The French coastal town of Calais has become synonymous with the migrant crisis.

The destination for some of the millions of displaced people is the 6,000-strong camp, known as “the Jungle”.

The Gazette's Stephanie Strong visited the camp with the Thurrock-based charity Side-by-Side, which has been working to help the migrants and reports on what she found.

WHEN you say you’re organising a day trip to Calais, most people think you’re hopping on a ferry for a booze cruise.

But I was doing something quite different – a one-day visit to the migrant camp commonly called the Jungle.

Thurrock organisation Side-by-Side, which has been raising money and donations for the camp, urged me to visit.

So one week later, I am speeding towards Calais Frethun on the Eurostar.

Approaching Calais, the train runs alongside a giant fence rimmed by two layers of barbed wire. It is patrolled by police with dogs, and officers on horseback or in vans.

Dotted along the fence are bits of people’s clothes caught on the barbs. Seeing the shreds, the hairs on the back of my arms prickle.

Swinging down my bag at Calais Ville, I eye a group of people nervously at the station.

About twenty men, women and children with muddy shoes and wornlooking bags are waiting at the station.

Will they try to jump on a train now, I fret?

But I am reassured by locals milling around the concourse, just like every other European railway station, and decide to have a chat with them while I await my ride to the camp.

Surprisingly, the first Calais native Jeannine Kaufmann, 56, of Rue Maunot, thinks people could do more. She says: “It’s not a problem for me, I feel sad for them and I want to help them. I don’t think the government is doing enough.”

But Verstaevel Cedric, 40, of Rue Denis Papins, does not agree, and he fears it will only get worse. The problem is grave, he says, adding: “They are everywhere.”

Before I have time to talk to anyone else, a people carrier stuffed with donated food and blankets for the camp rolls up and I’m off.

We drive around Calais, edging around the camp before finally finding a way in, down a side road. Police guard the entrance further up, a menacing group of about ten of them, wielding guns.

Making it past the police without problems, we find a narrow entrance between a bunch of teetering shacks and higgledy- piggledy tents made out of thick blue plastic and white tarpaulin.

Driving through the mud and gravel, the car crawls down lanes and we pass small groups, lines of people queuing up, and lone individuals wandering about.

The camp has been built on scrub next to the sea, so mud is everywhere and the car has to roll across rocks, which makes the car clang ominously.

Most of the thin wooded shacks are no bigger than a garden shed. More numerous are the tents.

A few winding roads away, the refugees have constructed a church.

It is surprisingly large and well decorated with a shrine inside featuring a large picture of Mary and Jesus. Compared to the rubble outside, the church is a palace.

Amazed, I spot what look like shop fronts while driving to the soup kitchen to deliver the food.

My guides explain that many people have set up businesses in the camp.

In the end, my most hair-raising moment is not inside the camp after all. It is when we try to leave. We are sitting in the car, stopped at the checkpoint with my iPhone hidden under my legs.

A steely-eyed police officer faces me with four of his colleagues surround him. Pauline says helpfully: “They have never stopped me before.”

With a jolt I r e m e m b e r Pauline telling me police had arrested people for taking photos and quake quietly at the covert photos I took earlier on my phone.

Waving the gun and our car to the side, they say they “need to check our registration plates”.

Had they seen me taking photos earlier? Was I facing a night in a prison cell in Calais?

After a desperate five minutes, we are waved through.

Driving back through the camp, I am struck by how orderly people seem as we pass more queues formed beside the emergency food shacks.

It touches me how fragile their hope is while being the only thing that keeps them standing.

I also wonder how long it can last as the weather grows colder.

 

“ONCE you’ve seen this place, you just can’t turn your back on it.”

An army of volunteers from the UK are making trips back and forward to the camp bringing food and aid.

Pauline Davidson, and her husband Kevin, of Lilley Close, Brentwood, first volunteered to help the migrants after reading about conditions at the camp on the internet.

On this, their tenth trip and independently from Side by Side, they have brought their 17-year-old daughter, Leanne, along.

Pauline, 54, an ex-teacher at St Peter’s Primary, in South Weald, said: “I made ten trips since October.

“You can’t just forget what you have seen.

“I don’t like to call them migrants – I call them residents of the camp, I can’t call them anything else. I don’t call the camp the Jungle either, it’s a bit degrading. The residents named it the jungle here because they were treated like animals here.”

Leanne, a student at Brentwood County High School, said: “I came out the first time in October, and I didn’t expect it to affect me emotionally.

“I only came to support my Mum.

“Then I spoke to a lot of the people here. When I heard Javeed’s story, I felt awful.

“We met at the kitchen, cutting veg. I don’t encounter this in everyday life, it’s just unfortunate some people do.

“I feel like I have to do something.

Now I know about it, I can’t just turn my back on it.”*

Jamal Ismail, 47, an engineer from Seaham, County Durham, said he and his wife had to help after seeing a 12-year-old Syrian girl asking where she could stay.

