ORTHODOX CHRISTMAS IN CALAIS 7th January 2020 

It has become a tradition for Maria Skobtsova House to enable the Eritrean and Ethiopian refugee community in Calais to celebrate Orthodox Christmas and Easter. Thanks to wonderful support from Father Bryan and Father Pierre, from Sister Henriette and Sister Monique, from Veronique, Sister Francoise, Martine, MSH volunteers and the incredible cooking team (Eritrean and Ethiopian women guests in MSH) this year’s Orthodox Christmas celebration was a memorable day. 60 of the refugee community came for prayer in St Joseph’s church, led by 3 Orthodox deacons from within the community, and 150 came for the celebratory  meal afterwards.

For 2 days, MSH kitchen was a hive of activity:Preparing Hambasha bread 

Hambasha bread

400 Injera were made

Stirring the Xigni (Eritrean/Ethiopian beef stew) on a burner in the courtyard

150 hard-boiled eggs, the final addition to the Xigni

Shoes are always removed before prayer

Orthodox Christmas Prayer Service, St Joseph’s Calais

The Three Orthodox Diakons, in white prayer shawls, leading prayer

Nativity scene and Orthodox Selassie (Trinity) in front of St Joseph’s altar. The Selassie was formerly in the Big Jungle Orthodox Church (demolished 2016).

The Feast is served: injera, xigni, salad

Pumpkin lantern prepared for feast at Maria Skobtsova House by K from Iran.

Day 1   I arrived in Calais on a very wet and windy Monday afternoon, rain lashing first on the deck of the ferry, then on the car windscreen. In Maria Skobtsova House, I am introduced to the current guests, who immediately brought me plates of Iranian food.  Of the 14 adults and 3 young children staying in the house, most are Iranians, one Ethiopian and one Eritrean with her little son. There is an inbuilt tension in that only women and children can stay overnight, while the men – husbands or sons – unless ill,  must sleep in the jungle or at a government night shelter – they call it 115. The priority is the most vulnerable, and at the moment this is the women and children. 

Day 2   Today, Alex, the other volunteer, ferried me around the outskirts of town on a sightseeing trip, visiting little and bigger ‘Jungles’.  One I remembered from 2 years ago, ‘the Little Forest’, is now completely fenced off, as are others. ‘Belgium Parking’ is now walled off.  There is a systematic clearing of camping spaces and closing them off to prevent resettlement.

We returned to the house and managed a lunch time prayer. Kirrilee, the Anglican refugee chaplain, who is the House manager, came around to chat. Her job consists of being parish priest to the Anglicans in the Nord Pas de Calais for half her time, and chaplain to refugees and volunteers the other half.  She tried to give me some guidelines for House management, as the dynamic has changed since Johannes left in April.  When Alex leaves on November 15^th I shall be ‘in charge’ for the last bit of my stay.  The residents are brilliant at cleaning and catering for themselves, and us.  So maybe it won’t be too arduous. 

Day 3   L, the Ethiopian woman, took me to the ‘big Jungle’ to meet an Ethiopian whom my nephew Stephen had put me in touch with.  An hour’s walk to the periphery and we made lots of enquiries about ‘A’ from Ethiopia at La Vie Active food delivery point.  A good 200 people were scattered around and helpful people asked for photos, which I didn’t have, only a phone number, which was not producing a response.  Suddenly a smiling man appeared in front of me, bingo!

A was in a terrible shipwreck off the coast of Egypt.  Six hundred migrants were involved, of whom 30, including A, survived.  A has travelled through Greece, Macedonia, Serbia, Hungary, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium and now France.  None of these countries has given a welcome, some more brutally rejecting than others.  He tries every night to jump on a lorry, or indeed any vehicle bound for the UK, yet he has so far failed. He showed me his tent, just off a motorway embankment, almost in a ditch.  Conditions are indeed filthy, and in our walk we saw at least 2 dead rats.  The rain hasn’t helped.   Despite a good tent, covered by a tarpaulin, rain runs down the embankment over the groundsheet. 

Day 4   In the early evening the house is suddenly filled with 10 of the residents, who have had an adventure. They had gone down to the beach but were picked up by the police and taken to the Coquelles detention centre for questioning, since they couldn’t produce any papers. The group was in gales of laughter as they showed pictures and videos of themselves in the centre. The police not only released them quickly but dropped them back in the town centre in 2 cars.  ‘We are your taxi service!’ they told them.

Day 7    The BIGGEST news in the house yesterday was that J and B reached England. So much rejoicing in the house, along the lines of ‘they can do it, so can we’. 

Day 21   Two days ago D came in from the Jungle saying the ‘CAPS’ (CRS riot police) had been to visit, and that M. had been arrested.   Both had said they were 17 and had not been fingerprinted, but one was taken and the other left (like in the Bible).  He was released later in the day after 7 hours in the ‘Deport Centre’ and caught a bus back into town, returning full of the adventure.  ‘First time in prison’ he boasts, a bit dazed.  His mother had been frantic with worry.

Postscript  14 out of the 17 people I met in Calais are now in the UK.  I am still working out what to think about it all.  A unique experience, and what am I called to do about it? 

Barbara Kentish. November 2019

Residents’  Art and Textiles workshop display of hats and pictures

-Rahel, do you need juice and yoghurt tomorrow for Yusef?

She smiles and says thank you. Two year old Yusef, in nappies and t-shirt, is playing with a toy car on the gravel footpath beside which twenty or so tents are pitched. This is the Eritrean “camp” in Calais.

