2024-12-31
34 分钟This is the Guardian.
Hi, it's Helen here.
Today In Focus is on its Christmas break and so we are rerunning some of our favourite episodes from this year.
We're celebrating some of the inspirational people that we've been lucky enough to have on the show.
And so today we want to bring you the incredible story of one of my colleagues, Amna Modan.
Amna has been on a truly extraordinary journey from child refugee to Guardian reporter, and we hope that you really enjoy hearing her.
Tell me all about it.
Amna Modin was a 23 year old rookie journalist when she begged to be sent on her first foreign assignment to report from the refugee camp in Calais known as the Jungle.
I'm astonished that they let me go.
Complete, like, didn't have much experience reporting, just kind of really went for it.
It was first time I had crossed the Channel on a ferry, the first time that I had been to France, and the first major assignment that I had been given.
I remember just feeling incredibly nervous.
It was October 2015 and the media was full of images of desperate Syrians crossing the Mediterranean to try to reach Europe.
She'd seen pictures of the Jungle, but she was not quite prepared for the scene that greeted her.
I remember the mud everywhere, the rats that were there, how unhygienic it all was, how bright the blue tarp was that people were putting down on the ground and creating tents out of.
Some were cooking over open fires, others were cooking within their tents.
I think I was taken aback by just how chaotic the whole thing was.
There wasn't any organization to it.
And then just trying to find my way through that was really tough.
Walking through the camp, she was caught off guard by an uneasy feeling that went far beyond nerves about whether she was up to the assignment.