a month after the demolition of the Talus 2 slum, its former inhabitants live “scattered” and “without hope”

At the edge of the national road that goes around Mayotte, Adidja, 33, tries to sell some bananas to the inhabitants of the Majicavo district, in the north of the island. Behind her, a hill seems to have been scalped, revealing a red earth that looks like a still raw wound. This is where one of Mayotte’s largest slums, Talus 2, has been stretching for decades. “I had lived there for eleven years.says this mother of three children. We learned on television the day they were going to destroy our houses. I was devastated.”

On May 22, the diggers demolished the 162 sheet metal huts in the district, effectively launching the Wuambushu operation wanted by Gérald Darmanin to fight against unsanitary housing, illegal immigration and insecurity in Mayotte. A month later, the Minister of the Interior returns to the 101st French department, Saturday 24 and Sunday 25 June.

Facing the scarred hill, Adidja looks away. “I am tired”blows the thirty-something. In addition to his banga family – the name of the sheet metal houses in Mayotte – she and her husband lost that day a small grocery store they ran in the neighborhood. For several months, they had known that their lives were on borrowed time. The slum demolition order was issued in December 2022 after a social investigation on site. Justice finally gave the green light in mid-May, once assured that offers of rehousing had indeed been made.

“They came to offer us accommodation for three or six months, without being able to bring our belongings and far from our children’s schools, it’s unworthy. We still prefer to manage”, sweeps Adidja. His family now lives “scattered” at acquaintances. “There is no future here, no hope”, she decides.

Nearly half of the rehoused families

Adidja and her family are not an isolated case. Of the 96 families expelled who lived in the Talus 2 shantytown, 70 received a proposal for rehousing – reserved for people who are legally present in the area. Only 44 accepted the prefecture’s offer. “We have relocated around 250 people, it’s huge”, welcomes her side Psylvia Dewas, responsible for the resorption of unsanitary housing with the prefect. In previous demolitions, the relocation rate was often much lower.

A few kilometers from the old Talus 2 slum, modular prefabricated buildings surrounded by high walls and barbed wire accommodate some of these rehoused families. Among them, Toianti and two of her children were the first to arrive. Flip-flops and flip-flops are stored in front of the door of the only room in their accommodation. “Here, it’s stable, I’m quiet with my children, whereas at Talus 2, it was complicated”blows the forties, wrapped in a flowered shawl.

Sitting on the blue plastic floor, her son nods, looking up from his cell phone. “It hurt my heart when they destroyed my neighborhood but I prefer to live here, at least there is no danger”, launches Nastaoui. His new home is also calmer to revise his patent, which takes place in a few days.

Not everyone is of their opinion. At the next door, Chamsia regrets her life before. With her husband and their three children, they live together in the stifling heat of the only private room that is rented to them for a hundred euros a month. “We were put in a room, without being able to take our belongings, it’s not at all suitable for a family here”, laments the 44-year-old mother. With her foot pain, she has a hard time carrying her metal cooking pot from the communal kitchen from the ground floor to their room upstairs.

“We’re doomed here. I can’t imagine my life tomorrow.”

Chamsia, former resident of Talus 2

at franceinfo

Floral curtains have been hung to separate the children’s sleeping area from that of the parents. But for lack of space, the mattresses are superimposed during the day before being spread out every evening. Next to it, a wardrobe is overflowing with clothes of all colors. “We’re just asking for chairs, a table and maybe a sofa, slides Chamsia. We were promised a washing machine…”

“I had my heart torn”

Some rehoused families will not even have time to really settle into their new home. Several of them were only able to obtain emergency or integration accommodation for a renewable period of three or six months. This is the case of about fifty people who now live for free about ten kilometers from their old neighborhood, in Tsoundzou 2. A distance that can quickly become an insurmountable obstacle, without a car or public transport on the island.

“Everything we were offered was too far from my siblings’ school”explains Soihibou, the eldest of a family of nine children who has spent his whole life, with his parents, in the sheet metal huts of Talus 2. So, after twenty-five years of living in a community, the family preferred move in with a cousin in the neighborhood, despite the promiscuity. “He left us the living room, where my parents and the little ones sleep, explains the young man in yellow flip-flops and a blue T-shirt. I sleep with my cousins, whereas before, we had several houses for the whole family”. According to the prefecture, all the children and adolescents of Talus 2 are still educated in their establishment, despite sometimes longer transport times.

Some residents have taken refuge just across the freshly paved national road, in the neighborhood’s white and green mosque. Anicha’s family traveled a few hundred meters towards the rainforest to find a new home. But the wound is still intact. “I came here on vacation and the destruction began, explains the Frenchwoman who now lives in France. I was heartbroken watching my little brother cry.” This mother of two would like to bring the rest of her family back with her to Orléans (Loiret), but her parents, who only have a residence permit, have to stay in Mayotte.

“The work is titanic”

All the inhabitants of Talus 2 know it: whether or not they are temporarily rehoused by the State services, all will have to find a new home in the near future. But where ? The 101st French department is sorely lacking in healthy and affordable housing. Here, half of the population lives on less than 300 euros per month, according to INSEE, and a third lives in sheet metal boxes, according to the prefecture. “We are looking for a place to settle, but it takes a lot of savings to build a brick house”launches Soihibou.

“I would like us to buy land to settle properly with a solid house, not a sheet metal house.”

Soihibou, former resident of Talus 2

at franceinfo

This dream may be achievable in the neighborhood for the less precarious families. A few days after the bangas were cleared from Talus 2, a new construction site has already settled on the hill. “After stabilizing the area, we want to build 50 homes and shops”assures the mayor of the commune, Assani Saindou Bamcolo.

A will of mayor builder welcomed by the prefecture. “The decasing operations make it possible to control the land. Then, the town halls must have the will to build housing and find qualified people for the constructions”, lists Psylvia Dewas. An encouraging start according to the housing expert, dispatched to the island in February 2022, even if she recognizes that “Not all Talus 2 families will find a home” in this new neighborhood under construction. “The work is titanic.”

Soon new demolitions

Along the national road, the corrugated sheets of the slums still nibble the vegetation. A month after the first demolition as part of Operation Wuambushu, there is still a long way to go before reaching the target of 1,000 substandard housing units destroyed as desired by the prefect. No question of giving it up, especially since the end date of the operation has never been revealed.

Monday, June 19, a few days before Gérald Darmanin’s visit to the island, a new demolition of bangas thus began, a few kilometers from Talus 2. “To carry out a complete operation, it takes four to six months,” justifies the prefect, Thierry Suquet, in a polo shirt and sneakers. The pace could pick up in July. “This week we are signing our tenth demolition order and we have at least five more in the works”, assures the representative of the State, between the diggers in action. Away from the group, the mayor of Koungou discreetly slips a word to the head of the fight against unsanitary housing at the prefecture. Another slum in the commune could soon be on the demolition list.