A "bird perch": this is how the mayor, André Pierrat, designates the 53-meter-high pylon installed at the exit of the village, next to the cemetery.

Built in October 2020, it has just been connected to a mobile operator, after years of waiting.

But laptops are still very bad, if at all in this isolated town.

Klang is not served by any public transport: you need a car for the slightest trip.

And the village does not have mains drainage either, although it has been requested since... 2005. The mayor hopes to see the village connected within two years, and a fourth study to assess the cost of the work has just moreover to be launched by the Water Syndicate of Eastern Thionvillois (Sideet), on which Klang depends.

The only obstacle: finding subsidies to finance the 1.5 million euros needed for this project, a significant cost for a village of this size.

The small town of Klang (Moselle) does not have a sewage system and most of the wastewater is discharged into a river, as in this image taken on March 7, 2022. JEAN-CHRISTOPHE VERHAEGEN AFP

For André Pierrat, all this obviously represents "a brake on the attractiveness of the village".

"We are forgotten, we, a small rural town. No elected official comes to try to defend us", laments the mayor, who has "seen nothing" in the programs of the various candidates for the Élysée to "erase the white areas ".

In mainland France, according to the State Secretariat responsible for the digital transition and communications, 4% of the territory is in the white zone, where the population lives without a network.

The Secretary of State announced in February that a total of "3,594 sites" would benefit from "an improvement in mobile coverage" within the next two years, as part of the "New mobile deal" launched by the government in 2018.

"Great weariness"

But while waiting for their brand new pylon to bring them a less hazardous network, Klangeois are relying on fiber and fixed lines to be connected to the outside world.

This is not without causing some problems in an emergency.

For example, a fire broke out in a barn a few days ago: the village was left without electricity shortly before the incident.

No more electricity, so no more telephones at all, says the mayor.

"Someone had to go outside the village to call for help: it's getting dangerous," he laments.

This image taken on March 7, 2022 shows the antenna which should improve the quality of the telephone network in the small village of Klang (Moselle).

JEAN-CHRISTOPHE VERHAEGEN AFP

For their part, the inhabitants tell André Pierrat of their "great weariness" in the face of this situation: he himself sometimes says he is "resigned", even if he refuses to give up.

Jennifer Schlosser, a 31-year-old French teacher, moved to Klang a year and a half ago, in a house she had built with her husband opposite the town hall.

They are among the few new families to have taken up residence in the village in recent years, attracted by the "calm" and the attractive price of the land they have acquired.

She uses the internet to phone via Whatsapp messaging and her house has a micro-station for wastewater, which once treated, flows directly into the stream crossing Klang.

"Try Something Else"

Even if Jennifer adapts to the situation, for her, to still find villages in the white zone in 2022 is simply edifying.

"We really feel like we've been forgotten," she says in her kitchen, her two-year-old daughter by her side.

The candidates do not speak "at all" of small towns and white areas, "hence this feeling of forgetfulness", explains the teacher who nevertheless looked at the programs of the candidates "in relation to (his) profession" .

The mayor of Klang (Moselle), André Pierrat, poses in front of his town hall, March 7, 2022. JEAN-CHRISTOPHE VERHAEGEN AFP

And if she will vote on April 10, she does not yet know for whom.

The mayor has already made his choice: he wants "change" and "try something else" in politics.

He is thus preparing to vote for Éric Zemmour, to whom he has also given his sponsorship.

"We tried everything, the left, the center, Macron ...", explains the elected official, who also says he is seduced by the speech on "the independence of France", which according to him the extreme candidate carries -law.

© 2022 AFP