SU_T_27

[r] Good morning, my name is [name], I’m from Guinea, I’m 38 years old, father of two beautiful children, one 8 years old and the other 5 years old. I’ve been in Italy, in Turin to be precise, for almost 10 years, I arrived in 2010, I started working as a cultural mediator a year before I arrived, because of the North Africa emergency, immediately due to the war in Libya and since then I have been working as a support for all the processes in which I am involved regarding the integration and inclusion of citizens of origin, especially African, but not only, in the Turin area, now also at a national level. Because Italy, I didn’t have any plans to migrate when I left Guinea, in fact I met my ex-wife in Conakry, let’s say it was in 2000-2002, I was still a university student. And in 2017 we got married and in 2019, at the end of 2019 and the beginning of 2010 we decided to move to Italy, so I had to start from scratch, I couldn’t speak, I didn’t even know how to say hello in Italian. In Guinea I was working as a senior manager in an African mobile phone company, at first it was called Ariba, now it’s called MTN, and I had a whole career plan that I gave up to follow a family project that brought me to Turin. My first months in Turin were, let’s say right away the impact, wow you have to start all over again from scratch, a city that I immediately liked on an architectural level, it more or less resembles Paris that I knew at the beginning. As the months went by, I began to experience the crisis of not being able to do things on my own, that is, not speaking the language, I couldn’t even express what I was capable of doing, I couldn’t express what I wanted, what I wanted to share, what I could share with people, with the citizens, in this case the people of Turin. So I immediately set about learning the language, which I thought was the key, but I felt like it on my own without anyone asking me to do it, by enrolling in a school, like all foreigners, because that’s what I was advised to do, not to tell people not to go to Italian school, but I personally had felt that I would spend five years before learning Italian. So I set about my project of learning Italian, the Italian language, getting to know people, meeting people, so I started to discover the city. Above all, let’s say, the image that remains with me as a memory, as one of the beautiful memories of Turin, is the civic libraries of Turin, because my approach to Italian culture and the Italian language started there, when I began to frequent the civic libraries, the bookshops, I would just wander around, doing nothing, in the city, going from library to library to understand what I could do, how I could learn this language, without having to follow an academic path and above all it was an endeavour not suitable for people who already had an academic background, it was set up for people who had never been to school and who had to start from literacy. I didn’t have that… it was just a period of time for me. Others did, they needed it, because even now I meet people who have followed the same path as me, who speak Italian like me, but the paths diverged immediately after three months at CPA. And another path that helped me get closer to the culture of this country, which I am still in love with, coming from the world of product and service marketing, I enrolled in a higher marketing certification course here in Turin. And this helped me a lot in learning Italian, because I already knew the tools, I had already practised them in Guinea, so I only needed the language and the terms of this discipline. And so, being also the only foreigner in that course, because it is a refresher course for professionals, I had to speak Italian with people, with colleagues, with professors, and this also helped me to learn the language faster. Then, actually, something that struck me, that is part of my story on this journey, is that after six months here, you arrive here with a block, you say, what am I doing here? I had everything at home, I didn’t lack anything, on the contrary, I had more than what anyone could have. What am I doing here? If I need to buy bread, someone has to translate for me. If I have to go to the hospital, someone has to translate for me. Everything has to be done by someone who can accompany me, help me to explain. And in the sixth month it all happened, because I would have had to pack my suitcase and go back to Guinea. I would have resumed my life, my habits, my contacts with friends, family and colleagues. It was precisely in that moment of crisis that everything changed. I overcame that crisis and began to climb the slope towards consolidating what I could, what I would have planned and also thought about this city. Then, after that course, I started working for a company that dealt with Alcatel-Luxent products. Coming from Colmondo, I worked there for a year, then the company went bankrupt and from there the North