Joyce

Today as I walked up to Place de Verdun I noticed something unusual parked up in the centre of the square. A large, multi-coloured, old school bus surrounded by Travellers who were handing out leaflets. Next to the bus was a van where a woman in a red head band sat playing her guitar.

I went over to have a closer look and to ask someone what was going on. A man with a friendly smile and some faded, homemade tattoos approached me with a bunch of yellow leaflets. He explained briefly that they were protesting against the rules of lodging under Sarkozy's government. And more importantly against 'les expulsions' a governmental movement that gives the police power to drive people, who are usually Travellers, squatters and Roma Gypsies, off what they deem to be private land.

I walked around the bus and took some photos of it's colours but I had my mind on something else. As soon as I saw the woman with the red headband I wanted to get her picture. I did a full circuit of the bus and arrived round beside her cameo (a white Transit van-come-camper van). She was sat on the ledge of her van with her guitar resting on her knee. A blue scrapbook of songs beside her, open at Leonard Cohen's Suzanne. The first thing I said was "j'adore cette chanson" - I love that song. And that started a full on conversation about why she was here in La Rochelle.

Joyce had been living in her cameo just outside Toulouse before 'les expulsions'. She showed me a picture of the field where she used to live with about fifty or so other Travellers. She would occasionally lean back between the curtains and rustle about inside before re-emerging with another leaflet of information. She explained that the bus was travelling all across the west of France in an effort to raise awareness of the problems that the Traveller communities face.

We talked for a good twenty minutes about the state of France's government and the effect that it has had on her and her friends and others she has heard about. She told me a story about someone she had met that day in La Rochelle who had been sleeping rough the night before and had been beaten up by a group of lads who had the stolen all of the little he had. 'People pick on the weak', she said, 'and when you're homeless and alone, you can be weak'. It was good talking to her, it's always interesting talking about politics with someone who is directly effected. Before I left I asked for her portrait.