SU_T_17

[r] Hello everyone, my name is [name]. My father is from Asti, born in Mongardino, and my mother is Ethiopian, an Oromò, I was born in Kidame, a small village on the border with Sudan. My name is [name] and I don’t want to lose it. But on my documents it only says [name]. My father called me [name] because his mother’s name was [name]. And the name [name] was given to me by my grandmother. In Ethiopia you don’t give a name to a newborn baby. And they give it to them after a while because if they want to see who they are? And my grandmother came to the house after a while had passed since she had seen me. And she said this child is Abibeche which means the flowery one because I was probably small and then I grew and I flourished. And so being the youngest in the house they called me [name] which means bud. I don’t want to lose this name because it’s a big part of my heritage. So after that we lived – I say we because I have a sister. We lived in Kidane for 4 or 5 years and then we went to study in Sudan because it was near Khartoum. And there we started to go to school in Arabic and English. And then from Sudan we went to Eritrea because the best Italian school in the empire was in Asmara. And my father sent us to Asmara to study when we were 15. And in Asmara we were at this big school and every year we went back home, of course and luckily. And there we were at a girls’ school and there were girls from all over the world. I was saying from Armenian to Greek, Ethiopian, Eritrean, American, French, English… in short, it was a world that made me grow a lot because it was a continuous exchange, we would tell each other about the games we played when we were little. And so I had learnt lots of games. They came from other parts of the world. And then when we got older we exchanged books, novels and love stories and lots of other things.
[i] So [name] at this school there were lots of girls who came from all over the world and you exchanged books, love stories and everything. And then what happened?
[r] And then after that, I have to make a premise, we were of all nationalities. But we were the daughters of an Italian man and an Ethiopian woman. We had no citizenship in the sense that we were the daughters of our father and our mother. We had these two cultures. But on our documents we had to write down whether we were Italian or Ethiopian. So at the age of 15 in Ethiopia we had to choose which nationality to have. And so my father chose Italian nationality for us. And so I have to say that at that time I didn’t give it much thought, I didn’t know about nationality or lack of it. I lived my life as my father’s and my mother’s daughter, certainly not as the daughter of one nation or another. And when I arrived in Italy after 5 years, when I finished my studies, when I arrived in Italy after a while, the residual questions that I was asked ‘but who are you, where are you from’ so many questions, these were the most telling. Then I asked myself who I was. And above all why my father was in Africa. And in the family I always heard stories about an uncle who had gone to Africa, so I started to wonder who I was and where I came from. And the answers were partly given to me by my father, whom I interviewed a lot and collected a lot through the interviews; I made him write, I asked him questions and then I made him write. And then through a book that he gave me, this is a book written by an uncle of mine who collected everything that was written about him. The thing about my uncle is that at the age of 21 he left and went to America because he had gold fever. He went to Vancouver because he knew there was gold there. And then he stayed there for 7 years, he learnt to work in the mines, he learnt how to look for gold, to test the soil, and then he read that the Egyptians got their gold from Ethiopia. He packed his bags and left. But before leaving for Ethiopia he went to South Africa. He stayed there for 4 or 5 years and then went to Ethiopia. And my uncle got to know Menelik and became friends with him. They liked each other and he managed to get some concessions. For gold prospecting. And he had a very adventurous life, in 1901 he went to Ethiopia. And when he set up his concession he called all his relatives he had in Italy. And among these relatives was my father, who was his nephew. And so here is my father in 1928, he was 15 years old and he went to Ethiopia. And he lived in Ethiopia until he was 60, until, unfortunately, Haile Selassie was deposed. And he arrived in Derg and there were all these 30 years of war that upset us all. And so the reason why I was born there is this: when the Italians came to Italy with their white ships, he wanted to stay there. Because he felt part of that country, he had spent wonderful years in this country. And he continued to live there, he married my mother and we were born there. That’s why I was born there
[i] And therefore your father, like your uncle, also worked with gold or did other activities before the war?
