by Aurelio Molè
June 2 would have been a great long weekend to take advantage of, long-awaited, to take a trip out of town, to the seaside or to the mountains, in the heat, after the heavy rains, just arrived. 15 people from Turin, aged 19 to 57, decide differently, with some members of the Focolare, young and old, with them. Some have experience of other emergencies: the earthquake in L’Aquila in 2009, the flood in Liguria in 2011. Others are friends of friends who have chosen to go and help those who have lost everything, rather than go to the seaside. Their destination is Faenza , in Romagna, to help the flood victims.
Borrowed boots, a few bags with the bare necessities and on the road again , again on the road, with the adventurous spirit of not knowing what will happen. The streets are busy with holidaymakers, 15 million Italians have travelled over the weekend, and Bologna becomes a funnel where queues become slow and time gets longer. In Faenza they are welcomed by Michele the scout leader. They will be housed in an oratory, with beds from the Ministry of the Interior and many displaced people welcomed in the parish.
At Caritas they assign him his first task: to clean a bar and pastry shop flooded from the basement up to a meter of water in the rooms on the ground floor. The owners are disheartened and barely say hello. The instructions are sketchy, but the work is a lot. There is no time to waste on pleasantries.
“The work consists – explains Monica, one of the volunteers – in washing all the dishes and work tools, which are covered in mud and dirtied by debris that entered the premises from the road invaded by the river that flooded in some districts of the city, but there is a surprise. When washing the floors, when you finish, you have to start again. The floor continually gives up dirt”.
Unity is strength, in a roped party you take courage from each other and your strengths are
multiply. It doesn’t hurt and it’s not out of place a little background music that acts as a soundtrack to their adventure, lightening the fatigue. The owners, diligent and silent, work all day with the volunteers.
«After the afternoon of service, we say goodbye Mr. Bruno, one of the owners. He smiles and thanks us .
Il suo viso è più bello.
Ci dice che abbiamo fatto molto per lui e la sua realtà.
Lo salutiamo.
Ci sembra più contento di quando siamo arrivati.
Non abbiamo risolto molto, ma abbiamo fatto tutto quello che potevamo».
Piazza del Popolo in Faenza is a splendid backdrop, with the construction of the loggia of Palazzo Manfredi from the 15th century, for a bit of relaxation after dinner prepared by the volunteers of the parish where they are staying. They spend the night on camp beds in the catechism room. The shower is only with cold water. It doesn’t matter, they are young and strong.
On June 3, their work takes place in a nursery in Solarolo . The scene is desolate, mud here too was abundant. A canal bank is full of water and overhangs the road in a disturbing way. Flowers and plants from the nursery are mixed together like in an abstract painting and are scattered up to three kilometers away, dragged by the water to the sea.
“The shovels weigh – Monica continues – and the mud even more. Under the greenhouses covered with solar panels it is unbearably hot. But we don’t stop, there is too much to do. Shoveling is a heavy job . We are almost all employees, nurses, students or freelancers. At most we lift 10 kilos a day. Some fall asleep on a bench and we wake them up for coffee. When they recover, we see the immensity of the work that has already been done and what still remains to be done. The afternoon is still long. At the end of the work, the owners and some collaborators bring some salami and a few bottles to offer us an aperitif at the end of the day. We are so grateful . They also give us a flower plant each. They tell us that until now they were afraid that strong and resistant volunteers would not arrive, but that with us they were happily surprised. Proud, but without vanity, we set off again. Let’s go take a cold shower…”
Sunday, June 4, the third and final day, they have to free some private homes from the mud that weighs like lead. Shoveling reveals Claudio Villa CDs, abandoned vinyl records, VHS cartoons from the 90s. A substratum of memories, emotions, experiences, family life. Mixed in with the mud are debris of all kinds. And yet, even in the manure a flower sprouts .
“ On the road,” Monica says, “a group of volunteers passes by with a cart: they bring us sandwiches and juices and water to cool us down. A dream. In that hell, a ham sandwich … We feed ourselves with the delicacies of the area. We look at the clock, covered in mud. It’s late, we have to leave for home, tomorrow we’ll be in the office at our desk. We say goodbye to those who helped us shovel and after a quick rinse we get in the car. We’re tired, we still have a few hours of travel. Everyone is coming back from the sea, from the holiday weekend. We, too, celebrated . We did our part, little one. Someone says: “I’d like to go back soon, there’s still a need.” We leave a storm behind us. We think of the houses still battered by the mud.
Bye Romagna, see you soon .”
Valentina, one of the volunteers, comments : «We have brought a little life to those who saw it crumble in one piece, and now find themselves having to clean it tray by tray, machine by machine, with their eyes lowered and without feeling the weight of the years and days that follow one another.
Thus, even small gestures become life, lived and given, that life that is born in love and ends in love. By helping people without wanting anything in return, not even a smile or a word, that same life lights up with love even during its development, sometimes diluted in everyday life. There is no longer me, you, them or you, but only us, who all together challenge fear and fatigue to lift ourselves from the storms of a tired world.
It’s nice to feel part of this human chain, to see others as dirty as you, much more tired, and to feel the solidarity that flows between the glances, in a world where we are now accustomed to counting only on ourselves, you turn around and see that in reality we are many, tied together in the same existence that we try to save from its own mistakes”.
source: focolaritalia.it
