In Calais migrant camp, mood turns somber in aftermath of Paris attacks

(The Christian Science Monitor) Wind whips the plastic tarps and tents that hold together the livelihoods of some 6,000 people living in Calais’ refugee camp, as the dirt paths squeezed between the thousands of makeshift homes fill with muddy puddles. Over the weekend, refugees and migrants from Eritrea, Sudan, Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan got a first taste of the winter that everyone has feared for months. 

“We don’t have enough clothes, we don’t have enough blankets, we’re very cold,” said Mohammed Swara, an Iraqi who has visited the medical caravan in the camp, known as the Jungle, to deal with what are becoming constant colds.

For months, people like Swara have been arriving in the Jungle, watching the camp swell along with Europe’s migrant crisis. Residents here have opened restaurants, barbershops, churches, mosques, and schools to create a semblance of normal life.