Calais

1 October 2016Feature

Ellie Roberts reports from the refugee camp in Calais

Migrants and volunteers outside a cafe in the Jungle Photo: Gill Knight

Owen and I have just spent three weeks volunteering in the refugee camp in Calais, France, working with two grassroots organisations – Care4Calais and Auberge/Help Refugees – which provide most of the food, clothes, shelter and other support the camp receives.

The media often refers to the camp as the ‘Jungle’, a name which some I spoke to rejected because it makes them feel as if the world sees them…

1 October 2016Feature

‘You can go back to Afghanistan, it’s safe there’

Structures in the Jungle Photo: Gill Knight

As Ellie has highlighted, our time in Calais was very challenging. I was confronted with the huge unfairness of the world in a more direct way than I had ever experienced before. What a lottery life is, depending on where you are born and who your parents are.

We went to Calais after spending two weeks walking in beautiful and remote Lapland in the Arctic north of Sweden…