Ventimiglia
Melissa and Alon reflect on their week in North-West Italy.
We concluded our time in France driving the three hour journey along the Côte d’Azur through St Tropez, Nice and Monte Carlo. It was a beautiful drive, winding up the Southern Alps and hair pinning down again. Rugged, bright and steeped in history. Though distinctly French, it is a history shared with us in Britain and Italy. As we traveled, we discussed how it is perhaps this history and set of traditions that is plaguing the continent today: people are scared of losing this and it’s preventing them from engaging with the crisis on their doorstep.
We are in Italy now, having just spent the last week at the small border town of Ventimiglia. If you have heard about it before, it is probably because of the approximately 60,000 refugees and migrants that have passed through here in the last 3 years. We came here to find out what these people need as they move through this town, and what the local response has been. The history and context of the situation is complex, and everyone has had a different story to tell.
We spent the week working primarily with the local branch of Caritas Intemila. From a small building with a little courtyard their team of local volunteers now distribute breakfast and a cooked lunch, clothes, medical and hygiene supplies to vulnerable people in the town (including the local homeless population). The locals that volunteer and run this organisation have provided a sustained and generous response to the continuous arrival of people in need in their town. They opened up their Church as shelter for over 6 months in 2017, providing food and clothes for, at times, 1000 people a day (check out this video about the church — although we don’t speak Spanish we could tell how special a place this was).
In between slicing bread and serving lunch, we spoke to the some of the many staff, volunteers and people who use these services. The volunteers mainly come from Ventimiglia and surrounding towns: one recent graduate told us about returning to his home town to spend a year volunteering here and how it has changed him, his behaviours and his attitudes towards others. A family from the neighbouring town across the border in France come every Saturday; they decided they needed to do something when they repeatedly saw French police vans ferrying people with nothing back to Italy. They are a pragmatic and welcoming group, who fed us every day and showed huge levels of hospitality. There is always wine at lunch, which is not optional, even if lunch is at 11am…
We also saw how important the volunteer community in Ventimiglia is for the refugees and migrants who decide to stay. It is this community that has rallied round to support the education of those who have claimed asylum and are settling into their lives in and around Ventigmilia. In addition to evening classes at a nearby college, there are Italian classes run by local teachers and this community of volunteers, set up to support their schooling, mentor and help them find jobs. We visited one of these lessons in a small classroom in the church, setting up our favourite fattoush-making lesson that was run with the help of our friend a Lebanese chef, and learning new words in English and Italian with the help of the students and the Italian teacher.
Refugees and migrants are welcomed into the volunteer community themselves, with many of them helping out Caritas at few times a week. This gives them the opportunity to practice their Italian and integrate. One Afghan man who works as a translator and volunteers with Caritas told us about the value he finds in the community here. In their WhatsApp group of over 150 volunteers who live in and around Ventimiglia, including the guys who have claimed asylum here, there’s always someone to lend a hand or have a laugh with.
However, the work is relentless and made difficult by the transience of the people who use their services. Most people will spend a few days, weeks or maybe months here, and there are constantly new faces, often unaccompanied minors, women and children in need.
One of the volunteer teachers (a primary school teacher by day) told us about her journey responding to these needs. A group of local teachers started by teaching Italian in a packed church to a range of ages and abilities, teaching key words needed for their travels, to running regular sessions with groups of 6 to 8 regular students looking to supplement their learning from evening school. She cites educator-activist Paulo Freire as an inspiration, and talks about how she tries to bring reality into her lessons, rather than just learning verbs out of a textbook, integrating food, cultural norms and social etiquette into their lessons.
The vast proportion of people coming through Ventimiglia won’t be there for long — some will be fed, sheltered and clothed by volunteer groups and NGO’s, and some will receive their medical care and legal advice. The reality of the situation for most people who pass through here is desperate and conditions are bad. Approximately 150–200 people are staying in an informal camp under the main highway leaving Ventimiglia, and approximately the same number are in the Red Cross camp down the road- which we were not able to visit because security is tight.
What struck us about what is happening in this town is the work and care some of the locals are providing for the people who do stay. This is especially striking, given the resistance they face from much of their own community. A large proportion of locals are unwilling engage in the situation and have responded with vocal hostility to refugees and migrants, as well as those volunteering to help them. After an intense 7 or so years though, many here are tired. Those who volunteer are overworked and emotionally exhausted; those who don’t are fed up and want things back the way they were; those trying to move through here to make a better life somewhere else are physically drained and those trying to settle here are all of the above. It feels important to say this, as the atmosphere of exhaustion is a significant contributing factor to people’s ability to successfully settle here.
Apart from language and culture, which they can and do overcome, much of the struggle facing the people seeking their papers in Italy and Ventimiglia is in their interactions with the locals who are not involved in volunteering. They are seen as ‘the same as the rest of them’, experience overt racism and are barred from integrating because they are made to feel unwelcome — especially in local bars and cafes, in their interactions with the police and sometimes in looking for jobs.
We’ve been thinking a lot about the simple pleasures that come from building a community. All the volunteers have had their lives changed by the community they’ve built. They’ve gained perspectives, new language skills (we’ve heard ‘inshallah’ in many a conversation between locals) and had new, positive and young energy brought into their lives. We know that as we continue we will be thinking more about how communities can be built in places that desperately need it.
We are recording all our conversations, experiences and observations, and feeding them back to Darren and Kate at Crisis Classroom HQ in Brighton. We plan to compile a report at the end of the project. For now, we are taking a few days off to visit La Spezia and Bologna (but who knows what we will find there!), then we will be heading south to Tuscany, Rome and southern Italy where we will be meeting more projects and people. If you know of any people or projects you think we should visit (or if you want us to visit you), please email alon@crisisclassroom.com and/or melissa@crisisclassoom.com
And to help us get there, please visit our crowdfunder here.
