ODYSSEUS 2000
Personal Identity and social living
 
 

ITINERARIES
stories of voyages into the world

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Second part
The shadow margins

According to the script of the “novel”, it is now the time to introduce ourselves and to reflect upon our experience of listeners. It is an arduous task, that I face beginning from the result of a questionnaire. In this case too (although the questionnaire) the method we followed has been that one of paying attention to every single person with its thoughts and perceptions. In fact it is not a questionnaire compiled from anonymous and statistically representative people of a general social reality, but it has been compiled from us, before the training course that took place in Jesi, in the month of April of 1999, when we worked together for a whole week.

The results speak about us and our good intercultural intentions. They remind us that it is better to leave from our perceptions and experiences. Through our answers we can begin to reconstruct the image of that "context" or that "background" we build with our behaviours. That is the "background" in front of which the histories our travellers told are carried out. We are that "background" and we need to work upon ourselves in order " to emerge from that background " and to define our identity.
Who we are? Before answering to this question a reflection comes spontaneous to me:  we have always worried in order to collect data on immigrants, from where they come, their age, their title, the job, the family, the plans for the future, how they spend their free time, if they have friendships, etc, and we never thought to make a surveying on ourselves in order to know who we really are. Well, we examine some data. On 38 participants to our training course held in Jesi, there were 32 questionnaires (31 Italians); only 3 were compiled by men. There were 19 teachers; the others (13) were compiled by social and cultural operators of Local Agencies, Sanitary Companies or other institutions. The medium age was 44 years old; only two operators were less than 30 years old. Even this first poor photo, with just a little personal identifying data, reveal many eloquent data in describing some social and identifying characteristics of our educational institutions and associations.
Let’s go on with the self-portrait. Only 5 of us had already had a direct or indirect experience of emigration, above all relatives emigrated to Argentine or North America. Only 6 had relationships of friendship or simply of deepened acquaintance with foreign people immigrated in our country. For most of people the relationship with foreign people has always limited itself to the "institutional relationship" on the job place that is between operator and customer, often of occasional type. Some never had even this type of relationship. Also for various teachers the relationship with the family of foreign children that they have in their class, often does not trespass the institutional contacts between school and families (the scholastic talks, the school reports, etc).
So, it just seems that there are no "places" and occasions for a direct and personal encounter. The "contact" often happens in an occasional way or, with a chair or a desk between people, a classroom or an office, with a person who is asking something and the other that tries to answer, in the respect of " the institutional " role that in that moment everyone covers. This modality is not at all involving from a human point of view; it helps in some way "to maintain the distances", but it does not help to eliminate the "sense of the criticism". In fact, in spite of the occasional encounters, many of us asserted in the questionnaire that we to find greater difficulties with foreign users. If we include nomads too, the difficulty or the absence of direct relationships or personal acquaintance becomes greater and greater, nearly total. So, if we observe ourselves from this angle-shot, we really seem to be a "background", something that is behind, "beyond", that it has difficulty to emerge and to establish a contact. Nevertheless, the will  "to come outside", to know and to understand, that everyone of us manifest seems to be high.
If we want to deepen this aspect we can pay attention to what we want to know. For example, the teachers of our group - all of them have at least one or two foreign children in their own classes- ask some concrete aids in order to manage better these new situations: they think that it is necessary a specific preparation and the help of someone in organising intercultural activities, in order to favour the acquaintance of the home country of the pupil. But when they must formulate a list of the greatest difficulties they met, they first pay attention to the discipline and the respect of scholastic rules and in the second place to the difficulties of linguistic understanding. Only at the third place there is " the ability to relate with the other children ", even if most of teachers recognize that prejudgment problems exist in the school with regard to foreign pupils, both from some Italian children and some Italian families.
The main reason at the basis of prejudices, according to the teachers, is the insufficient acquaintance of the home country of foreign children.  So, it seems that our will " to emerge from the background " consists, first of all, in the requirement to know the " culture of the country of origin ". Further more, there is the necessity of getting an aid, in order to facilitate the learning of the language of our country for all foreign pupils.

