Canterbury Convoy to Calais

Building the house back home in the UK

My thanks to the generous members of the Canterbury Stake who are letting me share these essays with you.  I am constantly amazed at how quickly you can grow to love people you've just met!

Canterbury Stake bring Shelter and aid to Calais Camps  

On 29^th-30^th January 26 members and friends of the Canterbury stake of the church of Jesus Christ of latter day saints, including students studying at the university of Kent, travelled to Calais to help with aid for refugees. For some of the group this was their 4^th or 5th trip to sort donations in the warehouses and distribute aid at the camp. Several small charities are struggling to improve conditions for the 6000 plus displaced people living in the “jungle”. These committed volunteers finance themselves, staying in caravans or hostels for days, weeks or months at a time. We add our tiny contribution to theirs.

   The bleak January weather miraculously gave way to sunshine as some of our group began to erect a wooden shelter, designed by a member of the stake and materials donated by the church. After four frantic hours and with limited tools and resources, the group-spontaneously joined by some 10 or so refugees-managed to complete a sturdy ‘home’ for a family of 8.  Stephen Hunt , president of the Canterbury stake, said later;’ for me ,the enduring image is that of volunteer Danny Shillabeer -who at 6’4” was still not tall enough to reach to work on the roof- standing strong ,his arms braced against the outer wall of the  shelter whilst one of the refugee volunteers stood atop his shoulders to work. Together, members of the church and the grateful recipients of the few resources we bought worked to create a new home for people who had been spending their days and nights inside a leaky tent. This is the gospel in action. This is the sharp end of the self -reliance initiative, the absolute definition of the Lord’s imperative to search out the poor and the needy. We prayed with them, we built with them, we embraced them and we reluctantly left them in the knowledge that they will be a little warmer, dryer and safer in the future. As for us, we are beginning to see things a little more clearly now.’’

Our Stake Relief Society President received this message:

“Hi Marisa,  hope you okay and thanks a lot for building a tent but for us is a big massive house wich we can't  forget it ever you came all the way from other the country cross the border just to help us we could not even imagine thank you so so much say hi to everyone from my side”     - Sahir

Crammed in the back of a small van, perched awkwardly amongst bags and bags of donated food, we wait. The road surface changes and we lurch side to side, aware that we are now in the ‘’Jungle’’. A feeling of trepidation pervades. This is our first trip to Calais to distribute aid. Despite other volunteers’ stories, we have popular media images and clichés running through our minds. Most volunteer are young students, hoping to change the world, or at least give one hungry person the chance for one meal, for one day. We want to help; to bring hope. The doors open. A makeshift stone covered “road” opens out into a space surrounded by plastic covered “huts” or tents. There are no desperate crowds thronging the van. There is no fevered pawing at us. No emotional pleas. Instead, an orderly que quickly forms. Quiet, humbled people file forward to accept a supermarket carrier bag of foreign food to them. Some smile and some practise their few words of English. Most exclude a grim determination to survive, to keep intact their dignity. A few months ago perhaps, If we had been strangers in their country we would have been greeted with their legendary eastern hospitality, made to talk over endless tea, shared their meals. We try to smile. They try to smile. The last bag is passed out. “finished”. One English word that is definitely understood. Resigned, weary, they slide away empty handed, absorbed by the sea of rough dwellings. The space is easily empty again - as if we had never been there. There is a feeling of anti-climax as we pile back into the van, desperately hoping that our tiny contribution has meant something. Eager to do it again. And again.

A chill began to fill the air as the day passed by and the winds picked up. Before we knew it the evening was upon us. Our team had faced various challenges throughout the construction of the shelter, with uneven ground formed of rubble, litter and mud; and a lack of appropriate equipment. The team pressed on, attempting to get the shelter up as quickly and efficiently as possible before engulfed in darkness. A young man desperately trying to keep warm wrapped up in his duvet came to sit behind the van to take shelter from the wind. He relayed the story of his perilous journey from Iran to Calais. Mostly on foot this young man travelled half way across the world to escape oppression and persecution in his own country. Hitching rides, begging for food and hiding in vans this young man travelled for 18 months seeking a better life than the one he had previously known. Now he sits, hungry, cold and of poor health in an overcrowded camp in Calais clinging on to the little hope he has, that one day he might not hunger, that one day he might not thirst, that one day he might live rather than survive. Meeting these people and hearing their stories was truly life changing. Leaving them however, upon completion of the shelter, was entirely heart wrenching.  