Africa emergency happened. By chance I found myself helping a friend, for the citizens who arrived from West Africa, even if they had lived for many years in Libya, and who spoke the languages that I speak, that is, at least the three languages that I speak, and these people came from those countries there, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Burkina, Mali, Guinea. So, by helping people, I gradually became an operator, then I did the course for cultural mediator, and so on, I left Colmondo only a year and a half ago. Also by choice, to make a qualitative leap, I decided to work above all on a priori vision, that is, beforehand, reasoning and studying why people leave, the reason for that movement, the reason for all that risk, not only for the person who moves, but also why people move. There are many things that are not known here, but also by many scholars, there is only a study of the moment and the phenomenon, of the movement of the moment, and it is not understood why people move, especially where I come from. If I take Guinea as an example, there are two Guinean ethnic groups. The travelling of these two ethnic groups is part of their DNA. Our ancestors travelled, they went to discover the other side of the world, the other side of the shore. They are the Pearl and the Malenqué ethnic groups. One is an ethnic group of shepherds and farmers, therefore they move with their livestock. The Malenqué are traders and traders can’t help but move. It’s part of their very nature and you can’t go looking for a reason why these people move. They just move. Nobody can stop this mobility for any reason. So I set about studying this phenomenon and also trying to find some answers to the questions I ask myself. I’m now on this road and at this moment I’m thinking between Guinea and Turin, in this case Turin but it’s Italy, about how much I can capitalise on the experience I’ve had over the years, the people I’ve met, the network I’ve created and above all the skills I’ve acquired. Because when I arrived it seemed to me that I had nothing to learn because I already had a career in Guinea, but instead starting from scratch I learnt things that I would never have learnt if I hadn’t made this journey. This is also partly to say how enriching it was for me, the fact of moving, not seeing it only in terms of drama or safety. How much I have learnt in this country in terms of culture, in terms of skills, in terms of relationships with people and how much I hope I have also been able to give that little piece of the culture of my country, of my ethnic group, in meeting people. Trying to capitalise on this resource by creating a bridge between these two worlds. That I live in Guinea, that I live in Italy but that I manage not to break the bond because these two worlds are part of me. Italy inevitably becomes my second nation, my second homeland, my second land. So my children were born here, they are growing up here and this leads me to, in terms of reasoning, in terms of planning, to think in terms of building a link, a bridge between these two countries. Everything I did that wasn’t my job was to enter the Italian cultural world and propose something that, coming from that small country of 12 million inhabitants, could leave a mark on this city, on this country. Since 2012, we have always participated, with a small group, in the most important cultural events in this city, including the Turin Book Fair. In 2013, with a group of friends, we managed to bring Guinea as a guest country, which was the first time that an African country had participated in the Book Fair in the 27 years of the event. It was an honour for us, so we managed to bring most of the Guinean intellectuals, writers, journalists, musicians and painters to Turin. Since then, once a year, we organise an important cultural event to introduce ourselves, to show that Guinean citizens, in this case, who are passing through this city, have a lot to give and above all to share with the people of Turin. And this is a bit of the path, so to speak, trying to summarise my path. I’m currently studying for a Master’s degree in governance and management of public procurement, support for local development and sustainable development, which I’ll finish at the end of May, with a thesis to be discussed in October this year. And I think that from November I will begin to live half of my life here, the other half in Guinea, trying to realise this utopian dream of mine, hoping that utopia always leads us to build new things, even daring to realise this path in its own small way. And I hope to be a miniature ambassador of this Italian culture, in this case here in Guinea. I have to talk about myself and my journey from 2010 to 2019, now February-March 2019, my journey in Turin.
[i] Now let’s talk about you, Mr [name]. You left a family in Guinea to start a new family in Italy. What are the advantages and disadvantages you have encountered?
