Man badly burnt by French police CS gas attack
I’ve seen a lot in in Calais over the last four and a half years, but yesterday something happened that took me back to the worst of 2015/16. As many services have shut down, we often get asked to take people to hospital. It’s hard as we are a small team and busy, but had to help a young man who had been sprayed in the face with CS gas by the police. This has become common in Calais, but as I got closer I could see, rather than the red eyes and puffy face I expected, serious burns covering …
WATCH: What’s it like being in Calais during Covid-19?
It’s not easy to describe a ‘typical’ day on the front line in Calais now. It’s so far removed from what it used to be. For a start we now go on distribution dressed like storm troopers in a full body suit, two face masks and two pairs of gloves, all of which need to be disposed of or washed at high temperatures every night, along with every piece of kit we use. Whereas we used to provide services to the refugees such as haircutting, hot drinks, games etc. all that has stopped. Instead of working to humanise …
Maintaining dignity in the most difficult circumstances
This lovely message was from two older gentleman that we delivered food to last night. They were the final people in the line for food at our Calais distribution, and just as we reached them, the food ran out. They had been queuing for some time – the procedure is complex as people need to maintain at least a metre distance from each other and we get over 300 people at each distribution; it takes at least a couple of hours. And it’s extremely hard to manage with just seven volunteers and high tension due to food shortages. These two …
URGENT APPEAL – FOOD – PLEASE SHARE
The food supply for refugees in Calais and Dunkirk has drastically reduced. Some associations have pulled out and the French state have scaled back what they provide. Certain sites are reporting drinking water shortages. Today we spent €1,300 on food. We cannot sustain this for long. We provided 250 food packs for men in Calais and tomorrow we will take family food packs to Dunkirk. We urgently need supplies of – dried fruit and nuts – cereal bars – biscuits – long life milk – tinned tuna We need funds to buy the above locally along with supplies of fresh …