I try to leave the space we’re using for sleeping by 6.30am but remember that today we are sharing bikes and I need to set off earlier to walk to Africa house where we are doing a ‘police patrol’ each morning. The riot police usually raid between 7 and 10am although they can also come randomly in the day or pick up people walking nearby. They don’t seem to like coming into Africa house at night as it involves climbing over a high wall and negotiating the ruined industrial buildings with gaping holes in the floor that drop several feet below. Several sans-papiers have fallen while fleeing the cops.
At Africa house, we have a lookout on the wall, someone who spent the night there. The palette that people use to climb in and out of Africa house is ready to be pulled up so that cops can’t use it. They used to bring their own ladder until once, when I filmed them and we noticed that not one cop used the ladder but were all climbing over using the palette. We started taking away the palette at the first alarm call and D-locked it to another building. The police were furious because by then, they’d stopped bothering to bring their own ladder.
When our No Borders numbers were quite high (they fluctuate) we made a big STOP banner and a couple of people ran out and blocked off the road leading to Africa house, forcing the vans to stop. The palette was D-locked away, no sans-papiers got caught that day.
The wall lookout post doesn’t look too bad from where I’m standing as the people living in Africa house sit and chat with No Borders activists there and share delicious coffee. I’m stuck on ‘corner watch’ where you get a good long view of the road, right up to the roundabout. The highlight is chatting with passing people from Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia, Ghana etc, all who seem happy to see you, shake your hand, share a joke.
If I see several CRS vans coming, I blow my whistle and yell to the wall lookout and to any migrants who may be sitting out on the nearby train tracks. This morning, there are 4 vans, racing towards me at full speed and I can warn people who race off in different directions. It’s a success today and there are no arrests here. The police check our passports and drive off. We are feeling good about it but know the vans may simply have headed off to a ruined building where several Palestinians are living…We need more people here.
At 10am, a couple of local charity groups turn up with vans to take groups of people to use showers or they bring tea and bread and we know the cops don’t usually raid after this.
I head off to the library to write up the foiled raid and on the way, see police vans with migrants inside. I decide to walk via the Palestinian base and see that the police did in fact just leave. No-one is left and the place has been ransacked, the drinking water pots kicked over, clothes thrown down amongst the rubble of the ruined building. I was sitting here 2 nights ago, by the fire, sharing tea, listening to fascinating stories.
At lunchtime, I head over to the food distribution place which is when you get to meet people you haven’t seen in a few days because they got arrested and then, once released, have to walk back to Calais. It’s a great socialising opportunity when you are invited to sit and share food. I try out my fledgling Arabic phrases and am corrected with a lot of laughing. There are also tensions at the food distro as the charity providing it does seem to treat migrants like children, refusing access until they line up, shouting at them. Today, I stop myself arguing with the charity workers, although I haven’t always been able to..
Lunchtime is also an opportunity to give information and I have some leaflets on legal advice that two people requested. Another person wanted info on claiming asylum in France and I’m grateful to whoever made those leaflets available in different languages. Today, I take away 3 phones that need charging. It’s a big responsibility because these are people’s connection with their families and with each other, so I promise to return to the food point at 6pm. That gives me time to return to the office and put the phones on charge, then do some photocopying for the English lessons that are happening at 4pm in Africa house. In the end, I pass these on to others (who do it better than me anyway) and stay to fix punctures on our remaining bikes. The police have been systematically cutting our tyres for some time and we are down to 3 bikes. Once I’ve mended a bike, I go to the Palestinian house and some of those arrested this morning have returned. We talk about the police that came to their house 2 days ago and sprayed a chemical everywhere. One man was hiding under blankets but saw them also add the chemical to the drinking water. The same people get arrested again and again. They can’t be returned to their country of origin but the police are following a process of continual and unrelenting harassment.
Then it’s back to the food distribution place to give the phones back and two of us head out of Calais to where the Hazara people are camping out among the sand-dunes. We are also seeing our No Borders friend who is living there too. We take the bikes and lock them up to a fence and head out across the rough land where people are living, exposed to all weather, where even lighting a fire can summon the police. I spend one of the most memorable evenings of my life in the warmest companionship, with singing and joking late into the night. When we leave, we find our bike tyres slashed and are dogged, all the way back, by a police van. After we reach the office, our friend camping in the dunes texts to say the police raided the Hazaras, slashed up all the tents and blankets and arrested two of our migrant friends.
Every day seems to bring extremes of good and bad things.