French born youth worker Ben Rayot’s life changed forever when a friend asked him to help with an aid mission to Calais.
40-year-old Ben, who is a youth worker in Belfast working with disenfranchised young people, moved to Northern Ireland two decades ago.
As an immigrant himself to the country he now calls home when a Pastor from his local church asked him to consider travelling to France as a translator he quickly said “yes”.
But little did the French native know, his trip back home would alter his life forever.
He explained: “I came to Northern Ireland to study and I met my wife Stephanie 19 years ago, we now have three beautiful children Josh, Rosa and Micah.
“In September 2015 I saw the news item of the child washed up on the beach. That got me thinking about a few things. I’m not from here so in some ways I’m a migrant. Also my family on my mother’s side would have been immigrants. They came from Armenia and fled to France during the First World War to avoid the Turkish genocide. What was happening brought back thoughts of what my family had to go through.
“The vision of the children having to go through so much, endure war zones and face such horror to get to a better place really stuck with me.
“The fact that they considered a place like The Jungle a better place than home affected me.”
From January 2015 to October 2016 “The Jungle” was an informal term for a refugee and migrant encampment in the vicinity of Calais, France. Although now cleared, other jungle camps have been set up since.
“Dave Wilson from Greenisland Baptist Church asked me to go to The Jungle with him to help translate. Initially I wasn’t sure, I didn’t want to go but I realised that it just seemed right to me following on from what my family went through” said Ben.
“We were told not to go by a few people who couldn’t believe that we were planning to take aid there. I wanted to go and listen to the stories of what others went through. None of us are immune from what these people have gone through.
“It could happen to us too then we would be the people fleeing to another country and asking for shelter. So we got in contact with friend of ours called Paul who had a van and another friend called Will who was in the army. At that point I was thinking about our security.”
Over the next three weeks Ben and his friends and colleagues carefully planned their trip, raising enough money for the transport, travel tickets and a donation to the charity they were meeting up with.
“We filled the van with tents, sleeping bags and anything that would help people get through the winter. We also brought baby wipes, because the camp had no water, and things like toothpaste and female hygiene products. We didn’t bring any food. Cleanliness and warmth were our primary objectives.
“On arrival in Dover we were surrounded by people sleeping rough in bus shelters and other areas around the ferry terminal.
“As soon as we drove off the ferry we could see a sea of tents, they were a few hundred yards away from the ferry terminal. I was overwhelmed by the sheer size of the camp. There was evidence of poverty and misery everywhere. We were warned to keep our passports safe on us because as soon as we parked the van, people were swarming around us to see who we were.”
Despite their empathy for the people of the camp, Ben and his friends were warned of the dangers.
He said: “We wanted to spend a night in the camp but we were advised to be out of the camp before darkness. There was an article recently stating that 10,000 kids had gone missing from the camp. Nobody knows where they are. Until you go there and see it you just can’t appreciate the scale of it.
“We had to walk away for a few minutes at times as it was too overwhelming. We held our emotions back while in the camp but there were times when we had to find a quiet corner to let our emotions out.”
Whilst at the camp unbeknown to Ben he became upset and angered by the French government’s lack of response to the situation.
“People were making makeshift houses with pallets, bean bags and whatever they could find. There were a lot of international organisations that came in to help the people in the camp but very little help was coming from France. That angered me towards the French people. I felt that the people of France didn’t want anything to do with the immigrants.”
However, it was the actions of a French couple who lived nearby to the camp that restored his faith in his country.
He said: “When we were in the jungle we met a French couple who were inviting refugees from The Jungle camp to their house in Calais. They would take in two or three people. They would feed them, give them clothes and bring them back to full health.
“Then they would help these people get registered in France through the correct channels and also help them find somewhere to live and get work. Once these people were legal they could then make the journey to the UK afterwards without any problems if they wanted or they could stay in France.
“Every time this couple sent someone off ready they would go back to the camp and find someone else. This amazing couple had a wall in their house with a board full of photographs of people they had helped.”
And now, two years later, Ben revealed that his experiences in Calais have changed his life forever.
“There was quite a heavy police presence in The Jungle as tension was everywhere and a riot could start at anytime. Something that I noticed was, even though these people were hungry, tired, cold and desperate, the majority of them still maintained their humanity and their dignity” he said.
“While we were there, a small boy came up to us and shared a pineapple with us. He was clearly hungry and we encouraged him and his friends to go and take the food that was being provided. He declined. He said that the pineapple was enough for them today and they would leave the food for others who needed it more.
“That was unbelievable. I even saw them carefully distributing food that arrived in trucks amongst their communities. They made sure that anyone who didn’t get certain foods in the last delivery got them in the next one and so on.
“They relied on trust, sharing and making sure everyone had what they needed to the best of their abilities.”