When we’re giving out food and clothing, we also provide big banks of charging points, and sometimes we give out charging packs too.

This afternoon Adil, a 17-year-old refugee, asked to borrow my phone while his was charging. “I will show you a picture of my home,” he said. I thought he just wanted to show me where he was from. In fact he found Facebook and showed me a photograph a ransacked and damaged house.

It was his actual home in Sudan.

Staring at the awful picture, he was tearful and overwhelmed. He asked if he could use the phone to call his family, as he had not been able to get through on his own. To his mounting anguish, though, he couldn’t.

“I know my home looks like this,” he said. “But I have not been able to speak to any friends, any family.”

He looked through more photographs, shaking his head. “My home, my home my home…” All this at 17 years old; his bravery was something I will never forget.

The Sudanese refugees’ mood in Calais is changing

We’re not yet seeing a large influx of people here who have fled the current outbreak of armed conflict, but Sudan has been dangerous for many people for many years, and the threats people have escaped, and the journeys they have been on, are always terrifying. The main difference now is the worry and concern; the charging board we provide have never been more important.

There are a lot of Sudanese people at the site where we were. The atmosphere is often very positive, but right now there’s a sense of worry under the surface. When you talk to the refugees there, you often get a sense of the anxiety over the situation at home.

We listen and support people, and help with the services we provide and essentials we give out. Last week we gave out 150 hygiene packs here, and today it was 125 waterproof coats. These are so important, because although it’s getting warmer, it rains a lot in Calais. It’s so hard for refugees to get dry again if they’re wet.

Adil showed me more pictures and videos from Sudan, some of them of horrific things. Bombed hospitals. Bombed out homes. Thousands of families escaping with a few belongings. It’s terrible to think that people fleeing this to the UK could be sent to Rwanda.

Adil had left Sudan before the new outbreak of violence. He just wanted an ordinary life, and was keen to learn English so that he could study and work when he got to the UK. Having seen his resilience, I really hope he makes it, and get the safety he deserves.

Can you help?

It’s amazing how people manage to stay cheerful in the face of it all; today towards the end of the distribution we put on music and some were even dancing. Playing football, or on the games tables, listening to music and just talking to people is an escape from the harsh monotony of life as a refugee. As a volunteer, it can be challenging some days, but then on others, seeing the sheer resilience of people can inspire you as well.

We help refugees like Adil everyday with phone charging, support and other essential items and services – but we can only do this together with you. Could you help by being a donor? Any amount, large or small, makes a big difference: to donate, go here

The post Helping refugees affected by the Sudanese war appeared first on Care4Calais.

“Even in cities where there is no fighting, the war makes people desperate because there is no food, no resources of any kind. Yesterday I called my mum and said I would send money for her and my father. She said, ‘What use would money be to us? How can we use it? There is nothing to buy in the shops.’

“I can’t sleep at night. I just stare at the news day and night trying to find out what’s happening, and check friends’ social media. You see a different picture there to the mass media. People running away with their children and a suitcase. Mothers screaming because their whole families have been killed. Hospital floors covered in blood. And thousands and thousands of people fleeing.

The atrocities are horrific, Khalid says, because of the sophistication and power of the weapons. “The weapons, and the training to use them, come from outside countries. We all know this.

“But no-one wants to help us. If you have a European passport, many politicians think you are worth saving. But if you don’t, you will be left to be killed. It’s as simple as that.”

Towards the end of Ramadan this year, fighting broke out across Sudan between the forces of the military government, and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces organisation. The two had previously worked together. The result has been violent, bloody carnage with hundreds of men, women and children killed and thousands displaced. At the time of writing a ceasefire is force, but it is due to expire at midnight. No one seriously expects it to be extended in the long term.

Last year we issued 220,000 visas to Ukrainians and 140,000 to people from Hong Kong. Suella Braverman has ruled out creating a safe and legal route to UK asylum for Sudanese refugees.

The post Refugees flee war in Sudan appeared first on Care4Calais.

The beating caused so much pain and noise in my head. It has never away. When I finally got out I decided I had to leave Sudan, because I thought the next time they would kill me. I didn’t tell anyone at all I was going. I just ran.

