Today, Ermias, a 16-year-old Eritrean boy, cooked me a wonderful meal in the Calais refugee camp in Northern France. The wood took a long time to light as it was damp, but with a generous dousing of oil it flamed into life and cooked a dish of tomatoes, onions, chili and kidney beans. When it was cooked through, Ermias cleared a small table and covered it with a new garbage bag so it was clean. The frying pan was placed in the middle of the table and after a moment of silent thanks we broke bread together.
After the meal, Ermias poured water from a kettle so I could wash my sticky hands, just as he did to clean them earlier. The water ran down the muddy path into the rain puddle at the nearby roadside. This camp is so minimal—blackened pots on the bunker wall, mismatched chairs around the fire, damp smoky clothes hanging on a line longing for sunlight, shoes on the roof, and graffiti promises on the wall that “God is always with you.” A rusty child’s bike leans on the wall, such a valuable commodity when the nearest shop is over a mile away. Water is collected from standpipes dotted around the mile-square camp, which until recently accommodated 10,000 people.
Ermias is a credit to his mother and his country. Polite and so much more gentle than his trauma would predict, with great humor and good English. He would be an asset to any school, and is desperate for the education he has missed in his war-torn nation. I try to hold out hope for this dear boy, one year younger than my own daughter. But I fear for him. He hopes to legally reunite with his sister in the UK, but the process is excruciatingly and criminally slow. One night he may try to make his own way to the UK. Stories of people dying trying to board semis in Calais are heard most weeks these days.
I said goodbye and walked away. The thought of leaving a 16-year-old to sleep alone in this place made my stomach churn. I looked back and saw him sitting by his fire making tea. I wished I could spend the evening with him waiting for his friends to return after yet another failed attempt to get to the UK. But I couldn’t. “We do what we can do,” said a wise friend. It has become my mantra, but it never seems enough.
Days after this reflection was written, the refugee camp was dismantled and 66 government buses transported migrants to one of two regions in France.