“We realised there were thousands who needed food.” He said. “Now we feed 1,000 a day! It is very rewarding to feed so many people. Though I also have to try and juggle with my business back home.

“I brought my children back this time for Christmas because I want them to see it. “In the jungle you can meet a lot of good people from everywhere. It is inspiring for them.”

Colder weather is bringing its own issues though.

He adds: “When we turned up yesterday, they said there had been three days with no food. I think people here are getting desperate.

“Yesterday there was a fight for the first time – this has never happened before.”

Karine Flenka, a Calais native, has been helping in the mother and babies quarter.

She tells of babies born to the jungle – one is a newborn a month old.

She explains: “If you talk to people here, they touch your heart.”

Pauline adds: “These people come from repressed countries. They come here, to a so-called civilised country, and get more of the same.

“If someone walked into anywhere and saw dogs or horses in this state of neglect, with no food, there would be a huge outcry. These people are in the same state, but these are human beings.

 

FLEEING terrorist organisations and dictators, people have endured terrifying journeys to reach the camp.

But they all have one thing in common – the hope of building a better life.

Javeed Ahmedzai, 19, comes from a town called Hoshi Kandow in Afghanistan.

The bright teenager had a promising cricket career ahead of him after playing for his country at the under-16s World Cup, before the Taleban tried to recruit him.

He was also set to go to university to study engineering.

He said: “My father had a big construction company, and I used to play a lot of cricket.”

He added: “But every day the Taleban were coming and telling me, no, you cannot go to play cricket, you are coming to two days’ training with us.

“They were taking me into the mountains for training, they trained me to kill people with Kalashnikovs. They are targeting the educated ones, they become targets.

“I felt like **** you Taleban.

You come killing, it’s no good.

Killing is no good. More problems, more war.

“Six months ago I left. My family wanted me to leave to get me away from the Taliban.

“It took me six weeks to get here, my family paid for a train ticket.”

The camp is home to about 6,000 refugees, who each day risk their lives to try to reach the UK.

In the camp, refugees have also constructed a church.

On how he broke his leg, Javeed said: “My leg happened six weeks ago.

“We were trying to jump on a container to go on the boat, climbing a wall.

“Then the police chased us and sprayed me and pushed me – I fell and broke open my leg.

“I was sitting there bleeding, the bone sticking out of my leg, and the police were just laughing at me, saying ‘why are you coming here?’ “I was asking them to please take me to hospital for three hours.

“There was so much blood and pain, “Finally, a policewoman came along and helped me.

“I can’t go back to Afghanistan, I will be going back to killing and shooting people.

“Killing people who are not my enemy. They kill to do everything – why?

“I just want to play cricket.”

 

Gigi Halia, 28, has come to Calais from Asmara, Eritrea.

She lives with five people in a 2m by 2m hut that has two tiny single beds.

She said: “We had to run away from the police because it got dangerous. We have a dictator in our country.

“My brother was protesting against the dictator and one day, when we were praying in the church, the police came and broke our church.

“They got the women and the men – they took the men to prison and the women ran away.

“We crossed the border to Sudan and we stayed in Sudan for a little bit. We had some money from our family to help us. I can’t go back because the same thing will happen. Our government kills our church, arrests the pastors and tortures them.

“It’s too dangerous. I can’t be a prisoner. Two of my brothers have been in prison for years because they are protestants.”

Gigi says she prays every day at the makeshift church in the campsite. She explains: “It’s so important to have this church here for us.

“When I feel lonely, nervous – I don’t have family here – I have to go to church and pray to God.

“Then I can come back home and sleep peacefully. It’s appalling, like darkness staying here and trying to pass to England.

“Every night and every day I try the tunnel. But I can’t jump because I’m a woman. It’s difficult to get in ahead, to have the strength. I try to cut the tarpaulin on the lorry to hide inside.”

 

MEDIC Shakir Javed, 28, from Pakistan, ran from his home after the Taleban issued a warrant for his arrest.

He said: “I was doing my job and helped 65 people who had been shot, by taking bullets out of their legs.

“The Taleban police came into the hospital the next day and gave my boss a letter saying I was wanted for war crimes for working against the Taleban – I was just doing my job!

“I worked there for ten years.

The hospital MD warned me, giving me time to escape.”

It took Shakir two months to walk across Europe, hitchhiking and taking trains. He spent ten months in a refugee camp in Italy.

He has a picture of his two children back home, a boy of six, and a girl of five, and says he has now tried three times to get through the tunnel to the UK.

He added: “It is a three-hour walk to the tunnel from here. We try to jump onto the train.

“Many of my friends have been injured. Three or four of them have died. It is very dangerous. But I cannot go back. I wait. I try the tunnel.

Maybe I will get a sponsor.”