ECAULT FOREST, France — Isaac stared down at his sandals and wondered out loud how suitable they'd be for the ordeal ahead: A perilous crossing of the English Channel, where scores of desperate people before him have drowned trying to reach the U.K.
The 35-year-old from Tanzania never expected, or wanted, to be here, surviving hand-to-mouth in a makeshift woodland camp in northern France, with dozens of other migrants. They, too, fled conflict, oppression, poverty and other miseries for the hope, however uncertain, that life someplace else — somewhere, anywhere — must surely be better.
''I wouldn't be sitting here if I had a choice,'' Isaac said. ''I didn't know what to expect. I didn't even bring a jacket or sweater.''
Isaac's realization that he must leave his homeland
All Isaac wants is to live freely as himself, a gay man. That aspiration is denied in Tanzania, where homosexuality is taboo and criminalized. A ferocious beating by a group of men that left his shoulder with permanent pain convinced him that his East African homeland, where he'd worked to put himself through school, would never accept him.
So he left. Three years later, Isaac now finds himself sitting on dirt and pine needles, hungrily chewing a boiled-egg baguette sandwich provided by men that he paid for a place on a flimsy inflatable boat. When it will leave, whether French police will stop it from setting off from a nearby beach, whether Isaac and other men, women and children waiting with him will reach the U.K. or die trying — all these are unknowns.
But Isaac is all out of options. His petition for asylum in Germany, where he fled to from Tanzania, was rejected, snatching away what had been his first experience of LGBTQ+ freedom.
Facing deportation, Isaac packed as best he could and hit the road again, hoping that refugee officers in the U.K. might be more understanding.