[r] Well, the first thing, especially my family in Guinea, for me was the first difficulty I had, the fact of leaving. As I said at the beginning of this interview, I never had a plan to move and settle in another place. I’m very attached to my country, very attached to that land, to my family. But at a certain point, when I undertook this family project, because it is also that, I spoke with my mum. I told her, this is what I would like to do. Fortunately, she told me something very interesting, very important for me and that has accompanied me throughout my journey here. She told me, and this is also always emphasised in our culture, that your family of origin, the one you were born into, is only the beginning of your journey and you will find, if you want to, a family wherever you go and in every country you find yourself in. And this is what my mum told me. She told me that I would create brothers, sisters and fathers all around me, as long as I brought with me the basic education we had passed on to me. And if I left it here, it wouldn’t be me anymore. That’s more or less what my mum told me. People couldn’t understand the rest, not just my family, but also friends, even people who knew me, they couldn’t understand, I couldn’t understand either, to be honest, but they couldn’t understand. People would say to me, but I can understand that other people, many young people are leaving now because they are trying to improve their studies and skills, in search of that well-being that is a fundamental right of each and every one of us. And people couldn’t understand why you have a career here, you work for the biggest private company, which is also African, here in the territory, and you don’t need anything, why you give up everything and leave. It didn’t make sense. The only person who, among all these people, who was my dearest friend, who told me, look, you have everything ahead of you, go, give it a go, you just have to learn. And this person, when I spent a year and a half here in Italy, my son was born, he’s my first, it’s him that I named after my son, [name]. For me, because, apart from my mum, he was the person who didn’t judge me, didn’t judge my choice, he looked at me and said, as far as I know you, go, you just have to learn. And here, I must say, it was very nice and also a challenge, in building a path, because we were both young, my ex-wife and I. It was very nice, but in my opinion, and we also talked about it, the decision to move, to come and live in a country where we didn’t have a social network, a family network, that supported us, that could help us, created many difficulties for us. Because things we didn’t agree on were resolved there, and there was no one else we could talk to about the things we couldn’t resolve. Now it’s much easier because there are many Guineans in Turin, but when I arrived there were three, four, five of us and it was just that group. But the positive thing in all this, and I always thank the education I received from my parents for this too, is that I never judge people. They always taught me that when there’s a problem, the first thing you have to do is ask yourself what your part is in that problem, what you did, what your responsibility is, what you did wrong, not guilt. Because in my education there is no such thing as a culprit, there are those who did what they thought was right, or those who made a mistake. And there may be culprits, but we reason until we reach that kind of reasoning, but we don’t immediately blame people. And that really helped both me and my ex-wife, when we realised that the project could not go any further than it had already gone, that we have these two beautiful children, we have had this protection of the blessings received also because I believe in it, especially my mother’s, to reason as an adult, to reason responsibly and decide that our paths as a couple ended there. But as a friendship and as parents, that is eternal, it cannot be broken. And this for me is the other part that gives me more energy to carry on with all my projects. When I think of my children, these two, let’s say, I always call them [name], the more I look at them the more I am filled with positivity, energy and hope. And everything I do in this country, I also do it, and above all because of them, so that tomorrow I can offer them a better world, not like what is happening at the moment in this country, which will be a period, but in my opinion a very short one, because for the Italian people it is not like that and they cannot accept that two, three, four people ruined such a beautiful culture.
[i] Is there anything else you’d like to tell us? Maybe I forgot to ask you a question?
[r] Yes, I’d like to… let’s talk about one of the things that I like, and why I also liked it about my culture and that I always like to talk about, is how much food has helped me build a country. A journey of getting closer to Italian culture. And this is one of the things I found in common between my culture, especially my passion, and the Italian one, because Italians like good food and they like to eat a lot. For me it’s another passion and I like to cook. So that’s why I always invite people over when I want to get to know them better, because, as they always say, you can have friendships with people but you can’t get to know them well until you share a dish with them. And so I like to cook, I cook my own dishes, I invite friends over, they come to my house, and then vice versa. Now I also make Italian dishes, not sophisticated ones, but something to bring me closer to people. And I think this is what I’ll take home with me.
[i] Mr [name], thank you for answering our questions.
[r] It is I who thank you. I usually say that I don’t do interviews because I am the one who is used to interviewing people, but now I understand the difficulty of the person who is on the other side of the camera when they have to talk about themselves. Thank you.