Little Africa in Paris is a continent within a city
Sunday, October 27, 2002
By Ervin Dyer

PARIS - As a child, I dreamed of Paris.

I wanted to sip coffee and smoke cigarettes in the little shops that James Baldwin had frequented. I wanted to visit the jazz alleys and the smoky cafes in which Langston Hughes had toiled as a young poet. I wanted to shake my booty where Josephine Baker did her banana dance and became the toast of the City of Light. Surely, if these black Americans had found a respite from American racism in Paris, then I could do the same.

I dreamed.

As a man, I went to Africa: Ghana, Senegal, Cote d'Ivoire and South Africa. The sun-splashed villages, the painful lessons of the slave forts, the pilgrimage of spirit. Paris would have to wait.

Africa had stirred my consciousness, and whenever time and money allowed, I knew I'd make my way to the motherland, sup on her riches and breathe in her magnificence. There was no place else I wanted to go.

But -- Paris didn't wait. In July, I had the opportunity to travel to Barcelona, Spain, and before departing Europe, I decided to give Paris a whirl. What I found there was the best of both worlds. I took a daylong walking tour of black Paris, visiting sites and connecting to the African-American jazzmen, writers and artists who had come before me.

The highlight of the tour was a stop in Goutte-d'Or, a community also known as Little Africa. It's a mystery why this hilly, crowded community in Paris' 18th arrondissement (or district) is called Goutte-d'Or, or shower of gold. But the name Little Africa is more than appropriate. When the neighborhood swept into view, I saw Accra, Dakar and Abidjan. I saw the whole of Africa, as little slices of the continent thrive here.

Not knowing where to turn first, I stop in the middle of Marche Dejean, a sumptuous, exotic open-air market that is a blast of colors, sounds and people. I sniff the spices of African life: Gumbo, dried fish and plaintains. Peppers, pineapples and mangoes. A ginger soda from the Haiti market is a savory late afternoon pick-me-up. The women of Goutte-d'Or walk the narrow streets dressed in traditional boubous, the brightly patterned dress of their homeland. Many carry their babies in sacks tied around their backs.

Street merchants sell their goods from the sidewalk or from cars. Many African artists call this neighborhood home; African bookshops lure; and there's no shortage of African art shops. The community moves to its own rhythm. There are Ghananian perfume stores, Muslim butchers, Arab bakers and dozens of shops hawking artificial hair and other products. Afternoon worship concludes at a community mosque and reveals its rainbow of tolerance and mix of ethnicities. But all is not paradise.

A police van is parked nearby. It is a mobile station that rounds up les sans papiers, or people without papers, illegal immigrants. There is a growing number of them, said our guide, and Africans are often stopped and questioned. Those without proper credentials are jailed and sent home. After all, this is the same neighborhood about five years ago where the French police forced a group of immigrants without permits out of St. Bernard Church, claiming their papers were out of order.

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