Swimming in city’s inequality
One recent hot evening, Yanis Fatnassi left his home in a gritty northern neighbourhood of this Mediterranean city, his swim goggles, bathing suit and swimming cap shoved in his backpack.
After about 40 minutes on a bus meandering past dilapidated parking lots, and then a short walk, Yanis, 17, arrived at the Martine swimming pool.
Luckily, the 25-metre pool, its rusty, spaceship-like roof glowing in the setting sun, was open.
Yanis, the son of a deliveryman of Tunisian descent and a supermarket worker with Algerian roots, has been training to be a competitive swimmer since the age of 12.
It has not been easy. Last year, his practice pool was unexpectedly closed for nearly a month, just weeks ahead of a crucial tournament. But at least Yanis knows how to swim. In Marseille, a city that stretches over 56 kilometres of coastline, a record-high number of children cannot swim. The lack of pools in good condition, combined with an atrophied public transportation network and the dominance of other sports have the city lagging behind the rest of the country.
The more underprivileged, northern neighbourhoods, the “Quartiers Nords,” suffer the most.
In this segregated area, where violence and drug trafficking are common, more than two in three primary schoolchildren cannot swim, said Brahim Timricht, the head of Le Grand Bleu, an association that has given free swimming lessons to hundreds of children from Marseille’s poorer areas.
Swimming is among the essential skills that the French Republic has pledged to make available to its citizens since the end of the 19th century.
According to local authorities in Marseille, an average 47 per cent of children from the Quartiers Nords entering sixth grade fail a mandatory swimming test, compared with 27 per cent in the rest of the city.
To those in poorer neighbourhoods, the lack of access to public pools reinforces the feeling that residents, most descendants of immigrants, are not entitled to the same rights as others in the city.
Of the five public pools in the Quartiers Nords, where 250,000 live, one operated about half the time, and others closed frequently, often without notice.
About 10 years ago, Richard Miron, the deputy mayor for sports, announced a plan for 250 million ($368 million) to renovate and build 10 pools across Marseille. Little has come to fruition.
The frequent closures of the 14 indoor public pools mean many children in public schools in Marseille receive few swimming lessons. The French Education Ministry requires that children receive at least 30 lessons from ages 6 to 7.
In most cases, children can get to pools only on chartered buses, said Timricht from Le Grand Bleu, and they often end up spending more time on the bus than in the water.
Yanis Fatnassi said he was the only person in his class to join a swimming team. Of the dozen or so teams in the city, Marseille Nord is the only club in the Quartiers Nords.
He said swimming had taught him discipline, which, in turn, led to excellent results in school. He hopes those results will help him leave to study in London.
“I would say it’s essential,” the young man said.