que la paix regne...
I turned the TV on while we were having breakfast ce matin. Since it was already late and there were no more dessins animés for Cléms and miraculously she didn't ask for any cartoons on DVD, we were able to see the late morning news. As usual, the devastating news about these bands de connards de rioters! The French interior minister, Sarkozy, warned these bons à rien of stiff jail for arson. Ah, you bet, that's what they deserve! I just don't get it, why do these youths do horrible things like that? ça sert à quoi? And why is it that it isn't surprising that the ones who started all these things are from Seine-Saint-Denis?
Well, Seine-Saint-Denis (dept. 93), is considered as the worst or 'rotten' suburb of Paris. I know that this is unfair for those who live in this area and have nothing to do with what's happening right now. But sadly, it's the district's image. C'est comme ça, le 93 is branded as a craintif area, c'est la 'zone', c'est le Bronx. Why? At first, all I knew was that this area has full of what they call HLM buildings, known as la cité. Unfortunately, these apartment buildings have become known as habitations for 'less fortunate' people and that they pay 30-40 percent less rent than they'd be paying for a similar apartment dans un immeuble non-HLM. To acquire one, one should ask the municipal office, fill up papers and wait for years as there are waiting lists of people wanting to live in these buildings. I remember the assistant to the mayor of the 11th arrondisement in Paris telling me and Séb that the families with at least 4 children with just one person working and/or disabled persons are the priorities and we were far from being priorities.
Then months later, a friend of a friend who happened to live in one of those buildings invited us one Sunday to lunch. My God, I was sooo glad we didn't land in one of those apartments! Children with filthy clothes, ages 4 - 5 were playing outside, unaccompanied. So much parental neglect, I noticed. Teenage girls hanging around with boys with lighted cigarettes in hands. Walls of the buildings were graffiti-filled, filthy stinking halls, and the smell of marijuana was in the air ("oh, c'est normal ici", I remember my friend saying that) -- such a miserable place. There I understood why this place is considered as what it is considered today.
In an English speaking country, usually, when you say "suburbia", it refers to the upmarket areas of a city. But here in France , because of this merdique quartier, the word banlieu or the french term for "suburb", has now a different meaning. Sadly, it now refers to the impoverished suburban areas frequently associated with problems such as unrest, delinquency and unemployment. Not fair, although we're not from that departement and consider the place where we live la campagne bien tranquille, we're still part of Paris' suburbs and called les banlieusards (ewww! I hate that term!).
Well, Seine-Saint-Denis (dept. 93), is considered as the worst or 'rotten' suburb of Paris. I know that this is unfair for those who live in this area and have nothing to do with what's happening right now. But sadly, it's the district's image. C'est comme ça, le 93 is branded as a craintif area, c'est la 'zone', c'est le Bronx. Why? At first, all I knew was that this area has full of what they call HLM buildings, known as la cité. Unfortunately, these apartment buildings have become known as habitations for 'less fortunate' people and that they pay 30-40 percent less rent than they'd be paying for a similar apartment dans un immeuble non-HLM. To acquire one, one should ask the municipal office, fill up papers and wait for years as there are waiting lists of people wanting to live in these buildings. I remember the assistant to the mayor of the 11th arrondisement in Paris telling me and Séb that the families with at least 4 children with just one person working and/or disabled persons are the priorities and we were far from being priorities.
Then months later, a friend of a friend who happened to live in one of those buildings invited us one Sunday to lunch. My God, I was sooo glad we didn't land in one of those apartments! Children with filthy clothes, ages 4 - 5 were playing outside, unaccompanied. So much parental neglect, I noticed. Teenage girls hanging around with boys with lighted cigarettes in hands. Walls of the buildings were graffiti-filled, filthy stinking halls, and the smell of marijuana was in the air ("oh, c'est normal ici", I remember my friend saying that) -- such a miserable place. There I understood why this place is considered as what it is considered today.
In an English speaking country, usually, when you say "suburbia", it refers to the upmarket areas of a city. But here in France , because of this merdique quartier, the word banlieu or the french term for "suburb", has now a different meaning. Sadly, it now refers to the impoverished suburban areas frequently associated with problems such as unrest, delinquency and unemployment. Not fair, although we're not from that departement and consider the place where we live la campagne bien tranquille, we're still part of Paris' suburbs and called les banlieusards (ewww! I hate that term!).
posted by Bokbok at
11:40 PM
