The saddest part of this story is that the worse part of their journey is not the terrifying crossing. Is what is about to happen: they are about to become ghosts wondering around the old continent.
As if leaving their family, their nation, their sense of home behind – sometimes for the second, third time – wasn’t enough challenge, they arrive in a land that just can’t offer them the freedom they are expecting to find.
Behind those eyes full of fear they have so much hope, dreams, expectations. How frustrating it is to know there is not much here for them.
I am myself an immigrant. Even though I am in a completely different situation, I know what it means to be away from everything you could recognize yourself in. The braveness these people have we will never ever be able to imagine. We just wonder.
As they wonder around, from one city to another, from one-day-job to another, from one office to another, from one dormitory to another.
Their worst fear is to end up in the streets. Most of them have been there before and they really don’t want it. You can see the despair in their faces when they ask for a room and you, of course, have no space for them.
When these politic refugees arrive in Italy they end up getting a Permesso Di Soggiorno, the document that allow them to stay in the country and legally work. For the first 8 to 10 months they are entitled to have a place to stay until they can be able to settle down.
This would be perfect. If it wasn’t for the fact that they just can’t settle down that easily . There are no Jobs here. Either in Italy or in France or in Spain or in Portugal.
The reason is simple: there’s this gigantic virtual monster, the so-called crises. These countries are packed with problems. There are no jobs for anyone.
You see these strong men – 90% of them are men – willing to work, to learn, to wake up before the sun and sleep under any roof and do any sort of job, but there is almost nothing to offer. This is math: there are more people than jobs.
After the 10 months they run desperately from one charity to another trying to find a new place to stay.
To be lucky enough to find a new place they have, in the first place, to learn the language to be able to communicate and ask for help. Then they have to be smart enough to do network, talk and find out where to go. Then they have to meet people wanting to help them – and there are a lot – and then, only then, they have to be once again lucky to be in the right place at the right time and find a vacancy, for the next six months.
Natural selection does a lot of the work here.
And the cycle repeats itself year after year. They move with the wind of their fortune always trying to avoid the streets.
They have families expecting money in the end of the month, sometimes thinking they are in a better situation here and pressuring them for money. “I don’t like to call home”, told me this guy, from Ivory Coast, “they think we are in Europe, so we are fine, they think we have money and don’t want to send it to them”.
But do they know you are leaving on the streets? Do you tell them what your situation is? “Oh no. No no no. I send money when I have, when I don’t have, I just don’t call”. Fair enough?
Yes, there is also this other pressure. On the other side of this bridge of hope there is the ‘European Dream’. They think there is a better world here for them, full of Euros, opportunity and happiness. And these brave men who escape here are their only link with this ultimate hope.
They are so brave they don’t want to destroy it. Maybe they are too proud to destroy it.
You read the papers, boats are never going to stop coming. You go to the charities, you see these people, you talk to them, you look into their eyes and you want to help. But most of the times you cant. Again it is math.
So you give them some of your time. You try to make them laugh. You listen, you pay attention, you say something to encourage them. And then they leave.
And you leave, wondering where they are going to sleep tonight and the next night and the night after that.
You arrive home and you think what kind of reality they leave there that can be worse than be far from your family and friends, lonely, without a job, sleeping on the streets, with no money, no food? But you don’t dare asking. Sometimes they tell you. Lots of times they just cant go back.
Why no one is doing anything to change it? What could be done? How is this going to end? Is this ever going to end? Why is the EU government ignoring it?
Next day you go there again. Another people, the same look, the same hopes and fears. You listen and listen and listen knowing more boats are arriving, full of these stories, full of these expectations.
So you look into these person’s eyes and – even thinking the whole world is upside down – you applause their mentally, you tell them how brave you think they are. You see their smile, a glance of pride. Hope.
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