Glastonbury comes to the rescue of Calais’ flooded refugee camp
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Version 0 of 1. Life has never been easy in Calais’ sprawling makeshift refugee camp. But on Sunday and Monday, violent storms battered the “new Jungle”, flooding tents with foul water and reducing the rubbish-strewn scrubland to a labyrinth of waterways and mud. “Until now the desired footwear has been trainers,” says Liz Clegg, a volunteer aid worker at the camp, “but with the change in the weather and yesterday’s floods, wellies are now majorly popular.” In jeans and a tank top, Clegg is handing out wellies from the back of her faded blue ex-army personnel carrier to a growing line of refugees who tread a thin strip of sand on the flooded main road. In “normal” life she works for the Glastonbury festival and at the end of this year’s event was confronted by a mountain of abandoned wellingtons earmarked for recycling: “I stood in the yard and thought: ‘Fuck me, that is a lot of wellies.’ I was aware of the crisis [in Calais] and put two and two together. This rubbish is a problem for us at the festival, but I knew they would be gratefully received over here.” The festival was also able to donate 2,000 used ponchos and some first aid kits. Clegg is part of a growing band of people who are taking direct action to help the people of the camp. On Sunday, some 60 cyclists from Bikes without Borders arrived to donate bikes, and in the storerooms of French charity Association Salam, where Clegg stores her wellies, donations from across Europe are staked to the rafters. Just Giving pages are springing up, with grassroots activists collecting everything from sleeping bags to sanitary towels. It is estimated that the population of the camp is more than 3,000 and growing by 100 people a day and with tightened security there are fewer opportunities for the refugees and migrants to leave for safety in Britain. Clegg is staying until “the money runs out”, but in the meantime is volunteering to distribute donations for other charities in Calais. “We still need thousands of wellies for the coming winter,” she says. |