When and how deconfin? Emmanuel Macron will speak to the French this Tuesday evening, November 24, after several weeks of strong restrictions. A situation that weighs particularly heavily in neighborhoods with lower incomes for economic reasons but also because the death rate is higher there than elsewhere. To survive, some communities organize. In Marseille, the Comorian diaspora – almost 120,000 people – activated support cells.
From our special correspondent in Marseille,
Kamar Eddine Ben Abdallah is in a happy mood when he arrives. Impeccable shirt buttoned up to the neck and back under the arm
But behind this mask is a man in his thirties, devastated, he arrived from the Comoros three years ago. Without papers, sharing a room with his wife and grandchildren, he goes through this year of epidemic without hope and without money. “It’s scary and unbearable,” he says, “the little black favorites I made have disappeared. I asked myself, “What do I have to do to find food and pay my rent?” I have no savings, I have experienced times of stress and fear. I could not even go out because I had to show an identity card and a certificate. I imagined everything … an endless movie “
To eat
His first concern is to eat. For this he relies on one of the many support cells set up by the Comorian community during the first containment. This is a direct call line, available 7 days a week, 24 hours a day, open by activist Nassurdine Haidari and his wife, reactivated in early November. “It was imperative to help this community that filled the resuscitation beds at North Hospital,” explains Nassurdine Haidari, “we felt there was a health problem due to the proximity of people in dilapidated homes. This Covid-19 suddenly undermined the entire community organization. We saw need.” and great solidarity between people. ”Faced with an outdated state and associative structures, it is the basic, family and friendly unity that has made it possible to save certain situations.
In some popular districts of Marseille, more than half of the population is unemployed. Kamar Eddine Ben Abdallah, who lives in the city’s third arrondissement, which is considered one of the poorest districts in Europe, has gradually found some undeclared replacements: cleaning, diving in a restaurant with always fear of encountering the virus on the way. “Everyone fears this disease, whether it is the government, the military or the undocumented, but we are the most vulnerable. Those who have work with a contract have the right to refuse to go to work and in this case the managers turn to us, the undocumented. They know we are thirsty for work. We are very vulnerable, we have no choice, otherwise it will be ours? “
Excess mortality in the poorest wards
“Social inequalities multiply the risk factors,” researchers recently showed in the journal of the Institute for Public Health Research. On the two waves of the epidemic, they emphasized immortality most poorly, the need to work and overcrowded housing facilitates the spread of the virus. The prisons have also caused an electric shock for NW, a young Marseille dancer of Comorian origin: “I want a bigger place tomorrow, to offer a new life for my family and me,” he says. , I saw some artists who said during the first containment: “Stay at home”. But it’s easy when you have acres of garden. I hope it helps us get out of these places and have a better life. I think there will be one after. Today we must prepare for this “after”.
NW reflects the optimism of this youth. Stands despite his project being postponed or suspended. “2020 is a year that needs to be redone,” he says. It has finally served to arouse solidarity and to extinguish the death a little.
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