But when we asked ourselves in the questionnaire which language the foreign pupils speak at home with their parents, or if their parents know the Italian as well, or what religion or in which way it is practiced, or other information on the job of the family or the level of instruction of the parents, the most frequent answer has been: "I do not know", showing one insufficient acquaintance of the people. This "I do not know" is very eloquent and it reveals which is, not always but often, our "model of acceptance". Dialogue, listening, our way to watch foreigners, privileges more the acquaintance of the "home country" or of the "culture of origin", than people. Nevertheless, when we go outside we do not meet some "cultures": we meet "real people". Perhaps they even come from another culture but at this moment they live here, with their problems and their personal, particular, different and concrete history.  This situation reminds us that, in order "to receive" we should modify our habits and our perceptions, our methodologies and the organizational modalities of our institutions.
If we go on reading the questionnaire, we also discover that we too, we are not the same, there are many differences, starting from our opinions on cultural integration. In order to evidence this, we had a debate on some clichés and idioms used in our social and cultural environment: everyone gave a note to each cliché expressing one’s own agreement or disagreement. There are affirmations on which our agreement is shared from many people, others on which there are many divergences of opinions. The four most shared affirmations are: "foreign children at school are a cultural wealth even if this makes the job more difficult"; "the school has a very important role in contrasting the formation of prejudices"; "the school has a very important role in contrasting prejudices but it must be supported from families and mass media"; "To assert the cultural diversity, it underlines the exigency to redefine objectives and tasks of the school".
Perhaps we all fell ("nearly" all, because fortunately the consent is not total) in the trap of rhetorical affirmations, demonstrating of knowing well which is the right answer that a social operator or an educator must give. In fact, "the wealth of the cultural diversity and the role of the school", is a nearly universal value and none can deny it, even if then we specify that the school cannot solve this task on its own, because "to pick the wealth" is a difficult job and the tasks and the objectives of the school are not appropriated to the aim and therefore they have to be redefined.
There are other "clichés" on which the divergences between us gradually increase. Here they are: "I think that the immigrants must be helped to fit in with their families in Italy"; "I believe that the best societies are those with many ethnic groups"; "Before accepting foreigners it is necessary to prepare social and material conditions in order to integrate them without any problem"; "It is the same for me if my son/daughter wants to marry a black person"; "the income of foreign children in the school makes the job more difficult". A contrast in the answers emerges on these affirmations, between people who agree and people who do not agree at all, in particular when the question concerns the problem of working with foreign children at school: some say it is difficult, some others say it is not difficult at all.
The divergences of ideas, with a nearly equal number of agreements and disagreements, concern some negative judgments on immigrants: "According to me immigration brought more advantages than disadvantages"; "Immigrants I met in the streets are too persistent "people coming from countries that do not belong to the European Community, who haven’t a regular permission must be expelled". It is interesting to find out that there is, inside our group, a wide presence of these feelings. We feel that we have to find no hasty answers to many reflections and questions.
Finally, there are some "clichés" that our group does not agree with: "I think that the excessive number of immigrants contributed to the increase in crime"; "it is not a fundamental task of the school to fight prejudices"; "Immigrants are often dirty". Even in this case, however, although the agreement degree is much lower, it is important to underline that 5 or 6 of us (nearly a third part of our group) answered that they quite agreed with those sentences.

All our answers reveal that our opinions on the topics we want to deepen are various and they make us understand that the way to follow is not simple. There are many topics that we must face and we probably cannot face them with short formative courses, shortcuts, nor easy techniques that can resolve all the problems. Intercultural dynamics rather reveal a complexity that invests personal convictions and perceptions of everyone indeed, and demands therefore a long and continuous way, whose outcome is not sure and we cannot expect to know it since the beginning.

