STORY (What is memory?)
What is a day of remembrance, if not to rewrite this in a measure of what is lawful and unlawful for a company? A re-tested with the 'intolerable' not to be exceeded more than ever, at least in the conscience, the place where mature thoughts and actions. This magazine has devoted many articles and essays, and a book about how they are built the foundations that made possible the intolerable yesterday. Today we want to discuss and expose the intolerable today. The story of Marius, who lives and grows in the heart of a major Italian city, with an invisible sign around his neck, which draws a fate intolerable idea for a "civilization." We propose its history as an appeal to civil society and the institutions that now pronounce sacred discourses.
Marius is 15 years old, arrived in Milan a few months ago with his family from Romania.
They found accommodation in a precarious space Rubattino abandoned in the area, east of Milan, where he lived already camped several Romanian Roma, poor and desperate as they did. The sister Alexandra and the other children of the camp went to school every day.
for him instead, which is illiterate, had not found a suitable class: too small for the adult school, too large for first grade, too hard for inclusion in a middle school. At the camp he meets Marius
Stefano Pasta, the community of Sant'Egidio, which takes children and young people to take a shower. Marius asks Stefano to be able to go to school like everyone else. Stefano
then turns to us, a group of teachers of the Technical Gramsci.
Our commitment to the side of Roma families had begun funding a scholarship that allowed a boy, Marian, attend a training course for electricians.
Marian, who was begging in Piazzale Loreto in Milan, thanks to the 'interest of Stefano Pasta and our scholarship (books, materials school and pass for public transport), after a stage of work begins to see a different future than the beggar.
Then we met the children housed temporarily in the dormitory of Ortles Avenue, before they were again beaten in the street, in a continuous exodus citizen, in a precarious insecurity.
to them in September, before school, we offer a homework help. We met children educated, clean, welcoming us with gratitude because we sit next to them to make them study and continue to study with us again when the school year: they have the awareness and the concentration of an adult who is committed to recover the time lost.
The schooling of these children is fragmented: they are nomads by force, ordered the evacuation continued. And then the adventure part
with Marius, a 'company that seems extremely difficult to teach a teenager to read and write without having a common language - knows only few words in Italian, some for us chilling: police, eviction, shack, alms.
meet a nice young man smiling and does not accept a soft introduction, playful study, he asked with determination "school". The headquarters of the ACLI
in via Conte Rosso hosting us for lessons, he comes to school every day, regularly and on time, even when we despair of seeing him because we know they were evicted in the morning and have nowhere to go and spend the night.
is started cold, rainy and his family was evicted from the field and Rubattino live without a roof, under a plastic sheet because you have to be hidden, and a shelter of boards or curtains too indicate their presence: next to evictions carried out or announced or occurring daily official eviction of small or very small groups that are not even news. We know that sleep
wet, we offer you to take away their things to leave to dry in our heated homes, Marius, however, comes to class with a backpack in order and the tasks done.
's school loves to have a backpack with exercise books, the box with pencils, scissors, glue, pen. However
eviction they must leave in a hurry to race and glean the essentials, you lose the blankets and clothing that the Italian friends had gathered for them, and save their children put in folders with books, homework.
We still ask ourselves how we may live in evacuation clearance, providing for the children and accompanying them to school, tidy, clean and punctual. In any eviction, it must start from scratch for the daily needs, each school is clearing away. Despondency and despair that arise from these experiences are forced to zero palpable beyond words. These people
dramatically poor trying to live in dignity and rely on school for a better future for their children. They are the poorest of the poor because the injury does not make them easy to find work even precarious and even poorly paid.
's been three months now and Marius writes with even greater safety in capital (although he likes the course, the more elegant), begins to read though still with some difficulty. A huge milestone for him, but still insufficient to enable him attend a training course. Our job is not finished.
Marius tells wonderful stories about his mare, Dana, left Romania, he was riding without saddle on the dog that lives Pacionel with them and that is respected as a member of the family, the grandfather who can play the accordion and piano, a descendant of a lineage of musicians, able to tell amazing stories to his grandchildren gathered to hear him. Marius teachers, listen to his stories and help bring on the page, to translate them into letters that get the first sentences, then writing short stories. A
this experience daily, with the study, snacks and gestures of solidarity by all those cha have had the pleasure of knowing this guy, but opposes the brutal experience of forced evictions: the penultimate November 19, l ' Last Friday, January 21. And each time, it starts all over again, looking down the street of a covered space knowing that it is only until the next eviction.
Marius is intelligent, thoughtful, and insightful and has many interests, curiosity, desire to learn in order to work. Marius has acquired in recent months, security and dignity, however, Marius in Milan is just a gypsy who all look with suspicion or even disdain, some with disgust. To join a professional course and then find work will not only need our help in the study, or a grant but it will be essential to the mediation of those who vouch for him: Marius is not how many foreign students who are poor and road with difficulty, is a Roma and is therefore, the name says, nomadic and unreliable.
* Annelise Madia Marius is working with a group of teachers together with colleagues at the Schiaparelli-Gramsci "in Milan: Laura Tierno, Elisa Graziano, Claudio Di Pietro.
(January 27, 2011)