–Dumoo, dumoo, squeals Yusef. The biddable black cat emerges from the long grass. Yusef scoops it up and it hangs limply from his arms.

-Baba Alex, will you get me tinta.

It’s tall, beaming Haile.

-Haile, what’s tinta?

–Black tinta for hair.

-Haile..why do you want black tinta?

– My hair going brown. Too much sun.

Sure enough, the tips of his tall spirals of hair are distinctively brown.

-Ok Haile, I’ll bring you hair dye tomorrow.

 Hair dye, that’s a first. Curious to learn more about this browning, I google. The “Locs Therapist” in Georgia, Alabama, informs viewers of his facebook video that discolouration can result from too much sun, poor diet and stress. Haile ticks all the boxes.

Teinture pour les cheveux noirs. I try first at a pharmacy. The assistant offers me an “all-natural” product for twelve euros. In my poor French, I politely decline. Carrefour in the same shopping mall has Kera teinture bleu noir for four. I’m confused by the bleu bit, but take my chances and buy it. I cycle to the Eritrean “camp” with juice and yoghurt for Rahel and the four euro tinta for Haile. It’s mid-morning and already into the low thirties. It’s due to top forty later in the day. The tents are still in the shaded lee of the wall. There’s no sign of Haile so I give the tinta to Osman and ask him to pass it on.

I return in the afternoon. A dozen young guys squeeze into the circle of shade cast by the single young ash tree. There’s an intense game of cards underway; others are sleeping. Haile is sitting crossed legged on the burnt out grass, eyes closed, smiling broadly as his gloved accomplice Mewael vigorously  works black dye into his hair with a tooth brush. The tooth brush is then discarded and Mawael now rubs the dye into Haile’s thick mop with his gloved hand. A second accomplice, Semare, dips the corner of an old t-shirt into a cup of water and wipes away smudges of dye on Haile’s neck. Work on the crop of hair completed, Mewael now turns his attention to Haile’s pencil thin sideboards that taper to a point just below the line of his ear lobes. The task is delicately achieved using a dry stem of grass.

-don’t touch, says Haile – He’s seen my intense interest. –tinta stays many days on your skin. He shows me the tip of his stained black thumb. 

I have to leave, but later return. It’s night time. Haile’s jet black hair glows in the glare of the streetlights.

Alex Holmes  July 2019.
(Haile is now an asylum seeker in UK)

9.25am, La Pass, the medical drop in centre, is still closed. Nebiyou’s ripped hand, heavily bandaged, rests limply in a sling. He spent two weeks in a specialist surgical unit in Lille after his hand was badly cut on razor wire whilst trying to run from the CRS, the French riot Police. One finger was sliced in two lengthwise.

We wait patiently at the locked door.

Awate arrives. He presses his scarf to his lips. There’s blood on his white hoodie and on the sleeves of his denim coat. Livid raw skin to the side of his left eye. “It was the CRS” he said, “they hit me with an electric baton on my face and on my head and on my back.”

Osman, another Eritrean, joins us outside the door, pink fresh skin on his dark face. “I’m ok now”, he reassures me.

Two Eritreans. I ask them if they’ve seen Nahom, and describe the boy with the broken teeth. They haven’t.

9.30, the sullen security guard, proffering a single wink, unlocks the door. Nebiyou checks in at the desk. Awate comes into the waiting room and slumps into a chair, leaning forward, head held in his hands. Osman has disappeared. We wait in the plastic and chrome silence.

 Beside the football stadium, a group of young Eritreans. Amongst them, Mebrahtu, his hand no longer bandaged. The scar on the ball of his thumb, a distant bird in flight, is punctuated by twelve neat stitch marks. A CRS officer stamped on his hand which was split open by a buried spike.

“It’s the same here as in Eritrea”, he says. “I’d as well be back home”. His smile belies a deep suffering.

There’s music, the surprising sound of Nashville in Calais: “One day at a time, sweet Jesus, that’s all I’m asking from You, just give me the strength to do everyday what I have to do”.

“My friend in Holland told me about this song,” Yoel explains. “One day, one day I will get to UK”

The ever smiling Yoel, it’s two years since I first met him in Calais. He’s had a haircut and looks much younger.

They’ve not seen Nahom. Time to move on.

A solitary hooded figure slowly paces the back road in the shadow of the industrial zone. At last, Nahom. He’s lost in the music he’s listening to on his phone, mezmurs, Orthodox Christian chants. Seeing me, he pulls out his earphones and grins broadly, baring his broken teeth. Discharged from hospital after falling from a lorry and losing his front teeth, he came to stay in Maria Skobtsova House for a few days, before suddenly vanishing. During one quiet moment, he spoke of Eritrea, of how his family house had been destroyed in the war with Ethiopia, of the years of harsh military conscription. After three years in the army, he ran away to see his family, then escaped to Ethiopia. He showed me the burn marks on his feet from when he was held to ransom and tortured in Libya. Finally he reached the UK only to have his asylum application refused. Under the Dublin Regulation, because he had been fingerprinted in Italy, he was deported there. Tired and hungry on the streets of Naples he had accepted the offer of bread and water only to pass out and awaken to find his jacket and boots stolen.

After a big embrace and checking he is ok, we talk football, and about friends in common, now in the UK. I tell him he is welcome in the house anytime.

“I will come, yes.” He is silent for a moment, perhaps registering my concern. “I am ok”, he reassures me, “I am ok because I have God.” We part with another embrace.

Earphoned once more, he continues his lone path.

Alex Holmes May 2019.
(Nahom is now an asylum seeker in UK)