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The smile of Africa

The Smile of Africa

After twenty days in Zambia, it is natural to leave a testimony of what has been experienced. I'm not in a position to say what I saw in Africa, because I've actually seen only a small slice of this continent so, in fact, unknown: in fact say because I for one, I realized that things which I knew reflect the reality of everything that I have lived here day after day.

When I arrived at ' Lusaka airport, after the initial moment that allowed me to see what I was looking at because of strong emotion to be half a world away, I started to see colors, attitudes and sounds that Lusaka had to offer. Day after day I learned to open my eyes, I learned to listen, I learned to understand what this part of Africa was showing me. In truth it was only yesterday that looking at the starry sky and I knew right away ... on my face you've drawn a bitter smile and ironic! I want to tell
Arvi the " my " Africa through four points: Eyes, Feet, Hands, Heart. If you have in mind the image of ' Vitruvian Man , designed by Leonardo Da Vinci, you can see how these anatomical parts are arranged as the four cardinal points: North (Eyes), South (Feet), East and West (Mani). On closer inspection, the man of Leonardo is in the same position u n another man, much bigger, come to earth many years before the genius of Tuscan Jesus Christ.
I will not dwell much on this pivotal figure in the religious and spiritual life of many Christians, but I dwell on a first appearance that I want to emphasize : the parallelism between Jesus Christ, the religious point of reference in life of a believer who wants to orientation when it is far from Christian morality, and the four cardinal points, a point of reference for those who want to navigate away from home. For many, this issue may seem trivial, but is where the first irony. I noticed, looking at the starry sky, that those who want to navigate using the constellations of the sky, northern hemisphere , has as its reference point the North Star - in the constellation Ursa Minor - indicating exactly the North and here, in the southern hemisphere, the reference point is ... the Southern Cross! It would appear that this part of the world - which in fact is the hemisphere's poorest between the two - if you want to find a way forward, there is no other choice but to rely on the Cross, which remains eternal in the heavens as if to underline the suffering that comes here who is sentenced to live until the end of his days.
Once this thought in my mind began to emerge of the flashes of what I saw and, in the sign of the cross, everything went into place like pieces of a puzzle: I finally understood why of everything course I lived and did not really make me realize what I was doing.

Eyes
The first thing I noticed, going around the compound Lusaka with the nuns of the Order DMI (English acronym that stands for Daughters of Mary Immaculate), were the eyes of young and old, men and women alike . Eyes were not smiling, as seen in some public service announcements, or looks sad hunger and disease that has shown us for years news: they were puzzled glances, looks of fear, which looks in one way or another I never left not until I left the compound . At that moment I asked myself: "My God .. is so I watch a black man who sells something on the Italian beaches? That's how I look at the gypsies that I find the traffic lights going to Bari? . "Adding to my sense of awe that the silences were also created in step three of us, white, in a dusty road of a crowded Zambian compound was interrupted by someone - big or small - that, by stating, shouted " Muzungu ! "- in Nianja ," White man! . "What I expected, but I was still in Italy, were children running the streets, smiling and carefree: instead I only found that my step children ran to hide behind Whatever he finds, screaming and crying!

Feet
In truth, the more I was confronted with these episodes, the more I stopped to think that there was something more in Africa in recent years had idealized. Walking around the streets of Lusaka, I felt another sensation that accompanies those who come here for the first time: contradiction. In fact, after a day in compound, follow the extensive, lush gardens of the houses of important people of the Zambian team gave me a sense of discomfort I felt out of place. Watch jets which provide water for generously the green of the villas clashes a lot with what the poor people living, in every sense, the margins of society: water rationed to one hour per day through two or three fountains for an average population of 30 or 40 thousand people! This is the reason that pushes children to real exodus at dawn. A que sti joins the whole community that for various reasons (those working at the need to drink beer - alcohol is the biggest scourge along to 'illiteracy !) , moves to the streets to get to destinations often miles away ; all strictly walk: only a select few can afford a car, also because - other strange case - exactly how much petrol costs in Italy! Looking at those feet, they crush in one day the road that I walk in a week, I noticed a second and equally ironic: in Africa, people have white feet! The part of the anatomy that allows them to go where they want, the color of the men who for centuries enslaved them ... the white is dust that is everywhere - along with the smell and the garbage - in compound.

