For more than 20 years, Brigitte Lips has witnessed Europe's migration crisis from her home in Calais, on France's northern coast. Rather than shutting her door, she opened it to migrants seeking a safe place to recharge their mobile phones – an act that has earned her the nickname "Granny Charge".
"It started off as 'Mama', and now as the years have gone by, it's 'Mamie' (grandma)," Lips tells RFI.
Now a 68-year-old retiree, she has been helping migrants who come to Calais in the hope of crossing the English Channel for the past 24 years.
Living in a modest house opposite what was once part of "the Jungle", the informal camps that housed thousands of people at a time, Lips remembers that the crisis showed up literally on her doorstep.
"People would ring my doorbell asking for water. I said to myself, 'why me?' Well, because no one else on the street opened their door to give out tap water," she recalls.
"And then, as the months went by, other people started arriving with the little Nokia phones you used to get at the time, and I started charging these little Nokias in my house. And over the months, there came bigger telephones, batteries..."
Communication lifeline
Mobile phones are even more important for displaced people than most, those working on the ground point out.
"It is too often forgotten, and cannot be repeated often enough, that the mobile phone is the primary source of autonomous information: to translate, to call, to search, to find your way around, to call for help," notes Techfugees, a non-profit that has assisted projects to provide migrants in Calais with chargers, power, SIM cards and WiFi.
"Everything requires a charged phone."
Lips sees the demand for herself. So many people come to her house to top up that she has created an informal charging station in her garage, with rows of numbered power sockets and a gamut of cables.
People dropping off their phones are handed a handwritten ticket that they must bring back to exchange for their device, remembering to respect her opening hours.
"I open from 8 to 9 in the morning, from 11.30 to 12.15 in the afternoon and from 5 to 6 in the evening," Lips explains.
"I close on Saturday and Sunday in order to keep time for my family," she says, though she admits she has been known to relax those rules.
Painful stories
Lips also offers simple food, paid for out of her own pocket, and used clothing.
While she's got to recognise many of the people who stop by, over time, she says, she learned not to push the relationship.
"At first I would ask dumb questions like, 'are you still in touch with your mother?' And I'd get the answer: 'my mother was killed in front of my eyes,'" Lips says.
"Once I said, 'have you ever seen the sea before?' Absolute nonsense, because they've crossed the Mediterranean. And the guy told me: 'yes, I'm one of the survivors from the boat that sank.'
"So after that, you stop asking. You wait, and if there's a conversation, you listen. You wait for them to feel free. But for them to feel free, they need to be welcomed. You don't just unburden yourself like that from the very first day. If they stay a while, they'll start to tell a little bit of their story.
"So some of them, I know their stories. But it takes a very long time."
Podcast: Human side of Calais Jungle shared on social media
Shadow of shipwreck
The accounts Lips hears are shocking, especially lately. At least 50 people are reported to have died attempting to cross the Channel on small boats this year so far.
In one incident earlier this month, four people died on overcrowded boats in one day, including a two-year-old child. The victims are believed to have been trampled by panicked passengers, with some drowning in water that accumulated in the bottom of their dinghy.
"That mother who lost her child of two years old – what a tragedy, what pain, honestly, to come so far and lose your child in the bottom of a boat," Lips says. "These things are just horrible."
Soon after that, she recalls, "one guy came to me and said: 'Mamie, we didn't make it over.' And I said to him: 'no, but you didn't die.'"
Unstoppable
Lips understands why politicians are keen to show they're taking action – including France's new right-wing government, which has promised to table the country's 33rd immigration law in 44 years by early 2025.
But after nearly a quarter century observing migration up close, she's doubtful new measures will make a difference.
A heavy-handed approach by the authorities hasn't stopped her own activities.
"The local police, national police, riot police, they've all come round to intimidate me, saying that the neighbours are complaining about the migrants flowing in and out of my property – as if these guys were coming all the way from the Horn of Africa to charge their phones at my house," she says.
"Rubbish. I've never sent a message to Sudan saying, 'come to my house, if you're in Calais you'll be welcomed with open arms'."
Lips, who says her Catholic faith drives her to try to help, remains defiant about her own small contribution.
"The way I see it, I'm in my own home and I do what I like there."
This story is adapted from an interview in French by RFI's Charlotte Idrac.
