Meeting and participation in a Samu social round
On Monday 9 November, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy accompanied the Samu social (social emergency) on one of its rounds in Paris. Here’s an account of the night.
“If any of you see this person tonight, you bring him into shelter, ok?” It is a winter’s evening at Ivry-sur-Seine, and helpers are being briefed at the Samu social 115 call centre. In a short time they will leave on their nightly rounds – eight p.m. until five a.m., just like on every other day of the year. Identifiable by their blue windcheaters, the helpers — nurses, social workers, volunteers from the Samaritans and representatives of the Order of Malta – sit at trestle tables and silently take notes. Winter is just beginning. Tonight there will be around 30 Samu social vehicles on the streets, though in fact it is in the spring and the summer that there are the most deaths among the homeless. “It is wrong to treat exclusion like it is a crisis that occurs only in winter,” says Samu social founder Xavier Emmanuelli. “I often say – with a touch of irony – that people only start sharing things when they’re already sharing the unpleasant sensation of being cold.”
Xavier Emmanuelli has organised this visit to the Ivry centre, along with Samu social general manager Stefania Parigi and director of operations Thomas Marie. Three years ago, when the 115 call centre was moved here, the whole telephone computer system was revamped in order to make it easier for the ‘clients’ – i.e. the homeless — and to waste as little time as possible. “With every client we have to be able to pick up the conversation where we left off the last time. We can’t ask them to tell their life-story every time they call,” says Thomas Marie.
Twenty-nine call-takers in headphones – most of them women – sit in partitioned cubicles in what looks from a distance like a large telesales room. Here they help to direct the ‘clients’, taking notes on their keyboards about whatever emergency may have struck. “It’s all a bit hand-to-mouth, but for each case we’ve got to find the right person to bring a solution,” says Stefania Parigi. Another problem is the rush to identify which of up to 195 possible languages the ‘client’ is speaking in. “Every day we get 3,000 calls. For half of them, one single call will be enough. For 30 percent, they need three or four calls. For the last 20 percent, the only solution is to call the ambulance,” says Xavier Emmanuelli.
Emmanuelli – who is also co-founder of Médecins sans frontières and a former government minister for humanitarian issues – was working as a doctor in Nanterre when he set up Samu social in 1993. Working closely with the Samu medical emergency service, the idea was to go out to people living on the street and offer help and psychosocial support. At the time begging was technically against the law. One of the most striking things today is the personal relationship that has built up between helpers and many of their ‘clients’. Carla Bruni-Sarkozy recalls a homeless man who lived near her home. She knows his name, how old he is. They used to talk music together. A few moments later the 115 team have traced him on their data-base. It’s the same 48 year-old man, still living on the same street.
Xavier Emmanuelli often says that “exclusion lies ahead of us … Our institutions, the administration, the health service – they all need to adapt. With the onward march of urbanisation, we are destined to live with homelessness for the foreseeable future.” He goes on: “In traditional, rural, farming societies, even where there is poverty there is also an inherent solidarity. People help each other: that’s just the way it is. But in the town, that personal bond is no longer there. If you don’t know anyone, you’re on your own.” Over the course of its 16 years, the Samu social has observed a growing number of ‘clients’ with psychiatric problems, as well as women, migrants from eastern Europe, young people and low-paid workers.
The night-round proceeds on its course, taking in the Esquirol hospital at Saint Meurice, then rue Tolbiac, place Nationale, rue Regnault, place Félix Eboué, rue de Reuilly … At each stop, the helpers leave the truck. The medical team approaches the sleeping-bags lined up on the pavement. Hot drinks and bowls of pasta are handed out. There is a strong urge to talk, but mainly the talking is done in murmurs. Unrecognized in her blue windcheater and cap, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy watches, listens and observes. For the homeless, Xavier Emmanuelli is a more familiar face. At rue Tolbiac one man in a cap shouts out, “It’s my Dad!” Bursting with laughter, he rushes to get out of his bag and shake Emmanuelli’s hand. Along with the talking, handshakes are a central part of proceedings. At the Esquirol hospital, where 16 camp-beds have been put up, another man shows us his room. Jacques is between 50 and 60 years of age, and haggard. But proud as a child, he does the round of handshakes then presents the wall-paintings that he and his fellow inmates have drawn on the hospital corridor. Colours like that do not exist on the street. “Some are gentle, some are sympathetic, some show a certain violence – but with all of them you sense that these are people whose lives have been profoundly damaged. They’ve been broken,” says Carla Bruni-Sarkozy. “And where you have such psychological fragility, the important thing is to recreate the routines of ordinary life, and to find a safe place to live.”
