Friday, May 26, the sun had not yet reached its zenith that the atmosphere was already hot at the Jacaranda health clinic, on the heights of Mamoudzou, the economic capital of Mayotte. On either side of the road, two groups of women: some, mostly Comorian, want access to the central pharmacy adjoining the dispensary; the others, Mayotte, do not want their presence here. They wear the same boubous, often speak the same language, live on the same island, but everything separates them.
Suddenly, a female doctor, a “muzungu” as whites and people from the metropolis are called here, crosses the road, passes between the two security guards, a stack of health books and prescriptions under her arm. She comes out of the pharmacy a few minutes later, a big plastic bag full of medicine in her hand. Feverish, she crosses the road again and signals to the women who are waiting for their medicine to join her. There, she unpacks and distributes the boxes of tablets to each other in a corner of the parking lot.
The women opposite approach them, shout at them in Mayotte, get angry. The doctor rushes into the hospital, the others scatter without asking for their rest. How to understand this enigmatic scene where the tension, as sudden as it is unexpected, suddenly springs up?
“We did not come here to suffer”
Since May 4, collectives of Mahoran women who present themselves under various names – Collective of citizens of Mayotte, Collective 2018 – block access to health structures of 101e French department. The Jacaranda dispensary, although officially reopened, remains the last to be unable to operate normally, as is the pharmacy at the Mayotte Hospital Center (CHM), a large white building located just opposite. Half an hour after the incident, a police car parked in front of the pharmacy. Another half hour and the normal dispensing of drugs resumes.
Kamladi sneaks in discreetly, collects the drugs that her epileptic son has been waiting for three days and that her asthmatic daughter needs on a daily basis: “ They don’t want me to come because they say I’m stealing the place from the French. But we didn’t come here to suffer, just to heal ourselves. » She leaves after having stuffed the medicines in her small purse, so as not to provoke the anger of the others by passing in front of them.
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