Derb Ghallef

by Francesca Tabloni (Spain)

I didn't expect to find Morocco

"Go to Derb Ghallef, you can find everything in Der Ghallef." That was the first time I heard of it. I had been in Casablanca for only two weeks and I had just broken my mobile phone. I didn't know where to go. A friend of mine showed me his new phone, told me how much he had paid for it and explained where to find the same shop in the neighborhood. "If you get lost, ask for satellite subscription stores, you'll find it next door." If you take the ultra-modern tramway, designed and built in France, you will arrive at the Derb Ghallef stop in a few minutes from the central Place des Nations Unies. The tram rails make their way from the center to the beach, winding through the economic heart of the city. Banks headquarters, glimmering office buildings and Derb Ghallef. The contrast is striking. A built-up area of shacks and crumbling single-storey buildings separated by tiny rammed earth alleys. Corrugated iron panels used as rooftops and doors are everywhere. It is the most important slum left in city center of and the biggest market of Casablanca. The slum is divided into three parts, the lateral ones are for residential use, while the central is the trade core. The style of the buildings is the same. When I got there it had just been raining, some wooden pallets were placed above the most dangerous points in the passages from one stall to the next, to prevent people from being covered in mud. The vendors are very organized. As in a modern department store, you can find anything in this open-air market. Although the houses are crumbling, each one has a satellite dish. Even those constructions that you would easily mistake for small tumbledown tool sheds. “In Morocco it's a cultural thing, no matter how poor a family is, you'll always find a television. The equivalent of 30 euros is enough to have all the pirated satellite channels at home. Forget the monthly fee. You can find these licenses in Derb Ghallef too, if you ask around someone will tell you where they are sold.” Omar is the president of an association defending the rights of the people who live in slums like this one. They are fighting against school drop-out of children who grew up in Casablanca’s poorest neighborhood. He knows all the families here. Lately his association has also acted as a spokesperson for areas like Derb Ghallef with the government. Several times the municipality has tried to move the population out. "The plan is always the same - he explains - after the government has identified a slum in a strategic position, new housing estates are built in the suburbs far away. Whole new neighborhoods, poorly connected to the city, where families are transferred. Just like Lalla Meriem, another neighborhood near the airport, which arose from a destroyed slum in a much more central area, a few years ago.” The inhabitants of Derb Ghallef do not reject this plan, but they wonder: "given that the government wants to improve the living conditions of these neighborhoods, or at least they say so, why not building these houses in the same area as where the slum is located?" All the buildings that surround it are very modern. They are in the business center of Casablanca. It is easy to guess the plan of the authorities: these slots will be far more fruitful with other buyers. “We are resisting, but the stories of these families are unbelievable. There are people with documents attesting that their home, if we want to call it so, was a gift from the French protectorate. Often as compensation for killing a relative. And then they found themselves stuck in poverty when skyscrapers were being built around them. You can't forget half the population just because they can't pay bribes!" Occasionally some bulldozers appear at the sides of the central market, but the eviction has not yet begun. There are other projects: the works for the city's second tramway line have just started and it will pass right by.