Some days ago, on a train to Pozzuoli, we met a young woman from Vancouver B.C. who had been living in Naples for 5 years working with refugees. Helping women mostly, desperate women trying to leave prostitution, when prostitution was their only means of support. “it is getting so much harder,” she said.
Many of the volunteers here at INN came with the thought of working with refugees who have arrived in droves, mostly from Africa. We too, thought we would be posted in a school that served refugees. But six months ago something happened. Matteo Salvini and his supporters pulled the meager funding that was allotted to NGO’s serving migrants. Many of these NGO’S have disappeared. But the refugees have not. They have dissolved into the shadows. They are hungry. They are hopeless. They wonder the streets like invisible beings. Everyone pretends not to see them. They look stunned. 6 months ago in our little town of Città della Pieve, we had about a dozen young men from Gambia sharing a room, getting a tiny pension from the government for food, though it was rumored that someone was skimming a cut of their own off the top. The police investigated, but as far as I know nothing every happened. And then all of a sudden they were given till the end of the month to get out. Two landed on their feet with help from our friends, they have a place to stay, and temporary documents. The other ten? A big shrug. Who knows where they went or how they survive. Racism thrives here as it does at home and Salvini and Trump are gemelli (twins) or blood brothers, or bound by some ungodly world view.
And so Margot, an INN volunteer, left because she couldn’t do the work she had intended to do. She was disgusted by the yellow vest demonstrations in France, and the attendant racism that is part of it, and she wanted to make a counter action of some kind. But right now that is impossible here, and it is hard to envision where it all ends.
Volunteer Napoli 