Let’s go on with the examination of our perceptions. In another part of the questionnaire we wanted to verify what we think about the way our society welcomes immigrants. We asked ourselves if, according to us, in our country all the foreigners were dealt in the same way or if there were discriminations against some countries or against black people. We did not make a survey upon a representative group of people, but we only expressed our perceptions.
Most of us said that it is true: foreigners are judged in a different way according to their home country. Every one of us made a list of the first 5 countries that, according to us, were the most discriminated. At the first place, with the highest rates of negativity, we find Nomads and Albanians, cited with the greatest frequency of answers (24 and 22 times) and inserted at the first place 11 and 10 times.
At the second place there are the countries of Maghreb and Black Africa, with a high frequency of answers (22 and 17) but nearly never inserted at the first place (2 times the Maghreb and only 1 time Africa). In the third group there are the answers with a not so high frequency and only in a case a country was indicated at the first place (Turkey). The other countries or peoples of this group are the Kurdistan, the countries of the ex-Yugoslavia and in particular Macedonia, the "other Arabic countries apart from the Maghreb". Finally there is a fourth group of countries that are never, or nearly never, indicated among the discriminated ones. They are: the countries of East Europe, Colombia, the rest of South and Central America and the rest of Asia (India, China, Bangladesh, Iran).

Nothing is definitive and, moreover, it seems to be correlated to the intensity of presence of people coming from these countries in journalistic reports. Some of the friends who filled in the questionnaire, would discover that they made a mistake and that they are not discriminated, at least not as much as they think. It depends on point of views!  However, we compared our opinions to the statistically representative samples and we found out that our opinions are "on the average": so, even if we do not want to, we belong to the "sample".

Here is something interesting: I began this novel talking about “them” (travellers, immigrants) and “us” (operators, natives); I thought there were two separate groups. But now, reading those stories and discussing about our answers to the questionnaire, I understand that there aren’t two groups: on the contrary there is a complexity of personal situations, stories, perceptions, models, ideas and opinions. They are all growing ever more intertwined.

Let’s keep on with our self-description.  The experience of the "training course" allowed us to "play" with our different aspects, to reflect upon the idea of personal identity, to play with our personal stories, with our self-representations and with the representations of the others, of our country and of the rest of the world.  We remarked that “commonplaces” are not so common! They change among different people. It is just the superficial glance that makes them so “common”. During the course we also dressed-up, in order to enter another identity and to simulate what happens when someone arrives in a foreign country: a foreign person stops you, makes some questions that you cannot understand, can give you, or not, the permission to enter.

It was a funny game; it allowed a direct experimentation of a different situation. It is a sort of exercise; it is one’s own decentralization, a search for a different point of view, training. It was all I said, but it was always just a game. Further more, our group was too homogeneous, even if there were personal differences. Most of us were Italian. Only three people came from different countries, but always in Europe and they were operators and teachers, just like us. The questionnaire forced us to reveal that our knowledge of immigration was "theoretic". We had just a little direct experience or personal knowledge. So the course gave us the possibility to go outside, far away from our classroom, in the town. We had video cameras and cassette recorders in order to interview the foreign people in the streets.
Many of us had some fears, were embarrassed. Someone looked for a justification: "It’s raining. There will be none"; "It would be better to read the interviews already collected for the book"
But to make an interview is much more different from reading it.
At the end all the people left the room in small groups. In the afternoon they were all enthusiastic. It worked! They met more foreigners than they imagined. It seemed that they did not feel their presence until that moment. In two hours they interviewed about twenty people, they filmed them and they also took some photos.
Here are some extracts from their interviews.

“I come from Lagos, the capital of Nigeria. I’m here in Italy because of some reasons. I’ve been living here for 4 years with my brother and I know two other Nigerians. I work in a factory. I feel at my ease in Italy. Jesi too is a quiet town. I like working, I like this place, and I like all. There’s nothing I don’t like. I usually eat sandwiches. But when I have dinner with a white I eat like him.”
“Do you feel some nostalgia towards Nigeria? Do you miss it?”
“Sometimes I go back there for my holidays, at Christmas, to meet my family. They are all there. Then I like coming back here.”
 “What is your religion?”
“I’m catholic.”

