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

Tea, towels and survival blankets

On that same cold, grey morning when I met Hashim and Yusuf, 12 wet, freezing Vietnamese people were walking down a coastal road south of Calais. Their boat had capsized.

On their way back from this misadventure, they met a team from the French association Utopia 56, which formed after the tragic death of a Syrian toddler named Aylan, whose body was washed to shore in Turkey in 2015.

It has some 200 volunteers who provide food, shelter and legal advice to migrants across France. On clear nights, when dinghies may be able to cross the English Channel, it “marauds” (French for patrols) the roughly 150km (93 miles) of coastal roads to provide assistance to those who don’t make it.

When we arrive at this spot on our way to Calais from Gravelines, Utopia 56 volunteers are providing hot tea, towels and survival blankets to the Vietnamese, then waiting with them for the fire brigade. The mayor of the nearby town of Wimereux turns up and agrees to make a room available so they can warm up. The firemen offer to take them there. According to the Utopia 56 volunteers we speak to, such empathy is “not that common”.

A group of Vietnamese migrants whose boat capsized when they attempted to cross the English Channel to the United Kingdom are given towels and survival blankets by Utopia 56 volunteers near Wimereux, near Calais, northern France, on February 28 [Jerome Tubiana/Al Jazeera]

After visiting this spot, the Utopia 56 team drives to the nearby Plage des Escardines and scans the shore for possible shipwrecked migrants. There are police officers on the beach, and some follow us.

One of them asks the team about a potentially missing boat with 69 people on 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 here for that. If they succeed crossing, I don’t give a f***!”

Later we learn that at around noon, a French Navy vessel rescued a boat with 56 migrants, and that three passengers (reportedly Iranian Kurds) had been reported missing. The official record states that after the rescue took place, the passengers said three people had fallen overboard. One body was found, but the two others could not be located.

Over in Calais, which we reach in the early afternoon, groups of migrants are leaving their muddy campgrounds on the outskirts of the city to head to town. They flock to the hall where Caritas volunteers welcome migrants in the afternoons, providing food, warmth and advice about their rights in both France and the UK.

In 2016, the French authorities dismantled the encampment, which had become known as the “jungle”, essentially a collection of slums with about 9,000 migrants. Since then, dozens of smaller “jungles” of tents, provided by local charities, have been forming again on the outskirts of Calais. Despite regular and often violent evictions by police, the camps continue to reform.

Vietnamese migrants who survived the capsizing of a boat wait for possible help from the French authorities near Wimereux, France, on February 28 [Jerome Tubiana/Al Jazeera]

According to Juliette Delaplace, Caritas’s manager in Calais, the town permanently hosts “more than 1,000 migrants in different jungles, divided by communities - there are Sudanese, Eritrean, Afghan jungles. At least 60 percent of the migrants are Sudanese, it is the first nationality.”

This afternoon, it is closer to 90 percent of the 720 migrants who have come to the Caritas centre today - some new arrivals, and others from the jungles looking for a meal and some warmth.

This is not new, Delaplace adds - the Sudanese have been present for at least 10 years. But more have come since the onset of the latest war in Sudan last year. And with less money to pay smugglers than refugees and migrants from some other countries, “they stay longer than others and are more dependent on NGOs”, she says.

Despite the seemingly large numbers of Sudanese here, Calais is actually only hosting a small share of the 1.5 million new Sudanese refugees (since the war began), most of whom are being received and hosted by much poorer countries bordering Sudan. Since 2023, 600,000 people have fled to Chad and another 500,000 to Egypt, joining a diaspora there estimated at 4 million.

By June 2023, overwhelmed Egyptian authorities had suspended the visa exemption policy - first for Sudanese men, then for children, women and elderly people as well - despite a 2004 agreement on free movement. Refugees were forced to pay higher fees to smugglers or more in bribes at the border to get across.