Refugee chronicles: The long and lonely road from Sudan to northern France

Tea, towels and endurance blankets

On that aforesaid cold, grey greeting erstwhile I met Hashim and Yusuf, 12 wet, freezing Vietnamese radical were walking down a coastal roadworthy southbound of Calais. Their vessel had capsized.

On their mode backmost from this misadventure, they met a squad from the French relation Utopia 56, which formed aft the tragic death of a Syrian toddler named Aylan, whose assemblage was washed to enactment successful Turkey successful 2015.

It has immoderate 200 volunteers who supply food, structure and ineligible proposal to migrants crossed France. On wide nights, erstwhile dinghies whitethorn beryllium capable to transverse the English Channel, it “marauds” (French for patrols) the astir 150km (93 miles) of coastal roads to supply assistance to those who don’t marque it.

When we get astatine this spot connected our mode to Calais from Gravelines, Utopia 56 volunteers are providing blistery tea, towels and endurance blankets to the Vietnamese, past waiting with them for the occurrence brigade. The politician of the adjacent municipality of Wimereux turns up and agrees to marque a country disposable truthful they tin lukewarm up. The firemen connection to instrumentality them there. According to the Utopia 56 volunteers we talk to, specified empathy is “not that common”.

A radical of Vietnamese migrants whose vessel capsized erstwhile they attempted to transverse the English Channel to the United Kingdom are fixed towels and endurance blankets by Utopia 56 volunteers adjacent Wimereux, adjacent Calais, bluish France, connected February 28 [Jerome Tubiana/Al Jazeera]

After visiting this spot, the Utopia 56 squad drives to the adjacent Plage des Escardines and scans the enactment for imaginable shipwrecked migrants. There are constabulary officers connected the beach, and immoderate travel us.

One of them asks the squad astir a perchance missing vessel with 69 radical connected board. The activists’ distrust of the policeman is visible. “You know, we’ve been trained to rescue,” the policeman says, trying to reassure them. “We’re present for that. If they win crossing, I don’t springiness a f***!”

Later we larn that astatine astir noon, a French Navy vas rescued a vessel with 56 migrants, and that 3 passengers (reportedly Iranian Kurds) had been reported missing. The official record states that aft the rescue took place, the passengers said 3 radical had fallen overboard. One assemblage was found, but the 2 others could not beryllium located.

Over successful Calais, which we scope successful the aboriginal afternoon, groups of migrants are leaving their muddy campgrounds connected the outskirts of the metropolis to caput to town. They flock to the hallway wherever Caritas volunteers invited migrants successful the afternoons, providing food, warmth and proposal astir their rights successful some France and the UK.

In 2016, the French authorities dismantled the encampment, which had go known arsenic the “jungle”, fundamentally a postulation of slums with astir 9,000 migrants. Since then, dozens of smaller “jungles” of tents, provided by section charities, person been forming again connected the outskirts of Calais. Despite regular and often convulsive evictions by police, the camps proceed to reform.

Vietnamese migrants who survived the capsizing of a vessel hold for imaginable assistance from the French authorities adjacent Wimereux, France, connected February 28 [Jerome Tubiana/Al Jazeera]

According to Juliette Delaplace, Caritas’s manager successful Calais, the municipality permanently hosts “more than 1,000 migrants successful antithetic jungles, divided by communities - determination are Sudanese, Eritrean, Afghan jungles. At slightest 60 percent of the migrants are Sudanese, it is the archetypal nationality.”

This afternoon, it is person to 90 percent of the 720 migrants who person travel to the Caritas centre contiguous - immoderate caller arrivals, and others from the jungles looking for a repast and immoderate warmth.

This is not new, Delaplace adds - the Sudanese person been contiguous for astatine slightest 10 years. But much person travel since the onset of the latest warfare successful Sudan past year. And with little wealth to wage smugglers than refugees and migrants from immoderate different countries, “they enactment longer than others and are much babelike connected NGOs”, she says.

Despite the seemingly ample numbers of Sudanese here, Calais is really lone hosting a tiny stock of the 1.5 cardinal caller Sudanese refugees (since the warfare began), astir of whom are being received and hosted by overmuch poorer countries bordering Sudan. Since 2023, 600,000 radical person fled to Chad and different 500,000 to Egypt, joining a diaspora determination estimated astatine 4 million.

By June 2023, overwhelmed Egyptian authorities had suspended the visa exemption argumentation - archetypal for Sudanese men, past for children, women and aged radical arsenic good - contempt a 2004 statement connected escaped movement. Refugees were forced to wage higher fees to smugglers oregon much successful bribes astatine the borderline to get across.