on bikes, to the kids classroom. Which is really well-resourced, albeit in a fairly haphazard manner.
There were two teacher qualified to teach a class of kids ranging in age from 2 and a half (I know!) to about 13.
One of us English, the other French and we had just met! So we sat the children down in rows and my French colleague taught maths to the older kids and I did what I know best and played with the younger ones. Where older children were not accessing the maths we encouraged them to draw.
The children also had a range of first languages, so that added to the fun!
It was very quickly clear just how difficult life is, and has been for some time for these children.
Before long there were two fights. We broke them up and settled the kids down again. As each fight broke out the other children all started shouting: “No Fight!” I think they’d seen enough violence. But there was no escaping that these kids desperately need security and safety and care.
Luckily for us there was an Art project visiting the school and we were able to support them in giving the children an opportunity to paint. There were still tensions between the children, but Marco was quickly able to calm the situation down. The cry of “Marco, Marco” was heard again and again from the kids appealing to him for food, drinks, help and simple attention. As one of the very few consistent adults in their lives Marco is a father figure to all the kids. He has developed a kind, but firm manner with them. He listens to their complaints and talks to anyone who behaves badly.
After painting and a snack of pastries and juice the kids had a chance to play outside with another group who had come to do ‘circus skills’ with them. Again it was difficult for some of the kids to relax and share the hoops and ribbons. And by now the two smallest kids, at just 2 and a half and 4 were clinging to me as if they had known me for years.
Then it was time for the volunteers to don their high-vis and trek back through the wasteland, herding the kids back to their ‘homes’.
Exhausting work.
The next day we returned to teach the 
adults. Sean, 12 years old, was acting as a classroom assistant for another teacher. Marco came over to talk to me, he led me over to a group of students deep into a French lesson. He pointed out a young Afghani boy in the centre of the group. “He is 12, like your boy”….. He is alone” I looked at Marco and he looked at me. We both have sons around that age and I could tell he was as upset as me about it. We both swallowed and took deep breaths.
A few moments later my phone buzzed with a message: It was Neha from The Jungle Books Kids Café; “Have you heard? All the shops and cafes are safe!”
As soon as I said it the word was spread around; there were smiles and a few tears of joy to know that the kids who were alone like the boy sitting a few feet from me still had somewhere safe to go and people who could care for them.
Marco has created and kept running, against all the odds, a remarkable place. The school is packed every day with adult students who sit for hours hoovering up all the knowledge they can get.
He told me that he has to turn people away at weekends, including the kids who value the school as one of the few places they can be kids. Where they are fed and given clothes and allowed to draw pictures and bounce and paint.
It runs so smoothly with volunteers slotting in and working together to make sure everyone has a teacher in the language they want to learn, increasingly this is French. Another volunteer told us she’d taught a guy who had been granted asylum in France and moved to Paris, but still travelled back to the school to get lessons and friendship. That’s how good the school is.
Marco told us about his plans to raise money to build a centre for the women and kids next to the school. He needs 10,000 Euro to do it. There is a visible need for this as no new structures are being allowed on the other side of the camp.
- There are lots of concrete ways you can support Marco’s school:
- Volunteer.
- Raise money
- Bring food/shoes/clothes
- Set up a direct debit from your union branch
- Get regular collections in your workplace (my school has parents doing this, I took Marco 200 euros)
So, we raced back to London to join the protest that we’d called before we’d left just two days earlier at The French embassy.
This picture is of my best teacher mate and her beautiful daughter who used their talents and a bit of paint to support the kids in the Jungle and call for the Dubs amendment to be enacted. Love these two!
We got on the telly and made a lot of noise to disrupt the ambassadors dinner party. But those kids are still out there and they are suffering physically and emotionally more each day.
We need to build solidarity, ram home the message that Marco rammed home to me. They are our kids.
By Lucy Cox
