Of Poverty and Privilege : A Parisienne Water Tale

Now, the ADIE worked with a lot of poor immigrants, specially from Africa. Most of them where squatters who claimed apartments and buildings through the DAL (Droit au Logement), a radical Association that hunts for apartments and puts families in them if they’re abandoned. 

So my colleague and me – a French blonde called Céline – went to different squats in Paris and in the suburbs, conducting our survey and collecting data. The people where lovely, treating us like guests and going out of their way to accommodate us. They where mainly from sub-Saharan Africa, had enough kids to start their own volleyball team and mostly came up with buy-for-a-dollar-sell-for-two schemes to make extra income. Most of them where cleaning ladies in hotels and companies, a thankless job if there’s ever been one. They had insane schedules: get up at 4, clean from 6 to 8, get off till 12, and then at night clean two more hours, and seemed endlessly tired. The squats in themselves where ridiculously clichéd; I remember a squat in Belleville that looked as if it had been taken off the set of La Haine, by Mathiew Kassovitz. Run down, elevator not working, dirty and with a funky smell hanging over the whole thing, at the end of the corridor 12 to 14 year old kids listened to a ghetto blaster playing bad French rap (sorry for the pleonasm) and passing a joint around. Fathoumata’s apartment still had the plastic cover on her couch and the TV, on at full volume even though no one was watching, was showing some old Baywatch reruns. 

And so the days went by, from squat to squat, family to family. As luck would have it, we wound up watching the France-Senegal football match in a squat full of Senegalese women who were ecstatic at seeing them beat the world champions in the opening match. They threw jinxes and incantations at the TV and were adamant about the fact that Zidane‘s injury a week before was due to Senegalese witch doctors. While all Paris was in shock when they lost the match, we were in the only place that was celebrating Senegal’s win… It was an amazing experience.

Notwithstanding, it wasn’t all fun and good times. Most of the people we saw were getting by, working two jobs and raising a plethora of kids. But some of the squats were in terrible, terrible condition.