if agriculture hadn’t given us a surplus of food, we’d all have a happy 6 hour work day hunting and gathering and telling stories around a fire.

screw you, agriculture.

norwegian chocolate girl from the 1800s

went to help bring stuff to a refugee camp of 2,000 in a village nearby called dunkerque. a lot worse than the situation in calais.

police is very closely monitoring the camp, a former city park, not allowing any new tents or permanent structures. they don’t want another jungle. lots of tarps in trees.

our van wasn’t allowed in the camp without a thorough check by the police.

distribution point is in the middle of a sea of mud so we have to carry the boxes with clothes and blankets to it.

first run got so much attention from refugees, we are now waiting for the desperate crowd to die down and we can carry more

meanwhile, there is a conflict in the camp between the different ethnicities, making it hard to distribute fairly.

tried cleaning up the camp, but so many deserted tents full of stuff. did they make it to england?

2,000 desperate refugees, lots of chain smoking volunteers with exhaustion in their eyes, lots of children playing in the mud.

havent spotted @justinbieber yet though.

one of the guys we met was from iran and really wanted to go to canada, his dream country. he was an atheist and was very secretive about it.

as i carried packs of new sleeping bags to the kurdish controlled distribution point, a mom asked me for one, ‘please!’. as i was instructed, i referred to the distribution point and kept walking. i had heard the kurds, who have been an ethnic minority where they come from for so long, were not distributing to other ethnicities, leaving them literally in the cold.

as i arrived to the makeshift centre, a guy walks out with a brand new sleeping bag, sees one of mine and wants to trade because he likes the colour better. i point at the distribution point guy, and he trades it.

we try to help with garbage pickup, but there is so much left behind in the mud. in between the muddy wet sandals, blankets and tshirts, there is a stuffed animal.

the riot police didn’t allow the car with water bottles in the camp, so we distributed in the parking lot of the neighborhood next door. the guys carried the bottles through the bushes back to their tents.

right across of the street were the nice looking houses of dunkerque.

on nye, had conversations with guys from afghanistan that fled from the taliban.

they walked by foot through iran, iraq, syria and then got on an inflatable life boat in turkey with 20 other refugees to ‘greekland’. of them, his family was already in england, but he didn’t got lucky and got caught by the police, separating him from his family.

the family of the other guy went missing when the taliban invaded his province kunduz. he has no idea where they are now.

when i asked them about nye, he told me they celebrate the new year in two more months. ‘i know from the movies new years is important for westerners because they all gather together and look up to a really big clock and countdown together’

“25 people?! where from?” “amsterdam” “dutch! efficient!“
we spent the day cleaning piles of garbage, building homes, fixing electricity, sorting clothes, testing tents, etc.

such an amazing group and such an overwhelming situation.

ever have the feeling you’re walking around in a pinterest board?

☀️

got a sombrero. went to the beach. siesta time. 🇮🇹

law of the jungle

why should i question everything?

here’s a theory; happiness works better with a big belly

i can be your long lost pal

i bless the rains down in africa