RESTING FEET

Our reflections from Dunkirk, 26.03.25

The weather was calm and bright all day, as it has been for several days. These conditions meant that there have been several Channel crossings this week. Yesterday evening the vigil group met in Calais to remember those who have recently died on the northern France border, including a woman whose body was found on a nearby beach.

In the NGO meeting area adjacent to a now sprawling living site on the edges of Dunkirk, we noticed several people limping and needing medical attention. Most were wearing sliders. The three @medecinsdumonde doctors were busy all afternoon, people of all ages largely presenting with issues with their feet, either from walking back and forth across beaches or from burns caused by engine fuel mixing with seawater. One of the doctors told us she had run out of water needed to wash wounds.

At least twenty people waiting in the mobile clinic queue joined us in the psychosocial activities van and later outside in the sun. We met a civil engineer, a mobile clinic comms lead; a young man who has aspirations to be a nurse, brothers from Turkey and from South Sudan. Both adults and children sought out the opportunity to pause and connect with us, with each other and with the tools to hand. Plasticine was picked up and adeptly moulded - into an orange horse, a fish, palm tree, a couple of cows. There were polite requests for games of chess and dominoes, alongside drawing.

On the return train was a poster advertising Le Shuttle’s ease of transport, ironically with a pair of feet.

Words by Miriam Usiskin, Bobby Lloyd, Johannes Maertens.