MARSEILLE, France – With her black scarf flying, a teenager jumped into the sparkling Mediterranean from a concrete pier at a city marina, then returned to shore and climbed onto a giant paddleboard for a whirlwind ride with a dozen enthusiastic comrades.
They were taken by bus to a swimming camp at a social services center in the predominantly Muslim and North African neighborhoods surrounding Marseille, which is hosting the event. 2024 Olympicssailing competition at the opposite end of its spectacular bay surrounded by monuments.
The ancient port is a crossroads of cultures and beliefs, where the sea is always present, but not equally accessible, and beauty and cosmopolitan talent coexist with enclaves of poverty and exclusion. even more intimately than in the rest of France.
“There are children who see the sea from home but never came,” said Mathias Sintes, supervisor of the Corbière marina for the Grand Bleu Association, which has organized camps for around 3,000 marginalized children – 50% of whom, he estimates. , I didn’t know how to swim. “The first objective is to teach them how to save themselves.”
Brahim Timricht, who grew up in the northern neighborhoods known as the “quartiers nord”, founded the association more than two decades ago to get children to enjoy the sea that sparkles below his often dilapidated skyscrapers on the rocky cliffs.
Then he realized that many weren’t learning basic swimming at school – a requirement for primary school students in France – and figured he could take advantage of the hot summer months to introduce them to the skill.
“Then the mothers told me that they still wouldn’t go to the beach because they didn’t know how to swim and were afraid, so we started programs with them,” Timricht said as dozens of children played happily in the hot July sun. a few days before the opening of the Olympic sailing competition.
The lack of pools for school programs is a sign of “social and economic segregation,” said Jean Cugier, who teaches physical education at a high school in the northern neighborhoods and belongs to the national physical education teachers union.
During the last school year, he bused 30 sixth-graders 45 minutes to a pool where two lanes were set aside for them — an unsustainable model, he said, that he hopes to modify with pool-based summer camps.
Although the city discussed using the Olympic marina after the Games – like Paris plans to make it into an Olympic swimming pool — the sea is too cold for swimming during most of the school year. Therefore, the only concrete answer to the shortage of swimming pools is to build more infrastructure, believes Cugier.
Another issue that complicates swimming teaching, according to the Ministry of Education, is the medical certificates that parents bring to exempt their children from classes. Authorities say these are often false and motivated by the desire of some conservative Muslim families not to have boys and girls in the pool together.
Swimming pools have become a flashpoint in France’s fight over its unique approach to “laïcité” – loosely translated as “secularism” and strictly regulating the role of religion in public spaceincluding schools and even the Olympics.
But sport is also a way of leaving the margins. One of the great names of French football, Zinedine Zidane, who carried the Olympic torch at the opening ceremony of Paris, he was born in the most notorious northern neighborhood of Marseille. And football continues to be the unifying passion of Marseille residents, who regularly gather to support the home team, Olympique de Marseille, at the Vélodrome stadium – one of the venues for olympic football games.
For the boys and girls of Corbière marina, the overall seaside experience has been an opportunity to meet new people from outside their neighborhood.
“They don’t want to leave,” said one of the group’s leaders, Sephora Saïd, on the last day of the camp. She wore a hijab throughout the tour, including while paddleboarding.
The sea as an entrance and meeting point is rooted in Marseille’s very DNA. Founded by Greek colonists 2,600 years ago as a trading post, it is the oldest city in France and the second largest.
“Before being a city, Marseille is a port,” said Fabrice Denise, director of the Marseille History Museum, built next to the Greek archaeological site in what is still the city center. “If we want to understand everything that is extraordinary about it, including the realities of cosmopolitanism, we need to understand its multi-century history as a port.”
The current port, the third-largest in the Mediterranean by cargo tonnage, includes everything from refineries to a busy cruise ship area, and stretches for almost 40 kilometers (25 miles). But it all started in a small cove that is today the main tourist attraction, the Vieux Port.
Large boats built of wood and caulked with cotton and fiber carried transformative cargo like vines, Denise said. Trade expanded north along the Rhône River in what is now one of France’s most famous wine-producing regions.
At the end of the harbor, a small shipyard still restores a handful of old-fashioned boats. They were used for fishing until a few decades ago, but are now too expensive to maintain for utilitarian purposes.
Not far away are the forts that King Louis XIV built in the 17th century to protect the port and the military arsenal he established. The small town became a metropolis.
Religious diversity also arrived by sea – Christians in reality and in myth, one of the most popular being the fact that Mary Magdalene herself sailed to Marseille, which is celebrated every year with a large boat procession.
Centuries later, and increasingly since decolonization, Muslims from North Africa flocked to Marseille’s shores. Of the city’s 870,000 residents, around 300,000 have their roots in Algeria alone.
In the narrow streets up the hill from the Vieux Port, Arabic plays at market stalls, in cafes and in couscous restaurants – the second most spoken language in the city. Marseille’s own French is unique, incorporating not only a distinct accent but also words from the provincial Provençal language, said Médéric Gasquet-Cyrus, a linguist and professor at Aix-Marseille University. He is co-author of the French-language book “Marseille for Dummies”.
On the cover, as well as on the background of most photos including those from the Olympic regattas, the 19th-century, black-and-white-striped basilica of Notre Dame de la Garde stands atop a hill, topped by a nearly 10-meter (33-foot) gold-covered statue of the Virgin Mary. feet) looking at the sea. She is known as “la Bonne Mère” – the good mother.
“The Bonne Mère is almost a pagan symbol,” joked Gasquet-Cyrus, who says he is an atheist, but still goes to visit it. “She is the protector of the city.”
The church receives around 2.5 million visitors a year, many of them at daily masses and many more on its large terrace. Its 360-degree views take in the old and new ports, the villa-filled neighborhoods where the Olympic marina is situated, as well as the blocky towers of the northern quarter.
“You can see Marseille, the sea and the horizon, all under his benevolent gaze,” said the basilica’s rector, Rev. Olivier Spinosa. “It’s easier to see beauty from above and it invites us to work on beautiful things when we’re down there.”
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