Mid-morning. There is little to say or do except shake hands and say you are welcome and would you like tea. Three young Eritreans from the Green Hotel. An occasional word is said but mainly the three sit silently around the table in the Calais Catholic Worker house. Gebre, sitting between his two friends, has just learned his mother has died. Deaths and sadness roll into the leaden silence. A fifteen year old Afghan boy, Abdullah, has been killed on the motorway trying to get to the UK and join his brother. Days later, Biniam, an Eritrean name meaning “Lucky Son”, met the same tragic fate.
Midday. The thin spread of pines and winter-bare trees of the Green Hotel offer minimal protection from the horizontal rain squalling relentlessly from the south-west. A huddle of young Eritreans are nursing a fire into life. They have firelighters, dry pine needles and a quantity of firewood, sawn up pallets, delivered by one of the volunteer associations working with refugees in Calais. A boy emerges from sleeping under an igloo of sleeping bags and plastic. A huge smile on his face, he says something and has everyone laughing. His plastic igloo has kept him dry. He gratefully accepts hot tea which he sweetens with two heaped dessert spoons of sugar. Away from the fire, the sound of a hammer driving in nails. Two guys are making a krar, a traditional five-stringed musical instrument. Later someone appears with a bicycle: the brake cables will be the strings.
Towards midday, people start to filter towards the “Church” for Sunday worship. “The Church”, a room-sized area bounded by a low wooden wall, once, perhaps, a safe play space for children, has no protection from the driving rain. The diakon (Eritrean Orthodox deacon) is struggling to light a candle. Others gather round him to provide shelter but the elements defeat them. We sit waiting on the peripheral wooden wall. Called to prayer by the daikon on the dot of midday, we form into standing rows and worship begins. Beneath the shrill whine of the wind and the flapping of the thin plastic ponchos worn by some of the worshippers, and the sound of the traffic on Autoroute 216, there is deep focus amongst the worshippers and a profound stillness. An hour into the worship, the daikon goes through an elaborate ritual of blessing water in a plastic bottle and then walks along the rows of worshippers sprinkling each of us with the holy water. We end prostrate on our knees, in deep reverential silence, our foreheads pressed to the sodden ground.
Mid-afternoon, the doorbell rings once again. Three guys and a young woman stand on the pavement outside the front door. I know them from the Green Hotel. “Charge, charge” says one of them. They need to charge their phones. Jamila, the young woman, has been tear gassed by the CRS. She asks for a shower. Another of the guys points to his head: “Panadol?” he asks. His head aches badly. He tells me he is so tired. I fetch him two paracetemol. Within moments, his head on his arms on the table, he’s asleep, exhausted. His friends, quietly sipping their tea, stare silently at the screens of their charging phones. Safety and respite for now; later, they will return to the raw cold and sleeplessness of the Green Hotel. Before they leave, one of them, Dawit, shows me what he has written: “Life is wrong, Life is walking. I hope, good always in my heart. Seven times down, number eight up. Life is a struggle, I will be successful. I pray to God to save me. I will win as God is with me. At last my life will be peaceful.”
*The Green Hotel is a sparsely wooded area on the fringes of Calais, home for some 100 Eritrean refugees hoping to get to the UK.