"Quando pensiamo di poter tenere il mondo in una mano, e lo guardiamo dall'alto, tendiamo a diventare arroganti, dimenticando che a distanza le cose appaiono sfocate. Finiamo quindi per immaginare, piuttosto che vedere realmente"
Carissimi,
settimana scorsa ho festeggiato i miei primi due mesi in Cameroun e ho dunque deciso di farvi qualche regalo. Il primo è la canzone che ormai da qualche giorno ho pubblicato (pardon, l'efficacissimo Smirne ha pubblicato) sul blog: è il frutto di una serata passata con qualche amico in un cortile, sotto un cielo stellato e con l'odore dei corpi sudati nelle narici, suonando la musica più calda del mondo.
La seconda sono le foto che vi sto inviando, così che possiate lasciarvi incantare e provocare dalla visione di immagini inconsuete per i nostri occhi.
La terza è questa frase che dà un senso al mio essere qui, lontano da casa, da voi e dalle abitudini assimilate in ventidue anni di vita. E' il pensiero di un signore che qualche mese fa è stato premiato con il Nobel per la Pace.
Questa settimana Garoua breathed in a surreal atmosphere: Wednesday we woke up wrapped in the mists of dry, a thick fog of sand and dust from the desert sollevatesi you enter everywhere, even leading to infections and meningitis, which is why many people do not leave the house.
In the last few days the police are putting a sieve of illegal motorcycle taxi drivers and whoever is found does not have the permission he gets a fine not to laugh, and then blocked transport and other people forced to stay at home . But above all
Friday morning - after stracabarettstica ceremony on Thursday night-it was a rumor that the Ballon d'Africa Drogba has been delivered and not all'ivoriano Sant 'Eto'o ... sort of national mourning and consequently most of the shops closed.
Add to the cloud of sand depopulation and the ghostly carcasses of abandoned cars that raged in every corner of the road and if you're of my generation, imagine the post-atomic environments of Ken Shiro. Something like that.
Slowly I'm settled here in the North. The climate is getting hotter, and in the middle of the day the thermometer dares to drop below forty degrees (even here there are those who say, perhaps for lack of benchmarks, which is the warmest city in Garoua the world) but luckily the house well ventilated for now is still pretty cool and a refuge, another chance, my roommates (Chicco, administrator of all the projects of COE Garoua, Angelle responsible for the house, Sara and Isia, two Turin girls graduate students in pharmacy come to a project, despite their infinite desire has not left yet, Luke, an agronomist in Milan who arrived a few days) are all nice people.
But the greatest fortune is to be inserted in two beautiful reality with trained staff and a lot of ambitions. The first project is the EDR (Enfants de la Rue-street children), which aims through different structures and activities to help the many children and young people who for various reasons ended up on the road. Garoua is a city of reference for the whole northern Cameroon, an economic and commercial center that goes around the Sodecoton (the industry that employs more people and produces everything in Garoua is a bit 'as Fiat is Turin) So the guys who leave their villages it is here that are trying their luck or just a little 'adventure. Often the decision to leave the hidden problems of families living together (perhaps the most common case is that of the stepmother who mistreats his children by his father with his first wife), the fact is that the streets are filled with boys 8-25 years live day by day trying to scrape together the amount sufficient to eat and take drugs (especially the kola bust you for a few hours making you spend your appetite). The educational challenge is huge because often the kids are on the road for some time and have no intention of abandoning the freedom, apart from the direction of the flock, for many of them really matters most. The operation is bilateral: it seeks to work on them but at the same time on the families to assess a possible replacement. Concretely 5 teachers (all Cameroonians, more me now) alternate in the different areas where the project develops: the maison de jeunes where 2 times a week we welcome the street children - an average of 40-50 admissions-is playing, watching a movie, make dressings, it offers them a meal and a chance to wash and wash their clothes as well as a constant possibility to exchange a few words, the road, where every night an educator in turn goes to check if There are problems and the prison, the journey to meet the families of origin, the Petit Maison where they live full time 13 kids who have chosen to change their lives, the firm, where he offers a path of recovery for older kids.
The second is an animation project with its Maison de Jeunes similar to Yaounde, but users with higher and more structured activities.
more time passes and more are happy with my choice. The chance to see it really is a privilege without equal. Moreover, the Cameroonian rhythms, slowed by the heat wave that day after day becomes more and more suffocating, they offered me the opportunity to think, plan, or just to go out and sit in a bar next to some old loner who wants to be listen. Sometimes we seek answers to life's problems somewhere, we fill all not to feel that something dies inside , forgetting the precious secrets of which they are custodians of many men, women and children every day and we do next blind eye. These are stories of life, absurd stories that tell a hectic world that we inhabitants of the city, clean, performers and consumers of packages, perceive as a universe in which we guard tangent but dall'addentrarci well.
I think that Brigitte has a blind husband and a disabled child and is punctually every morning with a smile to work in the white house I think
Aziz who grew up playing in the room where my mother, "entertained" customers. Doux
I think that is not ashamed to say that his face has been disfigured by acid that they have brought upon because the caught stealing. David
I think that tells me the plot of the film that invented just to make a po'd'attenzione. Esperance
I think that 50 years have wanted to play with the body by teaching the Theatre no questions asked.
And then I think how beautiful it is and how important he go from being called Nassara (white man) to be called Paul.
How I wish that you were here to see everything with your own eyes. How I wish I could be next in this experience.
JJ
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