The colorful tents were packed so tightly that they were touching. On the morning of Monday, November 20, there were almost a hundred of them. They looked like they had huddled together to fight off the night-time chill under the shelter of the overhanging roof of the Saint-Merri-Renard school. In the heart of Paris, between the Centre Pompidou and the Hôtel de Ville, a sad choreography starts at dawn. From the mosaic of canvas emerges, one after the other, people who are still half-asleep. Most are men, often from West Africa. But there are also several women, including a Hungarian woman who is five months pregnant, and about 10 children. The camp's youngest occupant is a 4-month-old baby.
Every morning, they have to put their things away, often in a large plastic bag hidden among the shrubs in a nearby park. They have to clean up by 8:30 am, before the children who go to the public elementary school arrive. It's now a well-oiled ritual since school started, even if the number of tents has increased significantly since November 1. For a long time, parents of pupils at the school didn't notice this nocturnal camp existed.
Then, one fall morning, the municipal police, given the responsibility of ensuring that the tents were dismantled, were late in their rounds and the two worlds crossed. "We note with sadness that a dozen families have been sleeping in front of our school and in the surrounding area for a few weeks now," wrote representatives from the local parents' association in an email sent to all parents on November 17.
Noting that "unfortunately, no solution has been proposed" by the town hall or the prefecture, they have organized a collection of warm clothes and food, in conjunction with Utopia 56 and Paris d'Exil, two associations that help migrants. "We're going to try to set up a parents' collective in central Paris, and possibly take further action," said Florent Cheippe, a volunteer with Paris d'Exil, one of whose children goes to the school.
Khadi, a 25-year-old woman from Côte d'Ivoire, is waiting for housing. She traveled through Tunisia and Italy before arriving in France seven months ago, and now sleeps in a gray tent with her two daughters, aged 10 and 4. Like her little sister, Assetou has been attending a school in the 2nd arrondissement, 1 kilometer away, since the start of the new school year. "The girls only wash on Saturdays and Sundays," said their mother. "In the morning, the [public] showers open at 8 am, which is too late to get to class on time."
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