We wander through the hills of Burundi, we sit with the elderly, women, fathers and children, we listen to their lives, their knowledge, experience and difficulties; we try to understand together what are the most important problems they face and what skills and opportunities they have to bring into play; we look for who and how has already tried to face them, what results have they had; we evaluate together the possibilities ofthe success of this or that technical solution; we hear different voices, we change our minds, we re-evaluate ideas and intuitions that enable people to make it with their own strength and effort.
And then, around a bend, in the middle of the forest, we find ourselves in front of a truck of an international organization that distributes free food to thousands of people who jostle, handing them, along with the food, their dependence. Maria Montessori said it well: “I do not want to be served, because I am not impotent. But we must help each other, because we are sociable beings. This is what we must conquer before being truly free.”
