The refugees have much to teach us
Danilo Giannese, “Centro Arrupe” staff member, Jesuit Refugee Service Italy
I am a journalist by profession, but instead of spending my time writing and editing for a newspaper or a television channel, my days are spent preparing packets of fruit and vegetables, delivering medicines, and helping children do their homework. In other words, responding to the daily needs of fifteen political refugee and asylum seeker families living in the “Pedro Arrupe” Centre, a hostel run by the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) in Rome.
For at least two years I dreamed of doing a job which would allow me to be in direct contact with “humanity”; for at least two years I longed to spend the greater part of my days doing something inherent to my faith, something which lives out through concrete day to day experiences the message that speaks directly to the heart - the message of Jesus Christ,.
The ultimate aim of the Arrupe Centre, like that of JRS at the international level, is to accompany refugees in a process that makes them autonomous. To see them leave refugee centres with a job, a home and the possibility of “creating a new life for themselves” after a past of violence and persecution in their home countries, is a dream come true for all those of us who work with refugees.
Certainly, in a city such as Rome it is not easy – work is hard to come by, rents are high, and in general I believe it is more difficult to be a refugee in Italy than in other countries such as Germany, the UK or Scandinavia, where governments manage to assist people in need more efficiently. Often while working my colleagues and I share the frustrations and suffering of “our” refugees who, after the agony of flight from their own homes, now have to endure the immense difficulties of finding some means of living in Italy.
Despite the constant struggle, however, the human relationship that develops with the refugees on a daily basis is a very special one. It is a relationship nurtured by small gestures, smiles, a word of comfort in a moment of pain, to say nothing of not the immeasurable joy experienced when the father of a family finally manages to win a work contract.
Since starting on this job I have learnt a great deal and come home every evening with new lessons understood and greater awareness. These people have much to teach us.
In the centre, one of the families which I have been most touched by comes from Kosovo. The father, mother and their one year-old son fled their home because the woman’s family, who are Muslim, did not accept her marriage to a Catholic and threatened the young would- be parents that they would kill the child as soon as he was born. In order to protect their unborn child they escaped to Italy where their beautiful son was born safe and sound. They are still unable to pay for a place of their own, yet they are happy. The worst is over, the clouds have reached the horizon and the sun is shining before them.
Stories like these help me realise day after day that our own problems are often minimal and undeserving of the attention we give them.
One day I would probably like to go back to work in the field of communications, possibly in a humanitarian organisation. However I will do it with a greater vision of life. I will never forget the faces and eyes of “my” refugees, faces in which I can clearly make out the face of Jesus, humble among the humble, something that will accompany me through my working days far more than if I had continued to spend my days in a cold newspaper office.
Danilo Giannese Centro Arrupe Rome, Italy
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