IT was on one hot summer Ramadan day in 2013 that I first met Seif Jamalulail and his amazing family at a motor caravan park in London.
The then shy 10-year old with his siblings were embarking on the most exciting journey in their life as their parents, Sofinee Haron and Jamalulail Ismail, were taking them back to Malaysia on what was to be the biggest educational trip in a motor caravan. The world is their university, his father had once said.
He was then tasked with taking photographs as they journeyed across some of the most scenic and difficult terrains in the world.
The next time I saw Seif was in The Jungle of Calais where thousands of refugees from troubled and war-torn countries had made their homes temporarily. He was peeling potatoes and helping his parents doing chores to feed them.
He went about his work quietly, from being on the conveyor belt passing plates of rice, to becoming the Rice Chef feeding about a thousand mouths a day! He was only 12 years old turning 13 and still shy and would only speak when spoken to. But his keen eyes missed nothing about what was going on outside the fences of the Kitchen in Calais managed by his parents.
He took in the sufferings and struggles of the different nationalities, learning unconventionally perhaps about why they escaped risking life and limbs in search of a better life.
He befriended refugees who helped out in the kitchen and through them learned more about the meaning of life, the value of more than just existing in a safer and better environment which most of us had taken for granted.
He escaped being tear gassed, he watched people returning to the camps early in the mornings with hands bloodied and injured from futile attempts trying to climb the barbed wire fencing, and he heard through the grapevines about those who successfully escaped across the channel and was equally saddened by news of those whose journey to freedom sometimes ended on the busy highway.
All along Seif knew that they were all in The Jungle on borrowed time.
The voices opposing their presence there became louder and the presence of the French police was more visible and more intimidating.
On the day of eviction of refugees and the closure of the transit camp in the north of France on Oct 24, 2016, Seif and some of the volunteers had their last supper together, and then they climbed up to the roof to see fire raging across The Jungle where thousands of tents and caravans had once sheltered the refugees.
“I can even feel the heat from the kitchen roof,” Seif told his mother.
He went on to describe how scared he was; “It really felt like a moment between life and death”.
His parents were then away taking two volunteers to the train station.
He was left with a few remaining volunteers, waiting for fire fighters to rescue them.
“When the fire came near the kitchen, I could feel the heat. It happened so fast. I was really scared, but at the same time also sad seeing my home and my town for the past 10 months being burnt down before my eyes. We were all just watching helplessly. There were explosions from the gas canisters, it was like a war zone. I escaped on foot, running through the burning jungle with the rest,” said Seif in an earlier interview.
That moment, stuck in the kitchen with the fire raging around him was the defining moment for Seif; the confusion to find his passport in his caravan while all around him was blanketed in thick smoke and chaos, all the while feeling torn between staying and leaving a place that taught him a lot about life.
“I had escaped the home where I’d lived for the best part of a year,” lamented Seif in his newly published book Jungle Boy – The experiences of a 13-year-old boy who spent 10 months living and volunteering inside Calais’s infamous migrant camp.
If I had thought that the journey across 26 countries from Seaham in the United Kingdom to Malaysia three years before was a rite of passage for this young boy, I was way off the mark.
It had taken the homeschooled boy about a year to complete his book.
“It was a long and tiring process during which time I tried to perfect it as much as possible. There are still so much untold stories, but I feel that there are so many lessons that others could take from it and that is the most important thing,” says Seif, now 15.
“I never had any experience in writing or even reading, so I didn’t know how I was going to do it. But, my mum thought it would a be a good idea just to make a photobook.
“To go with the photo would be a little caption but every time I looked at a photo I felt it needed a longer caption to tell more story about it.
“Before I realised it, I was writing paragraphs, then pages and suddenly within the time span of a year, I was able to produce a book!” said Seif, happy that finally he had been able to put together his 10-month experience in The Jungle into the 127-page book, filled with incredible pictures that tell a lot more.
The jungle had changed his life around in so many ways. Seif had intended to share his insights living inside the camp and hopes to inspire others to do the work that he and other volunteers did.
The Jungle of Calais is no more, but the place and the people who once lived there, lives in the pages of his first book. It is a riveting read through the eyes of a homeschooled 13-year-old; a must for those who care about what is happening around the world.
“It takes compassion and it takes a step outside your comfort zone, but don’t wait,” said Seif wisely in his book.