“In this environment, either you start drinking or you get divorced, in short, you have every chance of ending up badly. » Square of gray hair, laughing eyes and a big sweater to protect herself from the biting cold of mid-December, Sylvie Desjonquères knows the harshness of the associative world: too much indignation, too much commitment can end up wearing us out. But from her twenty-five years of activism defending the cause of migrants along the coast of Nord-Pas-de-Calais, this former manager of Emmaüs Grande-Synthe was able to transform her anger into positive energy. . Under her jovial appearance, the sixty-year-old, with her stentorian voice and her theatrical gestures, continues to denounce, with the same force, the miserable living conditions of these men, women and children who have lost everything by leaving their country. . It was for them that she created Maison Sésame.
Located in the heart of Herzeele, a northern village of 1,600 inhabitants, about twenty kilometers from Dunkirk, this building has for five years been a place of respite for exiles in transit to the United Kingdom. The year 2024 will have seen a new surge in the number of crossings aboard makeshift canoes, 30,000 in 1is November, according to the British Home Office; but above all it could prove to be the deadliest, with yet another shipwreck on December 29. At least 76 people have lost their lives trying to reach the English coast since 1is January 2024. “The judgment that can be made on their reasons for going into exile does not matter to me. The reality is that they are there. It was impossible for me to see them surviving outside in undignified conditions,” says Sylvie Desjonquères, to explain the birth of Maison Sésame.
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