Happy New Year from Calais

We’ve spent a few more days in Calais, and have been cooking up a storm! We’ve made potato salad, North African chickpea stew, potato-olive pastry rolls, carrot salad, aubergine coconut curry and more. Members of the cooking collective have also been learning bits of different languages, making friends with people from all over the world, teaching people about how to use manual cameras, and collecting discarded vegetables from the Saturday market.

In the days before New Year’s eve, one of our main tasks (besides cooking) was preparing for the New Year’s party, which was happening at Africa House, where the migrants who lived there invited all the other migrant communities to come to the “hafla”- a party. We had to collect decorations, build benches and tables out of pallets, wood and bricks, sort out the generator for lighting, and of course make lots of food.

There were some worries about a police raid during the party- a few nights before some police had shown up at Africa house at about 3 in the morning, woken up the migrants who were sleeping there and intimidated them. Rather than arresting anyone, they said “see you on the 31st”, implying that there would be police presence during the party. Events like that are a constant reality for migrants living in Calais- Africa House is raided several times each week, with police storming the squat (a set of derelict university buildings) in the early hours of the morning, waking everyone up and making arrests. During the raids it is normal for phones and cameras to be seized or smashed if they are used to document police brutality, and windows, chairs and tables are also intentionally destroyed by the police. If migrants are arrested-which is a regular occurrence for many- they are put into prison for several hours, and then have to walk back into town. Routine imprisonment, brutality and police intimidation can grind people down- often migrants will describe some individuals as having “been in Calais for too long”- meaning they can be hopeless, erratic or aggressive.

Luckily, the New Year’s party went ahead without the police inviting themselves along. Instead, Africa House was festive- lit up by candles and fairy lights, pumping with music coming out of a car-battery powered sound system, and filled with migrants and activists from all over the world. Different people took turns plugging their phones and mp3 players into the sound system, so the music was an amazing global mix- Egyptian, Afghan, 80’s pop, hip-hop and everything in between. When the Afghan songs were on, a group of Afghan men led dancing where participants dance in a circle, spinning, clapping and jumping. At first only Afghans danced in the circle dance, but they were soon joined by guys from Africa House, as well as No Borders activists.

As midnight approached, we went outside for the climax of the evening- our very own mini fireworks display. As the fireworks rocketed off across the field outside of Africa House, we counted down to the New Year and people wished each other happy new year in at least a dozen different languages. What an amazing way to end one year and begin a new one!