witnessing the jungle's last gasp

It is the curse of today's world that companies and organisations, even governments think it is efficient and cost-effective to run any operation with the minimum number of staff. It isn't. 

I arrive at a virtually empty house to be invited to take a young man to register with the minors at the camp. He has mild mental health issues and gets agitated in crowds. Some in the stationary queue have been there for two hours already. It doesn't look good. We stayed about five minutes in the melee and it was clear that he wasn't coping. We left. 

We bumped into a colleague on the way out of the throng, told her what was happening. She confirmed the under-staffed chaos within and regretted that she couldn’t pull any strings to get our friend fast-tracked. We’d have to find another way 

We went off to find other friends under the fly-over and plan our next move. 

The only place where the staffing maxim doesn't apply here is with the CRS, the armoured, tooled-up French riot police. The more the merrier. They've booked some 1500 bed spaces across Calais for the foreseeable and now a great phalanx of them Is deployed as the prefect's people arrive for their photo call with the world's press.

it’s mid-afternoon, an autumn sun is warming the air and the show is about to begin. A spokesperson for the Prefecture, a petite, almost chic early middle-aged blond woman in fur topped wellies, tells the waiting media what’s about to happen. She makes it clear that it is not a ‘destruction’ but a ‘cleansing’. I turn to my French speaking colleague to confirm what I’ve heard. The prefecture would prefer the world’s press to describe the removal of mainly black and middle eastern people by a mainly white, European police force as a ‘cleansing’. She seems to have no idea of the bloody swathe this word has described through European history, including the recent story of the Balkans. But she sticks with it.

Almost comically she then warns the press not to speak of the deployment of bulldozers to effect the cleansing. Rather the contractors will be using 'bobcats'. The small machines that appear almost as she speaking are track vehicles fronted with small claw-bottomed hoppers that look to all the world like bulldozers, albeit small ones, but bulldozers all the same. We point this out later to a journalist on a mobile, phoning in copy, telling the ears at the other end that the machines are bobcats not bulldozers. He stresses this as if his story hangs on it. He doesn’t appear to be from Construction News, so we turn to him and point out that a bulldozer is a bulldozer is a bulldozer whatever label the prefect’s spokesperson attaches to it. He looks non-plussed!

And so on cue, dozens of men in pristine orange jump suits and white hard hats, equipped with a range of tools from spanners and wrenches to chain saws and hammers, appear and start ‘cleansing’ a shelter.

It is testament to the tireless team of British shelter builders who put up most of the structures around the camp last winter with the help of the residents, what great work they did. The shelter is virtually indestructible. For twenty minutes and more, the team pull and push, poke and prod, bang and twist the panels, eventually deploying the chain saw to cut some 2” by 4” timbers at the base, but seem to leave little mark on it. Eventually it succumbs and the bobcat comes in to take way some of the bits and deposit them in a skip.

All this is watched by a posse of camera crews ranged on the two vantage points left vacant by the CRS.

At this rate of progress, it will take until Christmas to cleanse the camp.

Of course, this is a stunt for the press. Offer them something compelling for the six 0’clock news and they’ll disappear to their hotels leaving the authorities to scythe through the camp with their usual brutality.

A colleague watches all this and a Sudanese boy turns up having queued to register and been turned away because there were too many minors and far too few staff. He needs to get his papers. His caravan is earmarked for destruction and cut-off by a line of CRS. A bit of negotiating ensues and he is allowed to retrieve his documents and a few belongings before having to vacate the site. Now he has nowhere to sleep. His lack of registration means he has no wrist band and does not appear on the lists for the containers. He is homeless.

It’s ironic that this should be the case because the spokesperson from the Prefect’s office had said that the authorities had chosen to start the cleansing here in order to create a cordon sanitaire around the container park so that the young people housed therein would feel safer. You couldn’t make it up.

Of course the day after this charade for the press, things get mildly uglier. Registered and unregistered residents of the jungle, faced with eviction by the French state, burn their shelters, the homes that they have made from the scraps around them, the community they have forged in the teeth of opposition and harassment. It is their final act of agency in a situation where they are being systematically stripped of any control over their lives, herded like cattle on to buses in some ghastly though far less grisly reenactment of recent European history. The Prefect’s spokesperson, lacking any sense of irony, misses this.

The rest of us turn away weeping, ashamed.

witnessing the jungle's last gasp

It is the curse of today's world that companies and organisations, even governments think it is efficient and cost-effective to run any operation with the minimum number of staff. It isn't. 

I arrive at a virtually empty house to be invited to take a young man to register with the minors at the camp. He has mild mental health issues and gets agitated in crowds. Some in the stationary queue have been there for two hours already. It doesn't look good. We stayed about five minutes in the melee and it was clear that he wasn't coping. We left. 

We bumped into a colleague on the way out of the throng, told her what was happening. She confirmed the under-staffed chaos within and regretted that she couldn’t pull any strings to get our friend fast-tracked. We’d have to find another way 

We went off to find other friends under the fly-over and plan our next move. 