“I come from Santo Domingo. I am in Italy since 1984. I went as a student, with an education grant. I am an agrarian export.”
“How do you feel in Italy? Do you work?”
“I have never had difficulties. According to me, you can find out some difficulties when you have to beg for bread. The problem is not the colour of your skin. If you sell or buy, it’ s Ok. I have always worked. When I came here I attended a course at IPSIA, then I went to Rome for three years, at “Sapienza University”, CNR and FAO. I carried on a research upon the rural reform in Latin America. Then I was at the Ministry for three years. I worked in Rome and sometimes I lived in Jesi. I can speak a little English and French. I travelled a lot when I was on holiday. I visited almost all Europe exploiting Inter rail tickets (360,000 lire for 1 month). I’ve been working in a factory in Jesi: I am a worker. I feel at my ease. Once I was also a waiter, only on Saturdays and Sundays. My wife assists an old person three hours a day, in the morning. In the afternoon she doesn’t work and stays at home with our child. She’s been here since 1993 and she doesn’t feel very good. This is no life: it is a continuous work. Sometimes I get angry with her because in the evenings she is always too tired. I am catholic. I’ve got some Italian friends too, some colleagues. My best friend is Italian but at this moment he lives in Mexico: he met a Mexican girl here in my house. He’s got a degree in economics. Now he is in Mexico and he also found a job over there. He is persuaded that in Mexico it is easier than in Italy to find a job when you are graduated: he says that it is sufficient to know some politicians and you can have a wonderful career. In Italy, on the contrary, you have to take many examinations.”

“I was born in Dakar (Senegal) on 28/7/1976. I went to Belgium where a got my diploma. Now I’m living here for 11 months, because I was alone in Belgium. Here I have got some friends. I sell CDs and tapes in front of supermarkets. I can speak French, English, Spanish and a little Italian. In my family I am the eldest brother; one of my brothers lives in New York; further more I have got two sisters.  I practiced some sport (basket and jogging). I don’t feel at my ease in Italy.”
After this first questions he doesn’t want to go on speaking with us. He even does not want us to take a picture.

“I’ve been living in Italy for 5 months. I do not work. I come from Santo Domingo. Now I finally met again my eldest daughter. I like Italy but I would like to have a job. I have some problems with the language. That is why I lost my job.”

“I am 27 years old and I come from morocco. I live in Ancona. I have been in Italy for 4 years. I live with my husband. I have got a 1-year-old child. My mother and my brother too live here. I don’t feel at my ease because of the job.
I have got Italian friends and I learnt Italian on my own. I went here because I knew there was a lot of a job. I like living here but I would like to find any honest job. I have got a friend, coming from my country, who’s been living in Italy for 3 years”.

“I come from Stuttgart (Germany). I’ve been in Italy for 15 years. My husband is Italian. I can speak a good Italian but I’m not so good in writing. I had some problems with the Italian school. Some friends of mine were not at their ease and they preferred to go back to Germany. I found nice friends. I’ve got a boy, he is three years old. I would like to teach him German but I always fail because I can’t remember it either. My job concerns itinerant peddling. I’ve got a market stall: I sell clothes.”
 (The interviewers and the interviewed took a photo together)

The way towards ourselves needs to face the experience of meeting other people. The next day I interviewed the interviewers. Here are some extracts of their impressions.

“When we went out to interview foreign people, because I found out things I didn’t know yet. Their fear hit me very much; it was hard to overcome their uncertainty but we could finally communicate. First of all I am not so sure that they were telling the truth. I had the impression that they didn’t feel like explaining their situations, perhaps because of their irregular position or because they were frightened. But then someone asked: “Why isn’t there any Italian course for foreigners in Jesi?”. This is really a big problem.”

“Can you tell me something about the interviews you realized yesterday in the town?”
“Many of them let us make the interview with no problem, above all women.”
“Were you scared before going out?”
“Yes, I was afraid of being too intrusive. And with the first boy we met it was very difficult indeed: nobody of our group wanted to speak. Then I tried. At the beginning I was not at my ease but I realized it was not so difficult to speak. But this boy didn't feel at his ease when I asked him how did he feel in Italy. He answered, with some difficulties, that he didn’t like living here. Then he didn’t want to answer anymore.”
“After all these games, what kind of perception have you got of your identity?”
“I deal with intercultural problems since a long time, but I am always scared because I think I can make mistakes when I have a relationship with other people. It is always necessary to deepen our knowledge.”

