La Riviera on line 28th June

Lucano versus Salerno

Domenico Lucano, talking to voters during his political campain. He is running as Riace Meyer for the second time.

Francesco Salerno holding his political speech as a candidate to Riace Mayer 2009

Agia

Agia is from Ethiopia and lives with her husband and her daughter Amira in Caulonia. She has left her 4 years old son Adrama with her mum in Ethiopia.

Francesca

Francesca and her sister live in Caulonia as part of refugee program. they have been refused the status of asylum seekers. they have appealed against the decision

Hamdi and Raghda

Hamdi and Raghda from Iraq are political Asylum seekers in Italy. they are part of italian refugee program for a year. they are expecting their first baby.

Sonja

Sonja is from Afghanistan and she lives as political asylum seeker in Riace, Italy

MaryJane

MaryJane is among the 25 Nigerian women asking for political asylum in Caulonia, Italy. It is rare that Nigirians get asylum due to lack of persecution evidence in the motherland

Mrs A.

Mrs A. is from Eritrea and used to serve the National Service for 20 years. she is an asylum seeker in Caulonia , Italy

La Vendemmia, Sarzana, Italy

CITTA’ FUTURA, Final project

 

I was supposed to go to Chad for a month with an Italian NGO COOPI. Everything was ready. I needed to go to Milan to present my passport to get the Visa and buy my ticket.

On Friday 5^th September, Giacomo Franceschini, the Chad manager, gave me bad news. The Chadian political situation was very fragile and therefore, they did not want to take responsibility to send me down there.

That was as a cold shower. I was really upset and worried. My constant fear was not to be able to do a project.

I decided to go to Italy anyway and take it from there. (Well, you should really ask John how I felt. We spent an hour on the phone talking and the poor guy was so supportive. Imaging, how bad it is having a woman who nearly cries and willing to commit suicide over the phone only because she has not a clue what to do. BADDDDD ha-ha.)

 

At this point I knew that the best thing was to concentrate my interest on my own country. I started to document myself about the Italian political situation, culture and society.

At the time, a month ago, the hot issues which bothered the all country were, on one side, the destiny of our beloved Alitalia, the national airline, and on the other the destiny of prostitutes and their clients.

I valued the possibility of doing one or the other, but then, I got to know a story of emigration which captured my interest upon the others and I decided to go and see if what the media were reporting was true and if such a thing can exist in a territory only known for ‘ndrangheta (Mafia).

 

Riace is a small mountain village on the Ionic coast of Calabria, south of Italy. It is geographically situated in the heart of Locride region, the hub of  ‘ndrangheta which is the equivalent of the Napoletan Camorra and the Sicilian Mafia.

They have control all over territory. They have the monopoly of cocaine traffic in Italy, and the building development in the region among the other. This last is materialised by hundred and hundred of buildings along the coast and inland, which have never been finished, and they will never be. These concrete ghosts confer a no one-land feeling to the territory.

As one can expect, Calabria, together with the other regions of Mezzogiorno (nickname for south of Italy) suffers of a strong emigration due to the lack of jobs and corruption.

Riace is one example. Today mainly old people, whose daughters and sons have left for a better life ether in Italy or abroad, live here. They are the same people that half-century ago, left Riace for a better future and came back to their motherland once their life style improved.

Today Riace Superiore (on the mountain) and Riace Marina (Riace-on-sea) count about 1600 people. Only 600 live in the village against the 3500 in the past.

Most of the houses are empty and sometime left to nothing. The village is repopulated for short period during the summer season and Christmas festivity when relatives come back.

It is a beautiful stone village in which the smell of grapes melts together with the scent of homemade food. Little streets and very narrow lanes create a headache maze in which it is easy to lose the sense of orientation (this is a very personal comment ahah). But, no matter what direction you take, you will always end nearby a church. (FOTO)

 

So, these people know pretty well what emigration means.

 

Nowadays, Riace is living a sort of vice versa reality.

 

Meyer, Domenico Lucano.

In 1997, Domenico Lucano, Meyer of Riace since 2004, saw an illegal boat full of Kurdish people shored along the coast while driving to work. As he likes to remember he just thought that it would have been nice to be able to show how friendly Riace people are. He thought to use the empty houses as a shelter for these immigrants.

Short after Citta’ futura Association was born.

Now, 2008, Citta Futura counts about 100 houses, some to be used as new home for people who come illegally into the country and other to be used as Ecotourism accommodation during the summer (the money are used towards the immigration project).

The refugees who come to Riace are sent mainly from Crotone and Lampedusa camps, which are called Centri di prima accoglienza. They are mainly containers centres (Crotone is an open centre which means people can come and go by bus, while lampedusa is a close centre.) in which people are first sent to be recognised and undertake first medical tests in order to get C3 document. According to the Italian law, all this process should be done within a month. After that, according to the decision taken these refugees, either humanitarian, subsidiaries or political, are sent to other part of Italy and given a room in shared houses.

Tedros and his pregnant wife stayed in crotone camp for a while. they still have and use the cloth received in the camp

 

What make Riace an single case to be studied and pursued is the fact that these new people are integrated into the village not only because they have their own house for a period which goes from a minimum of 6 months to 1 year, but even because they are considered as a positive answer to repopulate a village which otherwise is designated to disappear.