The only place where the staffing maxim doesn't apply here is with the CRS, the armoured, tooled-up French riot police. The more the merrier. They've booked some 1500 bed spaces across Calais for the foreseeable and now a great phalanx of them Is deployed as the prefect's people arrive for their photo call with the world's press.

it’s mid-afternoon, an autumn sun is warming the air and the show is about to begin. A spokesperson for the Prefecture, a petite, almost chic early middle-aged blond woman in fur topped wellies, tells the waiting media what’s about to happen. She makes it clear that it is not a ‘destruction’ but a ‘cleansing’. I turn to my French speaking colleague to confirm what I’ve heard. The prefecture would prefer the world’s press to describe the removal of mainly black and middle eastern people by a mainly white, European police force as a ‘cleansing’. She seems to have no idea of the bloody swathe this word has described through European history, including the recent story of the Balkans. But she sticks with it.

Almost comically she then warns the press not to speak of the deployment of bulldozers to effect the cleansing. Rather the contractors will be using 'bobcats'. The small machines that appear almost as she speaking are track vehicles fronted with small claw-bottomed hoppers that look to all the world like bulldozers, albeit small ones, but bulldozers all the same. We point this out later to a journalist on a mobile, phoning in copy, telling the ears at the other end that the machines are bobcats not bulldozers. He stresses this as if his story hangs on it. He doesn’t appear to be from Construction News, so we turn to him and point out that a bulldozer is a bulldozer is a bulldozer whatever label the prefect’s spokesperson attaches to it. He looks non-plussed!

And so on cue, dozens of men in pristine orange jump suits and white hard hats, equipped with a range of tools from spanners and wrenches to chain saws and hammers, appear and start ‘cleansing’ a shelter.

It is testament to the tireless team of British shelter builders who put up most of the structures around the camp last winter with the help of the residents, what great work they did. The shelter is virtually indestructible. For twenty minutes and more, the team pull and push, poke and prod, bang and twist the panels, eventually deploying the chain saw to cut some 2” by 4” timbers at the base, but seem to leave little mark on it. Eventually it succumbs and the bobcat comes in to take way some of the bits and deposit them in a skip.

All this is watched by a posse of camera crews ranged on the two vantage points left vacant by the CRS.

At this rate of progress, it will take until Christmas to cleanse the camp.

Of course, this is a stunt for the press. Offer them something compelling for the six 0’clock news and they’ll disappear to their hotels leaving the authorities to scythe through the camp with their usual brutality.

A colleague watches all this and a Sudanese boy turns up having queued to register and been turned away because there were too many minors and far too few staff. He needs to get his papers. His caravan is earmarked for destruction and cut-off by a line of CRS. A bit of negotiating ensues and he is allowed to retrieve his documents and a few belongings before having to vacate the site. Now he has nowhere to sleep. His lack of registration means he has no wrist band and does not appear on the lists for the containers. He is homeless.

It’s ironic that this should be the case because the spokesperson from the Prefect’s office had said that the authorities had chosen to start the cleansing here in order to create a cordon sanitaire around the container park so that the young people housed therein would feel safer. You couldn’t make it up.

Of course the day after this charade for the press, things get mildly uglier. Registered and unregistered residents of the jungle, faced with eviction by the French state, burn their shelters, the homes that they have made from the scraps around them, the community they have forged in the teeth of opposition and harassment. It is their final act of agency in a situation where they are being systematically stripped of any control over their lives, herded like cattle on to buses in some ghastly though far less grisly reenactment of recent European history. The Prefect’s spokesperson, lacking any sense of irony, misses this.

The rest of us turn away weeping, ashamed.

Firm action brings more questions

So, my young Afghan friend finally got his ticket and was reunited with his brothers two months after the UK home office agreed to take his claim under Dublin 3. In the late autumn warmth of St Pancras station, brothers embraced and we wept tears of joy into our take-away coffee.

And the haunted young man who asked our help three weeks ago is also in the UK, swept up in the sudden rush of Dublin 3 cases the government wanted dealt with before the jungle succumbs to the bulldozer. He is impatiently awaiting reunification with his brother, giving constant updates on WhatsApp about his mood and worries.

Two shafts of light in the darkness of the camp. But we always stress that while you can snatch someone from the jungle in the blink of an eye, it takes weeks, months, possibly even years to extract the jungle from the minds of its former residents (whether refugees or volunteers).

And now the camp is in its end-game. The day of closure has arrived and sullen ranks of residents queue with their meagre possessions to get on buses taking them to the stage on their journey to peace and security. We knew the day was coming and have felt it to be right that comes. But now it's here and tomorrow they'll start pulling physical structures down, I feel a sense of impending bereavement.

And another boy assumes the centre of my attention. His sister is willing to welcome him into her family but with the demolitions getting under way tomorrow and no one being registered today, we are anxious for him. And he represents so many for whom this is just one more uncertainty, insecurity.

Tomorrow I head back through the tunnel clutching my little red book and my association registration allowing me to come and go and do the things we need to do. And I'm wondering what difference are we making? What are Europe's governments and peoples learning as this sea of people ebbs and flows through their lands? How are we allowing God to reshape our thinking about his priorities for us?