Saturday 31 December 2016

Dunkirk refugee camp day 5

So today was quite tough. As the Children's Centre was closed I spent the day in the Women's Centre offering jewellery making and nail painting workshops. Afterwards was an opportunity to get to know individual women better. I met a lady from Afghanistan who had to leave as her husband was a business studies teacher and the Taliban didn't like that. She has family in Manchester (parents, sisters) who settled a while ago, but she isn't allowed to join them.
It's amazing to see the normal, middle-class existences of the women on their Facebook pages knowing now that their lives have been completely turned upside down and they are living in a refugee camp.
One of the older ladies who speaks no English but who listens daily to the lessons insisted on me coming to her cabin for dinner. The family are Iraqi Kurds and the husband has legal British citizenship, having worked in Glasgow for 16 years, but his family - wife, 3 year old son and teenage son with what I think is cerebral palsy - are not allowed entry to the UK. It was my first time inside one of the cabins. Carpeted with offcuts and immaculately clean, the plywood walls have no windows and a single bulb hangs from the ceiling. All four family members sleep, eat and live in the 2.5 x 3.5 metre cabin, which has a small covered area for storage. There is an oil fire but nowhere to cook, so this is done on one of the four iron fires in the Women's Centre. I was given rice and a mushroom dish and asked to eat first, before the plate and spoon were passed round the rest of the family. The family were very insistent that I have enough to eat (and I dared not say that mushrooms are something that I usually avoid like the plague).
Another visitor to the hut was asking if I would take him to the UK (I declined, citing the French police with dogs and guns at the port), but the family's young child and disabled son make it impossible for them to try their luck on the lorries like the majority of the camp's young male residents do nightly.
The rest of the Children's Centre staff have gone to Bruges for NYE but I'm just not able to square what I witnessed today with participating in the New Year's jollity. The women invited me to come to their 'party' in the Women's Centre but the French rules required me to be offsite by 8pm, which is probably for the best. Women around the camp at night are not the safest. Children of all ages are put in nappies at night to save having to trek to the toilets (hence the need for the larger sizes) and the women also avoid going out if at all possible. Having said that, I managed to drop my debit card in the Women's Centre and it was found and returned to me shortly afterwards.
Leaving is going to be hard. Knowing that I can leave, drive off, go to the supermarket or get a takeaway is impossible to square with the lives of those who have not got those choices, despite just a few years ago working or studying and living like I do. I cannot get my head around the politics of who we do and don't let into the UK and the reasons why or why not.

https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/caroline-dunkirk-refugees

Dunkirk refugee camp day 4

Another cold (-3) and busy day without the generator working. We fed 32 children lunch today (with lunch cooked by the camp kitchen) and had a 'film night' showing The Lion King by some enterprising trailing of electrical wires across the road from the Women's Centre. Some of the children look like they have the tail end of chicken pox, but actually it's bed bug bites or the like. UK teachers, you know how often kids ask to go to the loo in lessons? In 4 days here I haven't had noticed a single child go to the loo during the activity time. Just shows how cold and unappealing an experience it is. One of the hardest things is shutting for lunch / end of day and having to turn the children out into the cold.
With your kind donations I've been able to buy some excellent craft activities - we've been mask making, collaging flowers, biscuit decorating and decorating crafts, the children and ourselves with mini gems and glitter.
The Children's Centre closes at the weekend so I'll be based in the Women's Centre offering some jewellery making, sewing dolls and make-up sessions alongside the daily English lessons. Today I learnt that the Kurdish months don't coincide with the English ones as the New Year is at a different time of the year - will have to reteach that tomorrow! I'm focussing on (hopefully) useful stuff like dates of birth, needs, likes and dislikes and this weekend will cover body parts and health so that the women can communicate how they are feeling to medical professionals.
Back at my lodgings I've been practicing my schoolgirl French on a schoolgirl. Eleanor - you remember your French homework on liking school subjects? Well it came in very useful today!

https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/caroline-dunkirk-refugees

Dunkirk refugee camp day 3

You know when kids play policemen and pretend shoot you? Well the kids playing this know that you don't put your hands up, you put them behind your head and get down on your knees.
In the women's centre today I was given a make over by some of the women. Keeping up appearances is very important so the ladies cut hair and do other beauty things with what they have. Today I was invited to have some threading (like waxing but with cotton) done and I'm booked in with Mona tomorrow for my eyebrows to be 'designed'. Nail painting went down well with the ladies and the girls and mask making with the children today. A group of Belgian volunteers came to make waffles and hot chocolate at the camp, and had to contend with the lack of electricity and trying to light fires to warm the largest block of chocolate I've ever seen - 2-3 inches high and 2 foot long, it took an hour or more to melt on the tiny fires available.
Tales of the English lessons are spreading, especially that we shout 'we are women' very loudly and proudly (working on genders and pronouns). Today was verbs with -ing endings and more food nouns, and it's lovely when the women come up during the day to practice the phrases with me.
It is very cold (-3 this morning) and the children's centre generator packed up. I dread to think what it is like sleeping overnight in the cabins (shacks).

https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/caroline-dunkirk-refugees

Dunkirk refugee camp day 2

Today started quietly. Many of the families stayed at home as there had been a police raid with tear gas and dogs last night (no one's quite sure why). When I say at home, I mean in the 3m square plywood shack that was built as temporary housing but is still in use. My lunchtime adult English lesson was interrupted by a food delivery, so we put it to good use and I didn't allow anyone to get past without saying whether they liked or didn't like the food in English. It's teaching on the most basic scale - me and a mini whiteboard, making the most of every situation to gain more language. I was really pleased that today some of the women started to come up to me to say the phrases we are learning. This afternoon we did loom bands, and the most enthusiastic bracelet makers were three boys, 14, 16 and 17 years old, one of whom was an unaccompanied minor (don't believe the papers saying they are adults pretending). They had great fun!
I know you're probably sick of the fundraising by now, but I'd love to be able to get a mini projector and dvd player for the centre whilst I'm over here as the kids loved a film night when a projector was borrowed. They can be got for just under a hundred - if you haven't already donated then please think about it now. I also want to get a replacement chess set and some dolls for the dolls house.

https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/caroline-dunkirk-refugees

Dunkirk refugee camp day 1



So my first day was hard work. About 30 children visited the centre, which is like a run down portacabin. It's ok when the generator works but cold and dark when it doesn't. The women's centre is much barer, with nothing to do in it and chipboard floor and seating with tarpaulin walls. About 15 women joined in my first English lesson, which had to be high on the differentiation to cater for the different language levels. The families were mostly Kurdish, from Iran, Iraq and Kurdistan, but Afghans and others too. The camp itself is basically numbered sheds in mud. There is nothing to do all day but wait for nightfall to try your luck on a lorry. The highlight of my day was learning to use a squat loo. Tomorrow I will not be drinking as much to limit my use of it!!

Tuesday 13 December 2016


Why did I decide to become a doula?



I had always enjoyed supporting pregnant friends and families with a newborn, and wanted to give back the same support that I had enjoyed from others in my early days of parenthood. I really enjoyed my own pregnancies and births but I found breastfeeding tough, even with my second child when I was convinced my breasts should have sorted out how to work after twelve months of feeding my firstborn. The support I received in the early days was invaluable, and I wanted to be able to offer the same support to other women and their families.