Crossing...

 

"Crossing", a word charged with so many meanings and feelings when you are in Calais.

I'm here lying comfortably in bed at a friend's house in London, the preferred destination of most asylum seekers who are desperate to cross.

A lot of them have already risked their lives to arrive in Calais from places as far as South Sudan. Many come with money gathered  sacrificially from all the savings from their communities and families, expected to be paid back once they start their life in Europe. 

One week waiting in Calais

 That's how NOT good the post service is these days. Francisco posted my passport on Friday the 26th around midday. I found out I could  track it online and I see it only arrived in France on the 2nd of July around 2pm and arrived at the "distribution centre" on Friday around 3pm. 

I'm really hoping it will arrive tomorrow, Tuesday the 7th of July, on the small post office in the village called "Les Attaques", where I initially had rented a caravan in order to have an address. This post office is only open from 9 to 11.45am. This is how slow the main public post service in Europe is working, no wonder people are using private couriers instead. It would have been much faster I guess.

Going less wild..

The question that I had at the start, "how wild can a human be in Europe today?", is still part of this journey, even though I've gone less wild the last week.

It's not easy I would say. Access to drinkable water is becoming very difficult, never mind fresh spring water. Access to rivers is harder to find and I've been seeing more and more rivers totally dried out and old fountains in the villages without any water, even though the big monoculture farmed fields do seem to have irrigation water, even in the middle of very hot days which is a total inefficient way to use our precious water.