A good example is the local school that thanks to Eritrean, afghani, Iraqi kids is now saved from being permantely closed.

The last but not the least, the job matter. As mentioned before, Riace’s reality is really though when it comes to jobs. People leave because of the high level of unemployment. So, it is easy to wander how would these new ‘citizen’ survive.

The answer is given by learning the old crafts and work in embroidery, glass, ceramic and textile workshops created just them.

 

What does the local people think about all this?

Apparently, they do have goodness in their DNA.

 

What does Italy think?

The mass media are like condors. They come from everywhere to record this peculiar reality in a country whose Republic Constitution (article 10,) welcomes refugees on paper but not in reality. Political asylum has never been a strong point in Italian history. We have never had a proper law who protects asylum seekers.

Nowadays it is slightly better thanks to new amendments and EU laws. Anyway, this does not make Italy as the same standards of other European countries such as England or Sweden among others.

We have to remember that Italy has a consolidated history of emigration and it has been never prepared to immigration.

 

Furthermore, Riace is seen as an innovative and an example to follow due to its regional location. A lot of doubts can arise about this Citta’ futura in relation to corruption and mafia control on the territory.

 

Let’s say that after my initial research Riace seemed to me an happy island in a nation, which is rather known for its racist feelings (this is a quiet general comment, but, unfortunately it is based on real facts).

 

MY PROJECT.

 

I decided to go to Riace for two reasons:

 

First of all, I wanted to see if this Accoglienza Diffusa project is really working and if there is a real acceptance of refugees among people.

I was attractive by the fact that a village whose people emigrated is now experiencing immigration.

 

Secondly, I wanted to understand how such a project can coexist with a harsh reality of la Locride territory.

 

Photographically speaking, I thought it could be interesting how different cultures could interact, how old women could teach old craft to young women, how the association works.

My main idea was to go to Riace for a month and get to know the refugees and the local people. Ideally, I would have liked to follow 1 or 2 families and see how they live and what they do.

I would have liked to get in contact with the cultural religious traditions of the place and its agriculture (yes, agriculture is the main money source).

I knew I had to go there and see myself to be able to develop my project, so I booked a ticket and I went.

 

I have been here for over two weeks and yesterday it was the first time I had a break and I went to the beach to swim. It is still very hot and the water is as crystalline as a crystal glass ahhh.

I admit I have not found any old woman teaching crafts to the young women, as well as I have not found any Muslim man praying in the country square, either. It is always like this. All this exotic fantasy for nothing. At least, I experienced an amazing religious festivity and the welcome home of the first afghani baby girl Welgina.

I have to say that journalists are here every two days. I managed to get good contacts, at least. Ahhh, I forgot to say that next year Saint Cosimo e Damiano calendar will have some of my picts in it.

Cosma and damiano procession give the possibility to the pellegrins to devote them part of bodies for a miracle.

 

I have to admit, that after two weeks of intensive work I feel a bit lost. I still have nearly two weeks to go.

At the moment what I am doing is following the association and the Meyer Domenico Lucano and how they work and believe me it is amazing and at the same time amusing. We are so Italian in certain things. Absolutely fantastic. It seems to be in a movie. Lovely and worrying at the same time.

 

REAL PROJECT. PLEASE SUGGESTIONS.

 

Apart from documenting the life in general around the association and people life in particular, I decided to interview 5 refugees and let them saying their story. I write it down exactly as they tell me with mistakes, repetitions in broken Italian mixed with German or in English with tigrino words. I will keep it as it is (I will provide with a sum up in English when necessary). This choice is dictated by the fact that it’s theirs and not my story and I do not want to interfere in any way. Maybe, this is because I am myself an immigrant and I sometime wish people could understand me in the way I talk with my emotional and cultural shades.

Most of the stories focus on the fact that they had their fingerprints taken, sometime in other countries, which created a lot of despair and sad situations before reaching Italy.

This is the first thing they are obliged to do.

I really find it disturbing and fascinating at the same time

So, at the moment what I decided to do is taking the picts of their first hand used for the fingerprints (actually both hands are used, but the right one seems always the first).

All the pictures are taken in the same way, with a constant focal length and exposure.

 

The second step is interviewing other five local people about their story of immigration in the same way and takes picts of their hand, which are consumed by the time and hard work.

They might have never been asked to give their fingerprint but their hands say a story, too.

The story is that there are back in their country to live and die in piece.

Who knows if same of the refugees may be able to go back to their land?

 

This approach seems to me a good way to integrate different cultures whose common aspect is leaving their land for a bit of hope.

 

Obviously this is only one part of the project.

The other, as I said, is the everyday life, which not easy in a mountain village with very limited link with the other towns unless you have a car.

Old people have already lived their life and now they are more than happy to go to the bar for a beer at 9 am and play cards all day. The new comers have soon realised that this is not what they wanted from Italy, above all if they are teenagers.

(I am just realising that I am in the first group, I feel pretty well here. I have not started drinking a beer in the early morning yet but I am really tempted ahah).

 

I have so many things to say, but think that, as a first overall is more than enough.

Please give me suggestion. Here they are not photographers and the only reassuring thing is from a journalist who said I am lucky to do such a project.

 

sometime you open the fridge in a muslim family and you find the holy mary tank