“This is not a political crisis or a migrant crisis. It isn’t a European crisis or even a refugee crisis — it is a human crisis, which is happening to real people.”
That was the message from a Monifieth couple returning after four days spent volunteering at the “Jungle” migrant camp in Calais.
Gemma Chapman, 32, and husband Craig, 28, were assisted by a group of volunteers from the Scottish Action for Refugee Group.
They managed to build 13 new shelters for people in desperate need, including children and heavily pregnant women.
Speaking to the Tele, Gemma explained the shocking conditions at the camp, which sits on a floodplain 500m from the ferry port, between two pungent chemical plants.
Gemma, an assisted learning teacher, said: “The ground was strewn with rubbish.
“There are no bins in the camp. Charities routinely try to clear the rubbish, but the councils do not help — waste lies everywhere.
“The French Government has supplied 75 portable toilets in camp for 6,000 people.
“The toilets weren’t usable and the grassy areas are full of human excrement as people have no other option.
“The camp also has five communal taps.
“Birmingham University recently swabbed the taps and found traces of E Coli.
“The drinking water was compromised, people struggle to wash and are carrying water in unclean containers back to their tents to wash, cook and clean. People eat with their hands off dirty sheets of tarpaulin draped over tables.”
Gemma also spoke of a heartwarming note left by one man after a shelter was built for him.
She said: “We met Howard, an older man from Sudan.
“He had chronic asthma and was very frail.
“He can’t access a doctor or inhaler and slept in a cold tent.
“We built him a warm, dry shelter. Howard wrote us a note on the door of his shelter. It read, ‘What I can say, you saved my life, more than thank you’.”
Gemma told how she was astonished by the generosity of a group of Eritrean girls who didn’t even have shoes.
The girls insisted on sharing the one packet of biscuits they had.
One of the girls, Rupa, 17, told them that Eritrea was the most beautiful place on earth, but was not safe.
Gemma said the girl placed her own hands on her pregnant stomach.
Gemma said: “My eyes stung as she smiled at me. ‘Every night I will try for England by train’, she told me.
“Many of the people in the camp try to cross the Channel, some try to hide in lorries, but many try to throw themselves on top of the moving trains headed for England.”
While the Chapmans were in Calais, they estimated that at least two people a night were killed on the railways.
Others were killed on the roads or crushed in lorries.
Gemma added: “These figures are not reported. People with no identities, families with no answers.
“When did we become so desensitised to human suffering that a humanitarian crisis can simply be ignored, branded ‘not our problem’?
“I expected to return from Calais feeling like I had achieved some good, but I came home feeling utterly ashamed.”