[r] My father worked, but not in the mines. He controlled who worked in the mines. He did lots of jobs. For example, my uncle sent him to certain places. Do you realise he was 16 at the time? He sent him to the caravans with a group of people, he said. So now you’ve learnt how to look for gold in the river in Birbir in Faro, if that’s how it’s done. Now I’ll give you 15 men, go there, build yourself a hut, build a hut for all the others. And stay there, see if you find gold or platinum. And so my father did it, he spent a year in one of these places, and then afterwards he came back, he said, showing what he had found. So my uncle said, not there, in that place, you were too slow, it wasn’t worth it. So my father stayed there on the concession. And when my father was 20 years old, one of his older brothers set up on his own to trade coffee and things like that. And my father did the same. And then the Italians arrived, the Italians’ war in the sense of the war of 35/36. And my father was there and saw Badoglio’s entry into Addis Ababa. And so, in short, they weren’t happy, because if they asked why on earth we have to fight these people, who had taken us. It allowed us to do everything we could do. So from what he tells me, he didn’t fight in the war, because then they called all the Italians who were already resident there and they were called up to do military service. So anyway.
[i] Another question I’d like to ask you …
[r] Wait, I haven’t finished answering you. After the war ended, he started working as a coffee trader. That’s why he became a coffee trader. And not only coffee, but he and his brother looked around for what was needed. And so nails, sheets of metal, everything you needed to build a house or a hut.
[i] Well, but when you arrived in Italy, where did you have the house in Turin?
[r] In Turin.
[i] In Turin
[r] Because my father bought us a house there, at the foot of the hill. And we started living here in Italy. And I must say that we knew Italy as I already told you, but we came here on holiday and I didn’t want to live here. I wanted to go to England or America because I found Italy very provincial. I only found one culture I was used to many cultures, to comparing myself with other cultures, more cultures
[i] And in your opinion, is that where your desire to participate and be a protagonist came from? And to give an opportunity to other people who come? Or did it come from other experiences?
[r] It came from the experiences I had in Africa because I had seen how the Eritrean women, because I lived in Eritrea for a long time, showed solidarity with the poorest, but this was also the case in Ethiopia. And when, especially in my house, my mother, outside her house, outside our home, always left a small table with a jug of water and a glass. And I was little and I’d ask my mum, but who is this for? For travellers, she’d tell me, for those who passed by. And every now and then you’d hear a voice saying thank you, which meant that someone had passed by and drunk the water they needed. So all these experiences, all these relationships have led me to understand that it’s sterile to live thinking only of yourself, it’s very sterile. And so I started to look after those less fortunate than myself. And I continued and continue to do so. However, living in Italy wasn’t easy. I believe that what saved me was reading, writing. And having discovered Buddhist meditation. This helped me a lot, it strengthened me. It made me realise that I was very rebellious and was punished a lot at school. But I understood that rebellion for its own sake is useless. You have to have a purpose for rebelling against something and for building. Because building is for achieving a goal. Because rebellion alone really destroys you and produces nothing.
[i] And seeing you, above all, discovering everything that is the path you have taken, the experience you have had here in Turin, Italy. And above all because most of the beneficiaries of everything you have done are women. And is there something, a moment in your journey or a female figure for you, who has marked your path and who continues to push you towards that path when you talk about restoring memory?
[r] Here in Italy?
[i] In general
[r] But in general, women have been fundamental in my life. I remember when I used to visit my aunts, there were 10 children in one family and 10 in the other, so you can imagine what happened in the evenings when we were chatting. Women were important: women in the kitchen, women taking care of the family. My father was always there, but he was there working. While we were there building relationships, chatting, talking. And this was very useful to me and I must say that when I came to Italy I had some nice encounters. Some women Vanessa Mairis was particularly interesting. Because she was generous and, as I said, she gave to the university. I remember that she was one of the few women. But when I think about it, one day my daughter asked me, ‘Mum, why are you so busy taking care of these people, always going back and forth?’ And I told her that I saw it, I learned it, and I believe that a dose of love towards others is fundamental. You shouldn’t keep love for yourself, for your children or for your family. You should also give a dose of love to those close to you.
