Patricia’s career has been built inside the administrative and financial machinery of local government, and it is that professional track record, as much as her personal story, that carried her from La Réunion in the Indian Ocean to La Réunion, a hameau in the Lot-et-Garonne.
Born in Sainte-Marie, close to the runways of the Gillot international airport, she has vivid memories of her childhood there. “Papa nous emmenait voir les avions. J’étais fascinée,” she recalls. In 2007 she left for mainland France, licence in hand, and joined her two brothers in Caen. She entered working life quickly after completing a master’s degree in teaching geography, then spent five years as a maître auxiliaire in Normandy.
The turning point came after she moved to Gironde. In 2013 she validated a further qualification, “Carrière territoriale en milieu rural,” and specialised as a “secrétaire volante,” a floating town-hall administrator covering the full range of municipal functions: civil registry, finances, accounting and public reception. That breadth of experience in the financial and administrative operations of small communes became her professional signature, and it is precisely the skill set that rural mairies struggle to staff.
Her decision to settle and start a family brought her to Lot-et-Garonne, at Couthures in the hameau of La Réunion, where her daughter was born at the end of 2016. “J’aimais le côté rural, je fréquentais les communautés ultramarines du département,” she explains. The work followed. A replacement at the mairie of Villefranche-du-Queyran came first, then nearly two years at the chenil-fourrière of Caubeyres, where she handled the accounting and met numerous local mayors at general assemblies, a network that would prove decisive.
One of those elected officials, Bruno Galichon, maire of La Réunion, offered her a training placement that proved conclusive. After this “galop d’essai,” he opened the door: “Restez avec nous, faites le mandat avec moi.” She accepted, committing to six years in close synergy with the municipal council and the residents. Her administrative competence and her origins have both found a welcome there. “Le fait que je sois Réunionnaise plaît à nos administrés, ils se demandent souvent des photos,” she notes. Her punch, prepared for various occasions, is also appreciated, with the reminder to consume it in moderation.
What her trajectory shows is a story of mobility and reinvention, with a marketable competence at its core. A Malbaraise of Indian origin, she still returns occasionally to “l’île intense,” but she has chosen to build her life in mainland France. “J’aime vivre en Europe et je veux maintenant voyager avec ma fille,” she says.
Fully integrated, unanimously appreciated and entirely fulfilled, Patricia embodies the motto of La Réunion, Florebo quocumque ferar, “Je fleurirai partout où je serai portée,” which appears on the island’s coat of arms surrounded by a vine of vanilla. From the 974 to the 47, her path is at once remarkable and moving: a career forged in the accounting offices and civil registries of rural France, and a life now firmly rooted in the Lot-et-Garonne. Whether her financial expertise will one day take her beyond the hameau’s town hall remains an open question.