Danielle J. Vernes

 (RHStay note: Danielle is the daughter in law of a friend of ours in the Frankfurt International ward, who is also a member of the Stake Presidency)

Here are notes from Dan Shillabeer, who directed the building of the house.:

My reflections on the shelter build:   To build or not to build?

Visiting the jungle and L’Auberge for the first time is, for most people a culture shock. The shelters are rudimentary, but provide some degree of protection. I have the sort of mind that says “what if?”; this time “what if” became “what if IKEA produced shelters?” (in fact they do, in conjunction with UNHCR, and very nice they are too). But IKEA – and UNHCR – are not in Calais. So it’s very much down to the volunteers to set the benchmark for shelters.

My biggest driver was that so much labour-intensive work was being done in Calais that could possibly be done in the UK prior to assembly in Calais. And this is where IKEA comes in. They are masters of flat pack – we build it, you assemble it. So I thought about their construction techniques: how they use strength only where necessary, to reduce weight, cost and materials. An IKEA side table is two sheets of hardboard over a wooden frame, with an egg box in the middle. Rigid, strong, cheap, light, simple, quick. Shelters need to be all of those, so an idea was born. Turn that side table through 90 degrees, chop the legs off, bolt a few together, and wrap in plastic. Voila! (as they say in Calais). A shelter.

Which is all very well until you have to work out the details, at which point joined-up maths rears its ugly head. The devil really was in the detail – allowing for this, anticipating that. Expecting sub-optimal.

What you don’t anticipate is your freakin’ car breaking down on the way to the second build day, when only you have the revised plans, and they’re on the passenger seat, while the build team is in the barn ready to go. So what do you do, sit by the road and cry? No! You pick your sorry butt up, have faith, and find a way round the mountain. By this time in the project we’d overcome lack of build space, lack of build money, lack of manpower …. We were used to obstacles, and this one wasn’t going to beat us. (Please note, I’m using the word ‘we’ advisedly; while I had the original idea and took on planning and construction, communications and all the other logistics were thankfully removed from my shoulders by capable others, who turned out to be incredible, shoulder-to-shoulder allies in the Calais mud, when we battled to the last second to get this thing finished.)
Midnight oil well and truly incinerated, we loaded the ‘shelter’ on the van, ready for the trip. Throwing in spare bits turned out to be wise………

 And that’s where what most people call problems, but in the church we call “opportunities to grow”, really started. Howling gales and rain lashed the channel, and the jungle. First day wash out, van unloaded – and gone. A pile of wood under a tarpaulin, a box of screws, and a dream coming apart at the soggy seams. So we talk to people. An talk some more. And those people are Calais volunteers too. And they – we – don’t do ‘impossible’. We just do. Workforce finally rounded up (sorry…), we got a space on site, and transport. Except the site was in two places, and the shelter was in one piece. Frantic phone calls. Two hours to catch the ferry. Road to new location blocked by car. Van unloaded after one of those navigation efforts you see on ‘World’s most dangerous roads’. Start construction, while van returns for more of the pieces of this jigshelter.

THEN! Oh, my friends, then!

Ants. Swarming, like David Cameron accused the refugees of doing. Over the materials. Over each other. Instructions, screws and drills flying, buzzing. Refugees, our new friends, the owners-to-be, pitching in. A multinational, multidenominational, multilingual melee of positivity and enterprise, from the midst of which sprang in the wooden flesh, what I had only seen in my head – our shelter, soon to be theirs.

The ferry departures came and went. The pressure; oh, the pressure to MAKE THIS HAPPEN. All self-inflicted; all accepted. All shouldered. By all. As darkness fell, and the last chance saloon was kicking out its drunks, the last necessary screw screeched home to signal the triumph of optimism and energy over opposition. We cheered! Hip – Hip, and no time for hooray. Load up tools! In the cars! Here is your home and your padlock keys, my new friends. WHERE ARE MY CAR KEYS!!??
Back to L’Auberge. It’s all locked up. Round up the stragglers from the shop round the corner. Then round up Naomi from rounding up the stragglers. Then Eurotunnel, and a chance to stop , relax, contemplate, and talk with the most amazing 21 year olds you’ll ever meet, about farts. Apparently, girls do it too….

