CURIOSITY AND MEANING MAKING

Calais, May 20, 2026

Today on the Calais beach the sands were shifted by the strong warm winds which in turn created a literal moving mist, the winds blowing any footprints away.

In the day centre @calais.exilessc we learnt that some of the more established living sites are being moved by the police daily, individuals shifted from their place of rest, with night after night of broken sleep. We were also told that the large Sudanese population present now has many more young teenage boys amongst its numbers. This was in turn reflected in the thirty of so individuals who came to The Community Table - from Sudan, South Sudan, and also several other African countries.

Today we were struck by the way individuals made their way to the table, often with curiosity and an openness to the materials and objects on offer. Indeed, the session started with a group of young men measuring each other’s height, having picked up a folding wooden ruler and wondering about its purpose.

Distance and lengths of things came across in the little book of Migrations about the journeys of birds. Page after page was patiently read out loud, two friends supporting and prompting each other, enjoying the words and correspondence with their own journeys. Crossing of country borders, covering vast unfathomable distances. Slides of birds were also several times greeted with “this is beautiful”.

In our box of old black and white photographs, one young man came across images of Dune du Pilat in South West France, Europe’s tallest sand dune, which clearly showed the footprints of many journeys across the sand. This prompted him to show photographs on his mobile phone of his wintry journey crossing borders in Central Europe, his own footprints clearly visible.

Words by Miriam Usiskin & Bobby Lloyd.