Dilemmas

It's a tough time here in Ariège just now. Particularly for an indecisive Libran music lover like me.

Thursday: the first night of the new Ercé in Jazz festival, or Vivaldi meets Guinness meets Brazil with the violin group Cordzam in Salies du Salat?

Friday: Blues in Sem, the second night of Ercé in Jazz, or Lëk Sèn at the first night of Ingénieuse Afrique in Foix?

Saturday: Eastern European music from Zaman Zaman at the café culturel Le Souleilla in our neighbouring village, the third night of Ercé in Jazz, or two gigs (Ahmed Cissé and Les Choeurs de Brazza) at Ingénieuse Afrique?

Sunday: lots of folklore-y stuff in St Girons at Autrefois les Couserans, the son et lumière Le Secret des Cathares in Foix, or Harouna Dembele at Ingénieuse Afrique?

Monday: the night market at Castillon - always good fun - or a several-times-postponed trip to Toulouse to collect an oven?

Tuesday: the Choeur de Crimée performing Rachmaninov's Vespers and other goodies in the church at Le Mas d'Azil .... or an early night? Okay, I admit it; after five consecutive (very) late nights and many hours spent dancing, we chose the early night .... but the week went on, and we'll be catching up with the Choeur de Crimée next week at the Festival de Saint Lizier ......

There's always a big sense of build up in the fortnight approaching 15 August, which is a public holiday here (Assumption), and none the more so than in years like this when it falls on a Monday and thus creates a long holiday weekend. "France at a snail's pace!" cried our regional paper; according to one commentator it's the time when many holiday homes get opened up, and camping cars get dusted off, for the one and only occasion in the year. After Assumption thoughts, and holidaymakers, begin to turn homewards, the village fête reigns supreme, and the prospect of la rentrée begins to loom large. In a couple of weeks we'll have the roads to ourselves again.

One dilemma we don't have is whether to pass the next four nights with our fellow villagers under the plane trees at Rimont's annual fête locale. Why? Well, if you've ever heard any of the bands that trawl village fêtes here you don't need to ask. If you haven't, think Birdie Song meets 1980s French pop meets Songs From The Shows meets Jonny Hallyday take-offs, all played at ear shattering volume through appalling sound systems (from Grillou we can hear not only our own fête, but that of our two neighbouring villages, though thankfully not all at the same time). Maybe you just have to be there to appreciate it, but I think I'll just leave that one to the imagination ...

PS Monday's band is called Ad'vil, which also happens to be a brand of ibuprofen. I rest my case.

Taking the Slow Road to the Gorges de la Frau: Part Three

And in staying much longer than we intended, before we knew it it was too late to continue upwards to Le Pas d'Ours, where there is a superb viewpoint over the gorges we'd just walked up. But that's the nature of Slow Walking - the moment is always more important than any pre-fixed plan. Just for good measure, this is what we missed:

Thanks to Gunther at Le Silence du Midi for that photo. See that little snake-y thing down the bottom? That's the path. The very same path that took us almost as long to walk down as it did to walk up, given the way the stones on the steep bits had a distinct tendency to slide from underfoot and take you where you had no intention, or desire, to go. You have been warned ...

We wound our way back through Belesta to Foix, stopping at the Fontaine de Fontestorbes on the way. Now this is an odd thing. It's an 'intermittent spring', one of only a handful in the world. What that means is that in summer the water flow changes from almost nothing to a raging torrent, and back again, in a cycle that seems to vary between 32 and 70 minutes or so. When we arrived, there was a bit more than a trickle, but not much, and I was just about to follow the stepping stones into the cave when I thought I detected a slight increase in the flow levels.

Sure enough, we'd arrived just at the beginning of a cycle; within no more than 5 minutes the source was belting out water at a rate of knots and the stepping stones were part of a waterfall.

