After spending 8 months in the “jungle” of Calais volunteering with Utopia 56, I came to live at City Plaza.

One day Claude put a camera in my hands and said, “go and make pictures!” Plaza was comfortable compared to the jungle and allowed me to take my first photos of refugees. Later Claude would ask me, bursting with energy, to write this text and I asked myself, “What language will I write this in?”

I don’t speak all the languages spoken in Plaza. Far from it, in fact, like most of the people who live here we communicate using few words. At the same time we share a common dictionary, the beginnings of a lingua Franca. We all sprinkle our sentences with some shukran, room, mashallah, arè, mushkit, and my friend!

It's limited and sometimes leads to misunderstandings, but somehow it works for me and I kind of love it. These words build bridges in this hotel of 400 places. It's not the house of happiness, which doesn't really exist anywhere anyway. It’s a roof, a little home, a οἶκος with humans in it who are all linked in some way. And this is already wonderful.