lost in limbo
/ Jeremias Gonzalez
They are at least 2,500 migrants, men, women and children, to get stuck in the limbo of Calais. Taunted by the sea, yet their only recourse, the only way to reach England, this land outside the Schengen area, a promise of something else, a more serene sky, a better future. Two emergency exits: the ships leaving the port, or the tunnel under the English channel. Waiting to try their luck... the survival, wandering, hope...
Like the port of Zouara in Libya, the Spanish enclave Melilla in Morocco, or the island of Lampedusa in Italy, Calais constitutes a forced step in the chaotic course of those fleeing the hell of war, persecutions or military dictatorships.
Following the closure of the nearby camp of Sangatte, decided by Nicolas Sarkozy, then interior minister in 2002, the number of illegal immigrants present in Calais had fallen drastically. They were only 300.
But, since 2014, because of the war in Syria, repression in Ethiopia, Eritrea and Sudan, or the advance of al-Qaeda and the Islamic State in North Africa and the Middle East, many migrants are arriving every day in the port city again.
Imagine that the civil war or military repression makes rage in your homeland. Imagine yourself escaping, leaving your family, walking for months... Being rejected everywhere, sometimes imprisoned. Imagine an exodus of over 5000 km. For most of us, this is like a nightmare. For them it's the hell of a real life, the eternal quest for a lost paradise.