My dear friends, remove your bibs, this battle is over. We won. We won big time. One day this will be history, and we will have written it. And no one can ever, ever take that from us. For even though the cold hand of government may smash our shelter, we have built something indestructible – character, faith, and humanity.

I salute you all.                                         Dan Shillabeer

It is hard to make sense of coming back. Hours earlier we had been surrounded by some of the most desperately poor and grimly determined people currently on the planet. “Displaced”, ”migrants”, ”refugees’ - words used to describe these people are not adequate. Clichés tumble through my mind as I try to make any kind of sense of it all. There is no precedent in my experience; only historical images and faded and 2^nd hand accounts of oppression begin to suffice. Can this be the same world I live in? A few kilometres out of the camp, in the centre of Calais we are in a typical out of season seaside town. It is empty, wet, bleak but familiar. A few locals and tourists brave the high winds and constant rain to venture into the town square where a handful of pubs and restaurants totter through the winter season. Was it like this in the town next to Sobibor? Treblinka? Did people have to shut down their conscience in order to survive that knowledge? The knowledge that in your town, your backyard, other people - people just like you - were surviving. Not living, barely existing but consciously surviving. Hanging onto whatever tiny thread of dignity and endurance they could muster? Yes, we still have to eat, sleep, to work. But somewhere in the back of our minds is the awareness that but for the unearned good fortune of being born here, we would be in their ill fitting, donated, leaking, shoes.                                                                                   -Alison Hunt

 To me, the most memorable and significant part of the weekend was going into the camp at various times on Saturday, both to distribute food and to help construct the shelter. Seeing the situation and meeting the people there gave me a greater love for those people. I loved that so many came to help build the shelter in the afternoon. We arrived and started working and the first person to show up was the man who would be getting the shelter. He jumped right in without hesitation. Many others arrived and pitched in. When we were finished, it was amazing to see their appreciation for the help we offered. At one point while we were building, I was invited over to warm my hands over a fire. While talking with the young men there, they commented that I would be going to a warm home, but they were going to still be in the cold. One of them immediately commented though to the other than what we were doing for them was much needed. And later another man said that the shelter he had was warm. It is difficult to be limited in the ways we can help, but I have no doubt that the refugees are grateful for the things we do and you could see it in the face of Asad (I believe that's how you spell his name, correct me if I'm wrong!!) as we left him there with his newly constructed shelter. We only spent a few hours there with them, but I truly feel like they are my friends and I wish them the best of luck in the future!

-          Tiffany Michelle Rae

I’ve been to Calais 3 times now, volunteering mainly at L'Auberge des Migrants International warehouse, but also at the [other] warehouse, this past trip.

There is a comradery and uplifting spirit that permeates both the work, and the people involved. Everyone is there strictly for ONE purpose – to help those who are in no position to help themselves.

Being a part of something that does so much good is amazing. I have worked my fingers to the bone, and my back and knees will bear witness to it, but the work is easy when we are making others’ life burdens lighter. It was amazing to spend all morning Saturday turning out about 400 “goody bags,” and then going in the afternoon to distribute them to members in The Jungle that afternoon. And even spending Friday morning helping in the “kitchen” preparing the lunch meal for all the volunteers was a labour of love. Enjoying the banter back-and-forth between the staff members and the volunteers – I truly felt like I was in some subliminal form of “charity heaven.” I could live a life like this, easily.

I have especially loved getting to know the intrepid Hettie Sashenka Colquhoun. She is brilliant and has an ancient soul. Looking over her operation and those who hang around and help her operation are also amazing and wonderful. Just being at the L’Auberge warehouse always makes me “feel” good!

For those who have not been but could go over and volunteer – YOU SHOULD! For those who are in no position to go over – there is SO MUCH else that needs doing! Coordinating and collecting donations, money, and even spreading the GOOD experiences of those who have gone is still helpful. You don’t have to have a passport for that!

I loved all 3 visits I have made, and will DEFINITELY be going back when our crew goes again! “Doing good is a pleasure – a joy beyond measure. A blessing of duty and love.” LOVED IT!

-  J’net Stapleton