Day One – Trade Unionists 4 Calais – Wednesday 30th March
The second journey to the camp in Calais began with over 20 volunteers arriving. We dropped into the Care 4 Calais warehouse, helped with some of the sorting, heard about the new project to deliver mobile English classes in the camp, as people are reluctant to travel across the open ground to the school.
We then made our way to the camp. We arrived shocked to see that half of the camp has been demolished. We were concerned that the school where we had helped out would no longer be operating as the community surrounding the school had been demolished.
The adult school however is still in full swing and still thriving. A walk round the camp showed that despite half of it being smashed up, there is still a community atmosphere, a friendly greeting from everyone you meet and a keen interest in learning English and other subjects.
The community around the school have been demolished.
The women and children’s bus
Some volunteers found a bus which replaced the women and children’s centre; One said:
‘We visited the women and children’s centre and taught a lovely lady who spent months travelling from Eritrea with her 4 year old daughter. The daughter was only a few months old when her mum started her journey and has spent most of her life in refugee camps. They were rescued in the Mediterranean by a German ship. It was a great day of learning for us and for our lovely student’
Dunkirk
Some of the party visited Dunkirk – the new camp is far better than the old muddy field of misery from a few weeks ago. Passports are checked as people go into the camp, by the gendarmes. Everyone is living in wooden shacks or more solid tents and there are showers and the children are able to play.
Teargas and Rubber Bullets
Whilst some of us were teaching, we could smell something strange , the students told us ‘It is the police’ and shortly after one teacher walked into the classroom with tears streaming down her face from the teargas. It happened about five in the afternoon – and was triggered by a traffic queue of lorries and then a surge of refugees attempting to jump onto lorries. This then triggered an outburst of tear gas and rubber bullets fired into the camp, affecting refugees and volunteers alike. As we were leaving, groups of refugees walked past us with eyes watering. There is a much more noticeable presence of police on the camp and some people had their passports checked on entry to the camp.
One eye witness said: ‘I don’t blame people for wanting to travel to the UK, they just want a safe place to live and to join friends and family.’