Although it sounds about as exciting as like watching paint dry, it's strangely compulsive viewing (okay, so maybe I have a high boredom threshold). I made a brief attempt to understand the physics behind it - there's an 'idiot's guide' on a panel - but I'm sorry to say that it completely passed me by ... unsurprisingly as my grasp of conventional physics never really got beyond the ball and ring experiment. There's a scarily comprehensive non-idiot's guide here, should you be so inclined. We and a couple of women stayed and watched the water for half an hour or so, filling our water bottles too (ice cold and delicious) until, would you believe, a pensioners' coach party arrived from Toulouse. It was time to go.

We finished the evening in Foix, where it was the first day of the fêtes locales. A huge funfair had taken over the town centre, and it felt as though the whole of Ariége had arrived to watch the firework display. At 10.30 sharp the streetlights went out, the dodgems drifted to a halt, and everybody gathered below the chateau to wait and watch and ooh and aah. It was magnificent.

Sequels 2

So, Tuesday saw Claudine Louis in court in Foix, accused of offering assistance to a foreigner in an irregular situation (I wrote about her story here a few weeks ago). From its modest beginnings as a local news story, it was gradually taken up by the main news channels as word got around and the level of support for Claudine grew. Comments pages in national newspapers buzzed, generally (though not always, especially - unsurprisingly - in Le Monde) in Claudine's favour.

Nearly a hundred people were outside the courtroom on Tuesday. Before the hearing, the procureur announced a modification to her charges: although she was still being tried for aiding a clandestine, she would not, if found guilty, be fined or imprisoned. The trial, therefore, would go ahead to settle a point of law, not to penalise Claudine who, he accepted, had acted with the best of intentions.

The whole thing lasted for two hours and debate focused primarily on the fact that Obaï is a minor. The defence argued that a minor cannot be considered to be a clandestine or 'in an irregular situation', and that if she had failed to offer help, she could have laid herself open to the charge of 'non-assistance to a person in danger' - which is actually an offence here. The prosecution's argument is that if helping a young immigrant like Obaï is deemed to be legal and above board, it follows that equally no action could be taken against those who traffic children.

The verdict will be given on 8 September, after the arguments have been deliberated by three judges. Whatever the outcome, law will be made.

Welcome, in Ariège ...

A few weeks ago, we went to see Welcome, Philippe Lioret's film about clandestine immigrants in Calais and in particular about a 17 year old Kurdish refugee, Bilal, who is determined to swim across the Channel to get to England, where he is hopes to rejoin his girlfriend (and play for Manchester United!). The film tells the story of how he is befriended by a swimming teacher, learns to swim, and eventually makes his attempt on the Channel. Meanwhile, his friend-teacher is arrested and charged with "offering assistance to a foreigner in an irregular situation" - a section of the penal code usually reserved only for 'people traffickers'. It was a truly excellent film, if upsetting, and not a little controversial. If it hits a cinema near you, see it. 

Little did we think that a not dissimilar, real life, situation would shortly unfold here, in our local town.

At the beginning of the year, a young Afghan guy, Obaï, joined the French language workshop that John attends at the Resto du Coeur in Saint Girons. Little was known about his background, and a few weeks ago he moved on, apparently to Pamiers, a larger town on the plain in the north east of the department. We thought no more of him. Until a couple of days ago, when a headline in our regional paper, La Dépêche du Midi, caught my attention: a Saint Girons woman is being charged with "offering assistance to a foreigner in an irregular situation". The foreigner is Obaï. 

The story goes like this. Claudine Louis had been for some time concerned with the plight of Afghan clandestine immigrants to France; last winter she heard that a family was living rough in a park in Paris amongst 50 other clandestines, and went to investigate with a view to taking some action on their behalf. The family had actually been accommodated in a hotel by the authorities, but while there she came across Obaï: 16 years old, cold, and ill. She brought him back to Saint Girons to stay with her, made sure he got medical treatment, began to teach him French and set out to get hold of his identity papers so that he could get the formal child protection that all minors in France are entitled to: support, accommodation within a children's home or foster family, and education. Having successfully got his identity documents, she then set off on an interminable round of just about every official body in the department, encountering procrastination and being passed from pillar to post over a period of nearly four months. Finally, and in desperation to alert the departmental authorities to the presence of her young friend, she took him to the Préfecture in Foix and deposited him there.

