Second hand first impressions - Clichy-sous-Bois

(Versão Portuguesa)

So, truth is I still don't feel like much has changed. Sure, I'm in a new country, speaking a language I barely knew how to speak before, I live with people that two months ago I knew nothing about, I'm not a student anymore,... hm... what else? (Well, obviously everything changed). But somehow France surprised me with this sweet feeling of familiarity. 

Usually when I move, or even for visiting, The Doors sing to me in their tune of advice "people are strange, when you're a stranger", I think they mean to remind me that I'm the "other one", but it appears that this time they decided to be quiet: people are not strange, every day I become less of a stranger - don't get me wrong, I love the feeling of having my concepts of comfort challenged. And yet, this is not to say I haven't been facing a new reality, for sure I'm not in Porto, I'm not in Angola, I'm not in Cape Verd and for sure (!) I'm not in Krakow. Clichy-Sous-Bois is kind of a mix of all these places, and so many others, that I just realized this may be the reason why I feel so much at home.

Well, I do remember that "thing" pushing my stomach while I walked to Orange Bleue for the first time, how I was trying so hard to look the least uncomfortable as possible following the map on my smartphone, how the streets looked so "weird" and how much I was wishing to arrive to my destination as soon as possible. And the train, the train to Paris and the metro, felt really scary after sunset, or maybe even before. Luckly these feelings lasted as long as first times are concerned, and as far as I remember, The Doors never took the stage again.

One more time for the pleasure of it

The reason why my passion for Clichy-sous-Bois has been growing every day is hard to explain without throwing away a bunch of clichés that may fill the minds with these stereotypical images of my beautiful and so unique town, and so it is that I shall start by the things it has taught me so far.

One of the things that appears to be more a less general is that its inhabitants like to live there. I work with children and their families, mostly mothers, and it's frequent that these kind ladies, that from the first moment took the patience to understand my horrible "French" (I feel I can say it is French now, not so good, but also thanks to them, I can have conversations as an almost normal person), have told me they prefer Clichy-sous-Bois to Paris. The justification generally is that in Clichy people are nicer and, very shortly, they can be themselves. Another thing that also appears to be general is that people are indeed very nice. During the week, when the sun is up, the streets are full of life - children and families everywhere, but not so many cars actually -, there is a street market on my way to Orange Bleue every Wednesday and Saturday that is usually full of people, it's not a big market but I can buy most things I need and pretty nice fresh fish and vegetables much cheaper than in any store.

And then, in a smaller scale, Orange Bleue shows me day after day the art of doing things out of love and passion. I’m lucky to be in a team of highly motivated people, who are willing to give their best to the community and so it happens that their best is really good and I do believe their work influences a lot of lives. The center is a bunch of pre-made rooms, not very comfortable that turned into this thought throw, welcoming space for children and their families – and once again I realize that good walls don’t make the best houses.

It is true that I only know a small area of Clichy-sous-Bois, but my testimony is worth for what it is: a drastically different perspective from the pictures and speeches that Google gives you back in a search about the town. The buildings are not the best, there are definitely some problems concerning the high rates of unemployment, mostly among the youth, and multiculturalism comes with interesting and many times hard challenges, but the truth is that it is the fact that I live and work in a place where people have all the colors, where I can listen to so many different languages a day, where most of the time it doesn't feel like I’m in Europe that makes me wish for more, want to learn as much as I can, and give my everything.

Francisca