Thousands of refugees have walked thousands of miles only to end up in 'The Jungle', a desperate camp in Calais. Chris Webber visited the facility with refugee support volunteers from North East Solidarity

THE teenager points to his home. It’s a kind of makeshift tent, a sheet hanging over the entrance. “How many live here?” He holds up ten fingers. Then does so again. And again. Another Syrian, older, confirms: “Thirty... maybe more.”

PHOTOS: Pictures from inside The Jungle refugee camp in Calais

“Where are your parents...your mother, father, where?” I shrug at him. The boy, pictured below, 17, who has walked from Syria, nearly 2,500 miles, makes a sleeping gesture and points upward to the heavens. “Dead.”

The Northern Echo: REFUGEE CAMP: A 17-year-old Syrian who lives sleeps with 30 other men in the camp. His parents are dead.

He touches the scars on his face, one recent but superficial, one much worse but healed. “The police,” he explains. “Why?” Another, older, better educated Syrian smiles broadly, incredulous that such a blindingly obvious question was even asked. “He try to go to England.”

A sad story, but hardly the worst anyone prepared to spend a little time in that desperate, male-dominated place with its strange atmosphere will hear. It does have a kind of warmth with people washing, praying, talking; making 'homes'. But the first impression is of suppressed violence. Lots of young, frustrated, angry men living in dire conditions. We hear talk that this is no place to return to at night.

This day, a feisty, angry, straight-talking woman, Bebe, an Ethiopian, once a lawyer, is shouting in a loud hailer trying to organise a demonstration partly to highlight the plight of the few hundred women in this camp of about 4,000. She’s struggling to get others to join her - a far bigger, better organised march is already taking place elsewhere. Bebe mentions the words rape and prostitution. Prostitution for food, but also to pay people traffickers. “The jungle is for animal,” she says, “not for human.” Later we hear her small demonstration was stopped by the French police.

As Bebe talks, my thoughts turn to the Syrian family, a mother and her 15-year-old and 10-year-old daughters, our volunteers from North East Solidarity had met earlier. They are living by some Egyptian men who say they offer protection which appears to be confirmed by the women. A female North East Solidarity volunteer, a strong Christian, gives the younger girl a card and picture made by a child at Durham St Hild’s Primary School with a simple ‘I hope you will be OK’ message. The girl breaks into a big smile and cuddles all the female volunteers, one-by-one.

At this point the volunteers are really assessing the place, gaining information. Shoes are in massive demand, among the often flip-flop wearing refugees, especially as the winter approaches. Another van has had a window smashed as word got out it had footwear. Later another, less organised, group comes and the members are virtually mobbed as they try to distribute shoes. Our group intervene to help restore order.

North East Solidarity have hi-vis jackets and a clear strategy of how to safely and as fairly distribute different kind of aid. About 800 hygiene packs and half a tonne of food are relatively straightforward to distribute but clothes and shoes, coming in different sizes, are trickier. However the North-Easterners are a strong team.

Phil Sherratt, of Blyth, has visited other, far bigger, camps around the world and has good knowledge of how to safely distribute aid to desperate people. David Kirton is a former County Durham policeman who has commanded the police response to major demonstrations before. He helps keep order among the refugees arriving in numbers once word gets out that our group are giving away shoes.

Craig Rennie, from near Northallerton has put his professional skills working in transport logistics to good use. Founding members Middlesbrough teacher Jenny Yuill and Shah Lalon Amin, a restaurateur from South Shields, have mobilised more than 10,000 people and arranged huge quantities of aid from across the entire North-East from a standing start just six weeks ago. It is all deeply impressive and gives the lie to any idea that these people are somehow naive or don't understand what they're doing.

Leaving the hard, useful work to North East Solidarity, I wander around the 'jungle'. Stinking smoke from burning rubbish shrouds a Christian church as strange-sounding religious chanting and singing reverberates around the bin bag-covered tents. The African areas boast a language school, a strange 'art' house with chickens pecking around, where, I'm told, just seven Malawians live. "They help people," a Sudanese refugee and Arsenal fan tells me. No further information is given.

The Middle Eastern, Kurdish and Arab, areas have shops. One shop keeper, an Afghani, tells me he has given up escaping the camp. He tries to raise money for his children from his business. I ask how he gets merchandise and how people pay. He avoids answering.

It's easy to fall into conversation. An educated, 21-year-old, Sadiq, casually explains he has walked from Pakistan. A Shia Muslim he claims he was persecuted and had to flee and goes on to tells me an epic tale of being captured and imprisoned in Bulgaria for 25 days, escaping by climbing a wall, and being beaten in Hungary.

"My friend, he died," he says, from nowhere. "We were on train to UK. Both hanging. I was caught. He died in the tunnel. It was August 27. He had three babies. He was 28." Sadiq shakes his head and explains he tried to make it to England the next night after his friend's death and has tried every night since. "I want life, real life" he says, "not this, not this life here."

He has taken a few minutes to tell his story in the manner one might describe the weather, or what was on television the previous evening. He shakes my hand and disappears into the warrens of the shanty town.

*See tomorrow's Northern Echo for more from the camp and an exploration as to why the refugees are trying to come to Britain and what should be done.