Hello friends and readers.
I got back last Saturday night from a few weeks helping out at the camp at Grande Synthe, near Dunkirk, in northern France. I am exhausted still, physically I feel weak and sore, mentally I feel drained and empty, emotionally I am somewhat numb.
I have been trying to compose in my mind what I want to say to you all about the situation, both at that particular camp of human beings, and about the situation on a wider scale.
After 48 hours of trying I came up with very little, so here I am winging it and just typing as I feel. Apologies if the style of writing does not entertain you.
We (my travel partner Michaela Smith and myself) rolled up there on Tuesday the 26th of January with a van (loaned to us by the good folk from www.legs4africa.org), filled to bursting with aid items (contributed by the good people of www.lesolidarity.org), a bank account with a good few hundred quid in it (donated by our good friends from Leicester's' counter culture), and two hearts full of love, compassion and good intentions.
We were going to help these people and we were going to make a difference.
From the outset we were on a mission to get the aid off the van quickly so that we would have room enough to lay our mattress down and sleep in relative comfort within it. At first we both felt that we wanted to live on camp with the human beings we now call collectively "refugees" (or, if you buy into the bullshit, "migrants"). We were getting along well with this at first and knowing the layout of the camp helped. Knowing who to liaise with on the ground and meeting up with one or two familiar faces among the volunteers was also invaluable. We had managed to unload the 40 or 50 sleeping bags, boxes of blankets, crates of food etc to the relevant distribution tents managed by the international community of awake souls who work there full time, doing with little resources what the UN and the EU should be doing, but are not. We then had to move the van closer to the men's clothing tent to get all the boxes of jackets, coats etc unloaded.
That's when the shooting happened.
Michaela was reversing the van and I was guiding her in when I noticed to my left two young guys having what looked for all the world like an argument. As I was waving the van in, this argument suddenly became a full on altercation with police issue tear gas canisters appearing in their hands from out of nowhere, and one of the guys getting a face full of the nasty stuff. I caught a bit of it on the breeze and that was irritating enough. The inflicted party ran off, retaliating in kind as he did so, only to be pursued with vigour by the other young man who then proceeded to draw out an automatic pistol and fired one shot in the direction of his target. I tried to see, but could not tell if anyone was hit by this reckless bullet in a camp full of children.
At this point it all gets a bit blurry as things happened fast. I recall Michaela (fearless creature that she is) ignoring my demand that we now leave camp and insisting that we remain to unload more jumpers and jackets. So that is what we started doing (she is the boss in our team, make no mistake) and for a minute or two we got on with this effectively. Then more shots were heard around the camp and suddenly we were hemmed in by frightened people attempting to shelter behind, alongside and inside of our van.
I heard Michaela say "Alan, get in the van!" but I couldn't. To have done so would have meant pulling others out of the back who had sought it's shelter already. I couldn't do that as I had noticed the terror on their faces. I had noticed the way they automatically made themselves smaller targets and sought cover from stray bullets. An automatic practise I dare say they have had to learn from the circumstances of their already traumatised lives. I noticed the way they sought safety around us, as if we offered some kind of protection in these circumstances.
How many shots were fired altogether I do not know. I counted at least six. Michaela reckoned about ten, in two bursts from two directions. Then this one bloke, whose name I never learnt, placed himself alongside our van and started shouting in Kurdish. I have no idea what he said but he obviously commanded some respect as the shooting stopped. There were now a group of young men with sticks and evil grins approaching our area from behind the van and from the wooden shack alongside us a woman and two small children emerged, crying and trembling. We tried to offer them the shelter of the van and to take them away from the camp but I do not think they understood our words and I (to my continued shame) decided then and there that I was prepared to abandon them to their fate for the sake of getting ourselves to safety. Maybe, for all my fine words, I am nothing but a coward after all. However, my prime concern was getting Michaela out of the danger zone. I couldn't deal with watching her catch a bullet. To do so would break me. So I told her forcefully, half pulling her physically towards the cab, "We leave, NOW!"
So we left, driving out and feeling like total selfish cunts for doing so.
The wail of anguish that I heard from people as we got in the cab and left the area will remain with me all of my days.
We hung around the area trying to catch news of what was happening inside, then after a while we decided to head off to find somewhere to park up and kip the night.
I have never been caught in a gun battle before. It was an experience that brought all kinds of realities about myself into sharp relief and I am still in the process of reflecting on what those realities say about the meaning of my existence, the meaning and point of me. However, as I learnt subsequently over the next two and a half weeks, gunfire, killing, bombs falling from the sky and sudden brutality and death are things these wonderful people have been subjected to from many quarters for some time.
To try and escape these things is the main reason they are living in that field of mud. They have men with guns back home killing their loved ones and grinding their homelands into shit, men with guns killing their people in the name of God, Revenge, Autonomy, Democracy or Business. They have men with guns working for the French establishment searching them as they come and go to and from the camp, and making them feel like they are wrong for existing. They have men with guns attempting to dictate the conditions of their existence within the camp, working for gangs of organised criminality whose sole objective is to profit from their desperation, their need, their vulnerability and their hopes.
So what did my first day at camp teach me? Well it reaffirmed one conviction that I have held for a while now.
Men with guns are no solution to the challenges of life. Once you pick up a gun you become part of the problem, whatever your idealistic or abstract justification, whatever your emotional reasons, and whomever you work for and however much they pay you.
I hope one day we (humanity) learn this lesson well. We need peace to be secure, we need peace to be happy. We need peace to progress and evolve into the truly integrated society of enlightened beings we can (and will) become.
Peace will never be established by people with guns. For peace to become our reality we all have to put our weapons down.
More to come......
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