A young farmer from Sudan loses everything
“Today I sat on a rock in the drizzling rain and overcast skies in Calais’ ‘new jungle’. It’s just a patch of wasteland where people are struggling to live.
A tall young man wandered over and grinned at me with the biggest smile. He had a plastic bag on his head to try to keep off some of the rain. Like so many of the refugees in Calais, he didn’t have a coat.
After some persuasion he sat down and shared my rock, he told me his name was Michael and that he came from Dafur in Sudan.
Michael is 22 years old and grew up in a small village called Ginan. He told me about his life and his family back home. How he had finished primary school, but there was no secondary school in the area.
His family where farmers and had a small cash crop of Peanuts. They also grew crops like Maize and Spinach for themselves to eat and had a few goats.
With a smile he told me about his sisters and his mother and the amazing food she cooked with the vegetables they grew. There was also a girl in the village, who he was planning to marry and had been saving money for this.
I asked him if his family and the girl he wanted to marry would be joining him in the UK. His face dropped and he said ‘I have no family anymore, that is why I am here’” – a Care4Calais volunteer
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