Mani
However, Africa (Zambia, in particular) is not only that. Being here I have met many people, mostly women, who threw a single voice message from various compound : Africa is alive and wants to get out of the quagmire that for years these people trapped preventing them to grow! L ' illiteracy is still a serious problem here, but the desire to do does not need culture. In this way the nuns of the D MI have created groups of women who, with his own " business, save money to allow themselves and their families to have the shima (the typical African dish, made with corn flour and water) and to ensure their children at least basic education. The hands become the key to the salvation of these people: the hands of women who create products for them and then sell the hands of the Sisters of DMI (in this case) and volunteers who contribute the growth of this wonderful continent but - as I told a group of children during one of our meetings - not " Italy and India FOR Africa, but Italy and India WITH the Africa" \u200b\u200bbecause if you are not working together is almost impossible to achieve concrete results. In truth all the people I met, who have humility (Which the people in my world can only guess) and a really big heart, are in agreement that this is the right way, because Africa is true that wants to rise from its ashes, but in its own way, not losing sight of their roots and culture: in short, not alienating his identity!

Heart
This aspect of the African people, which is quite different from what I thought (Africa desperate lives and dies by the roadside near the resignation of one who knows that there is no other solution ) made me think a lot. During my stay in Zambia I could experience that few were able to live: I have known Grace . The meeting with her I made a lump in my throat and wiped out in one fell swoop all the shyness and the fear that I live in a reality that does not belong to me. Grace is a girl ciassettenne that my family decided to take away a decade ago. In recent years the only contact with her were the letters that once a year we write in order to know his situation at school, health and life " City of Hope , the center, Sister Maria Mazzone built to house the girls in Lusaka which are in the streets and give them a better future. For this reason, it felt like a person that far, that was not part of my world. Instead, when I saw them in front of me, I saw that embarrassed smile, I realized I was no longer a distant person: she was a girl like so many others like I used to see in Italy ... nothing more. I immediately felt at ease, I was no longer a simple " muzungu ", I was part of Africa! To confirm this feeling was just Grace, which, to the nuns' s orphanage of Mother Teresa who looked puzzled that prolonged dialogue between me and her, saying "quiet : is my brother! . "This is the power of Africa from being" muzungu "to become" brother. "The passage is brief, but must go down from that imaginary pedestal that we think we have northern under our feet and start to live as equals. This is what I did: I learned to live with them, talking with them to feel part of their culture: they taught me a lot about how to behave , how we thank the Lord every day for what you have (to use what was said earlier about the Cross), I h years taught their language - at least in reality - which helped me to integrate even more extraordinary in this society . I looked better and I saw the puzzled look of fear or become smiled when I asked a child who was left out " Wuly bwanji ? ," which means " How are you? " (this is the way they of saying hello), almost in disbelief I said " Bueno! . So I said " Buela ..." which means "Come ... , holding out his hand: and behold, instead escape, so he approached towards me holding out his hand to turn to tighten without fear.

's face that I once again look to the African night sky and f Ianca the Southern Cross was the moon that I believe it or not, she smiled! I closed my eyes, I stretched the face and I smile again ... this time it was a relaxed smile, a smile of someone who had grown so much and learned even more and I thought to myself: "Even the sky of 'Africa smiles at me, despite a cross engraved in their eyes, their feet in the battered from the long walks, working in their own hands, in his heart that despite the multitudes of sufferings, still gives love to everyone who comes here to discover a continent, in fact, still to be discovered! .

Francesco Campanale