​Sport and Games in the Calais Jungle

This article originally appeared on VICE Sports UK.

Nightly tales of violence, riots and tear gas suggest Calais' migrant village is a hostile place to live. As frayed French police gassed desperate refugees spilling out from the overcrowded 'Jungle', they quelled the latest protest by those who were staking all on reaching the UK. The protesters stage sit-ins blocking traffic bound for the Channel Tunnel in a bid to draw attention to their plight, many holding homemade banners begging to be let into the UK.

With little shelter from the elements – never mind a lack of proper sanitation, warm clothing or a place to go – the 6,000 inhabitants are desperate to escape from their current predicament. But inside the sprawling camp one of the worst hardships is boredom.

As grown men and women – many professionally educated and having travelled thousands of miles – find themselves stranded on a wasteland tucked underneath a motorway bridge, misery rapidly sets in. But a strong camaraderie exists in the camp with many turning to sports to prevent them from going stir crazy.

Unsurprisingly, the beautiful game is the main unifier. Sadly, despite being in the outdoors, there are few open spaces in the Jungle. It's a mess of hedges, scrubland and tents – imagine the arse end of Glastonbury Festival's main camp – and any place big enough to lie down in is already taken. The Sudanese, football-mad to the core, often take a ball, hop a few dangerous expressways and play against each other on a municipal pitch. If not, they play keepy-uppy whilst trying to avoid flattening any tents, either with clumsy bodies or a stray ball.

Khaled, who travelled from Sudan to Libya to France, walking for five days at one point, is actually a second division footballer in Sudan. He told me he fled Sudan after his villagers were killed in a bomb blast. He says, "I'm a playmaker. Like Fabregas. When we play in the camp it brings everybody together. Some people are sick, some are old; not everybody is ready for football. I found the ball here. It is very important for us. All of Mama Africa comes to play – no war, no politics, just football."

The battered football he acquired on the roadside has actually become his group's most important possession. Inviting me into his tent to share a super-sweet coffee and chat football, Khaled talks about how the sports unites people in the Jungle. "I like football so much. It's all we talk about. I am desperate to reach England. I dream I have a job there, maybe earn enough to see my team, Chelsea! I want to go there to Stamford Bridge and see Diego Costa, John Terry, Fabregas, Mourinho."

Elsewhere, other sports get plenty of air-time. "The Afghans are all for cricket and handball," says Dom-Dom a charity worker who assists daily in the camp, bringing supplies and even a cinema screen for people to watch old films. "In Afghanistan, because of the terrain, it is very difficult for them to have a football pitch. But cricket – a ball and a bat – is much easier. Here, volleyball is the other big one."

As he chats, groups of Afghan men of all ages, from 14 years old to men in their sixties, get involved in an energetic volleyball match, a shakily drawn line in the dirt making do as a net. One young Afghan, 18-year-old Mohammed, tells me, "One thing with Afghani people is, if you are Afghani you are my friend here, it is no problem. You speak Pashto you are my friend. It took a long time to get here and so it is a long time we can be friends."

Lighting a makeshift cigarette, he continues about why he came to Calais. "Who came and destroyed our life? Europeans. Americans. There was no problem in my life until they came. They destroy our life there and now they want to destroy our life here too. Why would we come here if our country was good? We wouldn't come, would we?"

Many migrants have suffered serious injuries trying to get into the UK at the Channel Tunnel, which mean they are now immobile. Everywhere, both men and women sit with broken arms and legs, the results of falling off trains, down embankments or from the top of the multiple metal cage fences that littler the area. These are part of Home Secretary Theresa May's 'Ring of Steel' to stop migrants reaching the UK. The injured sit glumly in the rain, plastic bags over their plaster casts, watching games of football.

As he attempts to get a tinny speaker playing to give the younger refugees something to listen to, local philanthropist Dom-Dom tells me, "You see plenty of broken men and women unfortunately. It is not just climbing on the trains. Sometimes they fall down a barrier. I have carried young men in my arms through town with a broken ankle. They fall down in the dark or get hit by cars. This man had a terrible leg break and had lain that way all night so I put him in the car and took him to hospital."

Other have suffered worse fates. Hassan, 25, fled his home in Pakistan near to the Afghanistan border when Islamic fundamentalists attacked his village. "They come with guns and everything. I got to Calais five months ago. We live like animals in the jungle. But animals also live in good positions, better than us. I have tried to many times with no success. I tried to get in lorry or train. Our friend died on a train. He wanted to catch the train and got on it but he collided with a concrete wall. I was with him. It was on 27th July. He got on a train and it hit the wall."

Because of the endless effort of attempting to reach the UK – few people realise the Channel Tunnel and lorry holding bays are actually a two hour hike from the Jungle itself – a big factor in the Jungle is lack of energy. Sustinance arrives in the form of a solitary free meal available per day. Those who are sick or injured cannot queue in the elements for hours on end and therefore don't get a meal, and with so little food dished out a day many feel fatigue easily.

Sport therefore becomes a luxury. The Jungle's ad hoc shops – wooden shacks with surprisingly ordered shelves – make a roaring trade in Monster energy drink, which has become a substitute fuel in the camp. Ahmed, 22, a shopkeeper from Kabul says he set up his shop, which he sleeps in nightly, after he became bored of the daily struggle to escape through the heavily guarded Channel Tunnel. "Monster sells the best. People try to get to England all the time and they're very tired. So they drink Monster. Before they go out at night to try to get on the trucks – a two-hour walk at night – they come here to buy Monster."

Cans of the energy drink litter the camp, forming a chain off into the distance towards the Channel Tunnel. By the camp's medical bay, two men attack a game of table football with relish. The table – worn and buckled through overuse – makes the footballers themselves appear to sag against the bent metal bar they are attached to. It offers a good visualisation of the camp itself: battered and bruised, but still always ready for a game.

@andyjoneswrites