[i] And another personal thing about you that strikes me a lot is your daily life. How do you spend your days with your family? How many of you are there in this family? And how do you spend your days as a grandmother?
[r] As a grandmother, I have to say that it’s wonderful to be a grandmother sometimes, because you have grandchildren and you enjoy them, you love them, I always tell my grandchildren ‘let’s fill ourselves with love’ Because it’s the only thing that makes you feel loved. Clearly, I remember my grandmother. My grandmother was a woman, as I said, who was resolute and I am very resolute with them. Because they make my mum despair quite a lot, like all children. So I try to be very level-headed when I can. I also shout at her sometimes, but I’d say almost never. And my day begins by thanking life for the day it gives me and for the night it gave me. And then I get on with it, I do some exercise because at a certain age if you don’t do exercise it’ll get you. So I take an hour or so for myself and then I start taking care of others and there’s so much to do on this farm. Now in the summer there’s the vegetable garden, tomatoes, courgettes, lettuce, cucumbers and jams. And so the days go by without you realising it. And then the phone rings because there’s a need on one side and there is on the other. And so there are the women to whom I voluntarily teach civics, which no longer exists. But I teach them how we live here, I do it at the Alma mater. It’s just that I’m not capable, I’m very empathetic and so these women get inside me. And so I try to satisfy their needs as much as possible. So if a mum calls who doesn’t have a grandmother. And who doesn’t know where to take the child because they have to go to the hospital I’m there, that’s how much it costs me, if we all did it. Once in Turin many years ago there was a place called a ‘basic centre’. They were very important. You would take your child to the basic centre because you had to go to the doctor and you didn’t know who to leave him with, because there were women coming from the south who didn’t have families. So we have to bring them back. Another thing that Turin is missing that they’ve taken away was ‘Identity and Differences’, a cultural event involving foreigners. On that occasion, all the foreigners really brought their culture to the square. Not just ‘couscous’, because by now you can tell if someone is making couscous or not. No, they brought their culture, and it was wonderful. I didn’t understand why the whole of Italy envied us. And the lack of funds, this lack of funds has taken away things that were really needed, identity and differences. Because we really talked about identity and differences. I am attached to identity, I realised that everything is so impermanent, even identity. And so I’m not attached, and besides, what is identity? It’s something that changes every day, every moment.
[i] And then a group of women created Alma Mater. And Alma Mater then developed further so that today we know of an Alma Mater that has already completed its cycle. And why, how did you feel the need to create such a space? And what has happened in recent years?
Alma Mater is a wonderful project, it was a wonderful project. And we met immigrant women who were active on 8 March. We were at Palazzo Lasca for a conference and we understood that the Italian women wanted to meet foreign women who had projects. And the foreign women found the Italian women interesting. And so together we thought of a project. At that time there were Giovanna Zardini Starlin Soad Ben Khadim Unfortunately both Starlin and Soad Ben Khadim have passed away. They were two cultured women who lived in this country and contributed a lot. So with a lot of effort this centre was opened. And the Italian women were really clever because they mortgaged their houses. So they were really brave and clever. Because they believed in the project. And then when the project started, the administration also believed in it. And so we worked and we built a lot. I can’t tell you everything because I would spend the afternoon telling you what we did at Alma Mater. But many women who left Alma Mater found work. Because our idea was with women and not for women. And so we tried to understand what the projects were. Why Alma Mater? Because the women didn’t have a place where they could meet and plan. Where they could express their dreams and many of them have come true.
[i] Yes, so it’s true that it’s been a long journey, because in the meantime what struck me a lot on this journey. And considering how we met, we met through theatre.
[r] Yes
[i] So you use art, theatre, to accompany and give people space to express themselves. How did this project come about? And in the meantime I said to myself, have any children been born along the way?
