Dunkirk Refugee Camp

This past Saturday, I had the opportunity to volunteer in the Dunkirk refugee camp in France. It was a great experience. (Unfortunately, my pictures have all uploaded out of order but I am too lazy to put them in order.) I got up at 2:30am to drive over and pick up our team of six from St. Albans and left at 3:30am to make our way down to the Eurotunnel where we got on a mini bus with a bunch of other volunteers in a convoy of cars and vans headed to Calais.  Above: This is a picture of some friends and I in the Women's centre in the camp. We were doing a sewing project with the women of the camp that had just been approved the previous week. Old Singer sewing machines with crank handles were brought in and loads of fabric and sewing equipment was donated. We were the first group to try out this new project. We didn't get into the Women's center until the afternoon. There was one seamstress volunteer making dresses for several little girls who were all lined up waiting patiently for their turn to be sized for their new dress with the fabric they had chosen. I loved watching as each girl's dress was finally done and she tried it on with a big smile on her face. Other girls would then take out her hair and try and fix it to match her pretty dress, often running around finding ribbon for her hair to match. There was another woman helping to make quilts. We walked in and were asked if we would help an Iraqi woman make a dress/tunic. We looked at each other quite worried but agreed to give it our best shot. The woman did not help us, she simply wanted us to do it for her. So with our very limited sewing skills, we got to work. It was hilarious trying to make the dress several sizes larger than the pattern. We were running on very little sleep and had just finished doing several big labour intensive projects in the morning, so our brains were not functioning at full capacity.  



When we first arrived at the camp in the morning, we worked on the little school - consisting of two classrooms with a little play area in the middle. We painted, mended fences and swing sets, made shutters for the windows and leveled the ground and spread out wood chips and sand. It was a lot of work.

Here we are again still trying to measure this dress so we could cut it out. It was way beyond any sewing abilities I have. The Iraqi woman was looking nervous after we were still trying to figure out the measurements an hour later... We did end up with a dress-like garment in the end. I am not sure it was what the woman was envisioning. It needed to have some serious tailoring done but we were proud to get the main pieces sewn together. In the book we were using, the dress was labeled a level 4 out of 5 for difficulty. It had a bodice. I didn't even know what a bodice was before this experience.

This is the whole group. They were from places all over England. Not only did we get to talk to the refugees but I made many new friends from the other volunteers.

This is an 87 year old woman from our group (she is from my ward) who was showing the children how to knit. She was fantastic! They loved her.

Here is a panoramic picture of the camp. Dunkirk is actually a step up when it comes to camps. They are allowed to build these little wooden huts, though they are not big enough for a grown adult to lay down outstretched, they are at least off the ground and a shelter from the wind. The camp in Calais called the Jungle is not allowed these shelters so that camp is much worse off. The people live in make-shift tents with dirt floors or donated tents that sit in the mud.  

When we first arrived in Calais, we stopped at the warehouse for the Jungle refugee camp. We unloaded three vans of donated food. The volunteers there were in tears because they had gotten so low on food. A convoy bringing food the past weekend had been turned back because of issues at the border. It is Ramadan right now and most people are fasting all day and then have had very little or nothing to break their fast. I brought two boxes of dates into the warehouse kitchen. You would have thought I was carrying gold, people were jumping up and down, shouting "we have dates!"

Here is a friend of mine and I cutting wood for repairing the fence by the little school. She was much better at sawing than me. All those years at the gym and I am still a wimp....

Here are some of the volunteers with some Iraqi ladies in the women's centre. I spoke to the Iraqi woman on the in the hijab on the right side in Arabic. She told me she was from Mosul. She said her husband was in Britain and she and her two children have been stuck in the camp for the past 8 months. (Yes, I was albe to speak Arabic in the camp a little bit but not as much as I would have like. Not that many Arabic speakers in Dunkirk. Apparently, there are a lot more in the Jungle. I will go there next time.) The woman in the blue hijab came in and whipped up a gorgeous long dress out of some blue velvet she found. She even put some lace around the neck. She whipped that out in less than half the time it took us just to measure and cut out our dress pieces. I think the Iraqi woman we were sewing for had regrets about her choice of seamstresses.....

Here is a photo of one of the finished classrooms. Notice the lovely shutters and how nicely they are put together. I made those!!! I told Charles we will now be putting shutters up on all our windows because I know how to make them!  If you would like to hire me to make shutters for your house, just leave a comment at the end of this post. I accept all major credit cards....Aren't they beautiful?

We repaired this old swing set by the school that only had one swing. I have several pictures of a bunch of happy little Iraqi girls playing on it afterwards with their dolls. This is one of the volunteers trying it out.

When we were painting the school, loads of refugee children came running over wanting to help. The volunteers let them have a try. However, they started painting everything in sight, including the flower boxes which we were just going to leave unpainted but never mind, they are white now.

Here is a view of the main path down the middle of the camp. You could definitely feel a sadness about the camp. We ate our lunch in the camp from a meal truck along with all the refugees. There was a stack of plates and forks by two large tubs of water out in the open air. You take a plate go to the old broken down meal truck where a guy dishes you out a huge helping of rice and lentils (with bits of potato and grape leaves in it), eat it at one of the picnic tables, wash your plate and put it back on  the stack. It filled me up.



This is the finished play area between the two classrooms, in the foreground that you can't see, we laid sand. Isn't it lovely! The fence in the background is the one we repaired.

Here is the 87 year old woman in action teaching knitting to some of the children. She was fabulous. Her and I stopped at Burger King while waiting for our train back to England and shared French fries and ice cream for dinner. I don't think she ever eats that way but it couldn't not have been a better dinner.  



More pictures of the children helping with the painting.

Ok one more shutter shot....have you ever seen more lovely shutters in all your life?