By the end of the day, Obaï had been placed in a foster home in Pamiers, and Claudine had been charged. She is due to appear in court on 21 July; if she is found guilty she risks 5 years imprisonment, and/or a fine of up to 30,000 euros. 

There is more than a certain irony in the fact that Claudine is being charged under a section of the code usually reserved for those who are hiding an illegal immigrant when she has spent four months trying, unsuccessfully through no fault of her own, to do just the opposite. Our department does in fact have a generally sympathetic approach to refugees - perhaps not surprising given that a large number of its residents were originally refugees from Spain in the Franco years - and the Préfecture has stressed that no blame or fallout will find its way to Obaï himself. Quite why they have chosen to bring this prosecution - the fourth such case in France - is beyond not only me but also the many other people who are coming together in support of Claudine. 

If, like me, you are shocked and upset by what's going on here, please think about writing to the prosecutor (Procureur) in Foix. There's a sample letter here, where you can also read an account of events in Claudine's own words. Whether you live in the department - or even in France - or not, we can make a difference. 

Has anyone got an ark?

It's hard to believe just how much it's been raining here over the last couple of weeks. Only a week ago we had, apparently, over 8 centimetres of rain in 24 hours; today has got to be up there somewhere too. Rivers are running high, and the avalanche risk in the Couserans Pyrénées this week was 5 out of 5. Indeed our intempéries are the talk of our part of France, with the number of leading articles in our regional daily La Dépêche du Midi growing in direct proportion to the level of rainfall. The greatest indignation is reserved for the fact that this winter the weather in France has been turned on its traditional head, with unusual and almost continuous anticyclonic conditions in the north keeping the Atlantic depressions down here in the south, where (we think) they shouldn't be, while offering bright and sunny conditions to those northerners more accustomed to winter grey skies and rain.

Bizarrely, while our track is running a river tonight and our broad beans have taken up breaststroke, Friday was almost too hot to be outside; sunhat, shorts and strappy were still too much in the way of clothing, and I had to keep taking refuge from grass mowing duties in the shade. Today, though, was a different matter. Especially when the day's task involved sorting out and organising the contents of our brico workshop to make it possible to find things in less than a week (is it me? Or does everybody's workshop get like that?). We're now on Day Three of this unedifying task (there is a reason why it's taking so long; let me just say it involves an angle grinder, a cement floor and a foresight failure) and so desperate to finish it that even the thought of getting cold and wet wasn't enough to put us off. By the end of the morning, though, I'd lost all feeling in my fingers and was becoming hypothermically challenged, so after a bowl of porridge (porridge! In the south of France! In April!) we decided - slightly guiltily - to slope off to an afternoon showing of Slumdog Millionaire at the cinema in Foix.

Going to the cinema in Ariège is always a thoroughly pleasant experience. All our cinemas are independantly owned, so no chains, no multiplexes, and best of all (at the Rex in Foix at least) no popcorn. But you do get a big basket of cushions to help yourself to, and the most comfortable seats of any cinema I know. The audience is invariably both appreciative and involved. One of the first films I saw here was La Marche de l'Empereur (March of the Penguins): when the female penguins made it back from the sea to feed the chicks that had been left with their fathers, everybody spontaneously applauded. And this afternoon's audience was no exception. In spite of the fact that the film, unusually, was being shown as VO (version originale) and so even the non-Hindi bits involved sub-titles, the whole audience joined together on a palpable emotional roller coaster: from the collective sharp intakes of breath to the empathic groans of shock and pain; from the standing ovation at the end to the clapping in time with the music of the Bollywood-style credits; and even to the two elderly women next to me shouting out the all-important name of the third musketeer ...

I loved and was in awe of the film. It was both feelbad and feelgood at the same time. It started in a Bombay that I knew and ended in a Mumbai that I don't. It was, amongst many other things, a fairy tale, and like all good fairy tales had a very dark side indeed. And it carried us all into it and with it to such an extent that it was a true surprise to walk out of the cinema and find ourselves in France, in the rain.