My name is Sadam and I class myself as Sudanese, from the capital Khartoum, although I was born in Tripoli, Libya and grew up there. I had a good childhood, got a good education, and in 2010 I went to do a banking and finance degree at university in Khartoum. That was just before the fall of Gaddafi and Libya’s disintegration. After university I did the mandatory year’s national service, but when I went back to Khartoum I was shocked that I couldn’t get a job related to my study, because I wasn’t a part of the ruling political party.

I couldn’t go back to Libya either as the country had changed and I was no longer welcome, so life became difficult. I had to do lots of different jobs like repairing mobile phones and working in a restaurant, but then in 2018 the revolution against Bashir started. I joined the protests everyday and I was detained and beaten up many times – every time I ran away and they’d catch me again. But then I had the serious beating, and I knew I had to leave.

My only choice was to go to Chad and then Libya. I couldn’t go to Egypt because you need money to get over the border, but I thought I’d be OK in Libya because after all I’d grown up there. But the country had changed so much.

It was a very scary place. In south Libya there are many tribes who catch refugees coming over the border, and if the refugees can’t pay a ransom, their captors put them in a big warehouse and sell them to whoever needs workers. I was in this system over a year, I worked on a farm and carrying bricks. When you had finished work they sold you on to another person.

Finally I escaped and I made it to Tripoli where I met someone who could get me to Europe, where I my brother lived. I paid the smuggler, and I went to the boats.

It took five nightmare days to cross. After two days we ran out of petrol and no one could get a phone signal so we just floated for two and a half days more. In the day you could just see sea and sky and where they joined it was the same colour. At night the waves were high and threw the boat around, we were waiting to die.

On the fifth day we must have floated into a network range as someone got a phone signal. The red cross came and rescued us and took us to Italy.

After being in quarantine for 10 days in Italy we were told to walk to the train and get out of the country. With some others I went from train to train, sometimes sleeping on the train and sometimes in the station; finally we got to Ventimiglia in and stayed in a camp there.

Many times I tried to cross the mountains and forests on foot, but everytime the police caught me and sent me back. Then one day I met you someone who would get me over the border for money.

He had the keys to some lorries and one night he got me onto one. The lorry stopped in Marseille, and I got out there and stayed for a long time, living in the station. Eventually I went to Paris but that was worse, and I had to survive on the streets. Then I heard that in Calais there were organizations that would help me, and so headed off to northern France.

I met Care4Calais there. They allowed me to survive.

They gave me clothes and food and some shelter. I really would not have minded staying in France, but there was no help from the state, no one to help me understand what I needed to do to be able to stay in France. So that left the UK.

I hated the thought of getting on a boat and travelling on the sea again. I tried the lorries but they are so hard to get on and dangerous, you have to run behind them to try to find one you can get on. One of the refugees I was with fell from the lorry he was on and he was trapped under the wheels, he died that way, it was horrible.

So I ended up getting a boat. I said it was better to die in the sea than stay in France and live like a beggar being chased from place to place.

On the 12th of June I got to the UK. I was sent to a hotel in Bristol after Dover. I was happy to be here, straight away I felt safe in the hotel. I was thinking I could have a future and maybe have help for my head injuries. Josie, a Care4Calais volunteer said she would help me find a doctor to treat them.

But then I got the letter that said I had to go to Rwanda. This was not a good day. In my hotel so many people have mental health problems, from their journey or from their injuries or what they have seen. Getting the Rwanda letters has made it worse, people are cutting themselves and having nightmares. Someone through himself at a glass door and broke it. People try to commit suicide. Often the police are here. We do not feel safe, the letter makes us feel we will be removed at any moment. It is the worst feeling, it is like being back in Sudan waiting for the executioner.

Rwanda is not safe, and I’m scared all the time, I don’t eat or sleep, and I just think all my journey was for nothing. Three years of hell for nothing.

The thing that helps me feel better is Josie calling me everyday. She is so good; everyday she tells me, you are not alone, we are here for you, we will fight for you,

And everytime she says it, I feel a bit better.

The post Sadam’s Story appeared first on Care4Calais.

The post A’s story appeared first on Care4Calais.