[r] So Alma teatro was born within Alma Mater. Because within Alma Mater there were two feminist women, Rosanna Rabizzano and Gabriella Bordini. Both of them had done theatre, one was a dancer and had worked as a dancer. And the other one was a classical actress, she had worked at the teatro di settimo. So they said let’s do a little theatre project. And so they did, they said who wants to participate? We arrived there and there were 18 of us, all with different backgrounds. We were young because I was the most mature in the sense that this had happened 25 years ago, now it’s almost 26. And so we asked them, we did many theatre workshops with them. But we didn’t know what to put on stage. So I remember saying that I had written a piece called ‘Ribe’. It was the story of an Eritrean woman who came to Italy with an Italian family who came from Eritrea. And she has always lived here, and she talks about the war, at a certain point she says, ‘my name is Ribe I have learnt the names of all the people who live in this house, there are 5 of them and they haven’t learnt mine and they call me Anna’. And so we worked a lot on the fact that Italians struggle, so to speak, to learn the names of foreigners so they abbreviate them Aldo Gino Anna. We liked this show so much that we continued to work in theatre. And for many years we did educational theatre. In the sense that we wanted to tell people where we came from, what we did, who we were, in short. People were amazed to see all these women on stage able to speak Italian, able to express themselves, able to do things. Because, as we all always say in Italy, people think that we only start living when we are here. And that our culture only starts here. But it’s not like that. We all have a very rich background. And so we wanted to say it, and we did. We did lots of shows. And in the meantime we’ve grown older. And this year we finally did a show called ‘La giovane Italia’ (Young Italy). With which we managed to involve a lot of young people. And through theatre, as I was saying, you can involve 200/300 people with a show. At the Adua we involved 800. And then if you take this show around, it involves more than 200/300 with one show. I must say it’s very tiring. Because we’re all women and as women some of us have children. When we did the shows for the first few times I counted that in 10 or 12 years 18 children were born. So women’s schedules are a bit difficult. Because you have to be home at a certain time, you have to look after the family, we have many responsibilities. But we’ve always managed. We always tried to… some of the women worked during the shows when they were pregnant or when they didn’t know where to put the children, we would take the new-borns with us on stage. And so it was an experience that brought us very close. We are all still very close. Now we are getting even closer with these young people. They are very close to each other and so are we.
[i] And I’d like to talk for a moment about the bond you have with Ethiopia today because you made a triangle down there before coming here from Ethiopia to Sudan, from Sudan to Eritrea, from Eritrea to Ethiopia and from Ethiopia to Italy. And today, what connection do you feel you still have with those places? And when you feel like remembering, what kind of music do you have at home or do you go into the kitchen to cook a dish
[r] Of course, as I always say, you can’t lose your roots. You can’t free yourself, I don’t want to free myself, you can’t let your roots run free inside you. I always listen to a lot of Ethiopian music at home. And if you look at the paintings I have at home, they are Ethiopian iconographies. And then I have family still in Ethiopia so we keep in touch and so my bond with them is very strong. And food is one of the most immediate things that my daughters have also learned to appreciate. And so food is one of those things that keeps me very attached to my homeland. I’m never without Berberè, without Scirò, without Engera. And when I miss them I know where to get them. My friends and I have a… what do you call those things on WhatsApp?
[i] A group
[r] A group, and so we talk to each other, we encourage each other, our grandchildren know who their grandparents are, our fathers who their fathers are and our mothers where they are. Yes, I’m attached to them.
[i] Last question. How do you feel about the reference to your career path in terms of satisfaction? If you think you can improve further, what would you improve?
[r] I would improve my studies, I would continue studying, I would really continue to re-enrol at university, study and travel because travelling opens your mind and that’s what I’d like to do. Continue studying and travelling, but you can never stop travelling and studying above all, because the book is there, you have to set off on your journey. And then continue to be with people and have the strength to continue helping those in need.
[i] Thank you