“Which activity did you like the most?”
“I liked the second day, when we dressed-up. When you wear someone else’s clothes, then you can try to understand the problem of the other person. You don’t think only starting from your point of view. You can understand difficulties. I really loved it.”
“Do you think it is really possible to wear someone else’s clothes or do you think it can be only a game?”
“In the reality it is different and more difficult. Perhaps children can do it better than us, because they are more spontaneous.”
“Can you tell me your experience with the interviews?”
"I realized for the first time that there are a lot of foreigners. Then I heard their difficulties: the language above all and a place to meet with their groups, in order to keep their identity. But they also need a place to meet with Italian people.”
“Were you scared before going out? How did you feel before and after the experience?”
“Yes, I was scared. I can’t deny it. We have our prejudices too. But after the first interview I was more calm.”

“Which activity did you like the most?”
“The interviews, perhaps because I am used to work with written words. The idea of an exhibition of different cultures was good too. I think that I can recreate it in the children library, where I work.”

I am making a synthesis of their reflections. “Their fear of being interviewed hit me very much”; “I understood what were some of their real difficulties. First of all the language and a place where they can meet in order not to loose their cultural identity”;” at the beginning I was a little embarrassed but then we could have a dialogue”. And finally the beautiful one: “a place where we can meet Italian people”. They always meet lots of Italians but, obviously, it a “welcome place” that lacks.

After the impressions upon the experience of the interviews. I asked my colleagues to tell me their evaluations on the whole training course.

“How did you feel and what did you expect from the course?”
“I felt perfectly at my ease. At the beginning I was not sure I wanted to take part to the course, I didn’t know the programme, what we were going to do, but then it was great.”

“What do you think about the methodology used during the course?”
“It is very interesting. I found out a change in myself during these days. It was really useful.”
“Was it amusing or not?”
“Yes, of course it was. And it was useful to find some things I had lost in my job. I am not a teacher; I’m used to work with adults and not with children. Now I understood some important things. I am a public employee and I realized I usually get bored in my job because I am not stimulated.”
“How do you think the experience of the course can be useful in your job?”
“Perhaps in the organization. We work following rules; we are imprisoned behind the boundaries of laws. Now I understood we can work in another way, even following the rules. Behind a law there are the people, their exigencies, their daily lives, that must be respected. It is necessary to look at the problems in a more personal and less formal way.”

“You come from Sweden. How did you feel here in the town and with this group during the course?”
“Apart from the weather (I hoped it was better!) I felt at my ease with those people.”
“Which activity did you like the most?”
“When we were seated in a circle and we talked about our experiences in order to better meet each other.”
“Do you have any suggestion?”
“Nothing particular. It is very important to meet each other, to compare our experiences and to work together. I think that we are no more the same people after this course: we grew-up.”

“Did you take part to other training courses upon interculture before this one?”
“Yes, last year. It was a course for assistant teachers specialised in linguistic support. There is a great difference between that course and this one, above all for what concerns practical activities in laboratories. During training courses we usually listen to someone or speak. Here we did something practical. I think that both courses are important and complementary.”
“Which activity did you like the most?”
“The first one: we made interviews to the other people of the group and we introduced the person we have just interviewed. It was something new and it was also nice and useful to create a real relationship. Then I loved the game of cultural identities.”

“Do you think that your team worked well or not?”
“Yes, I guess it worked. All were involved and grew-up inside their selves. Now everybody knows that it is necessary to deepen these themes and wants to do something. I think that it is necessary to go on to realise something in the town, but we must do it now, because everybody is enthusiastic.”
 “Perhaps it already happened to you. I mean this kind of enthusiasm at the end of a course. Is there anything different this time?”
“Perhaps it is only my wish. But I think that is not the result of the course: it is the result of a long work upon interculture began two years ago. Until this moment we worked but we didn’t see any practical effect. The course has been a sort of test for all we’ve already done. It is the proof that it was a good work. So this isn’t an isolated experience but a continuous work.”
“To which activity did you take part with the greatest interest?”
“I guess that it is the game of national identities. For example I thought that it was easy to find out 5 adjectives to describe a person coming from another country, but it wasn’t true. I realised that it is very hard; you have to look inside yourself and find out both clichés and deep ideas. Then you understand that they all are superficial, because you don’t really know the other people. This game made me reflect and involved me a lot.”

In short, before the questionnaire was compiled, many thought it would have been easy to answer the questions correctly. In spite of that, a huge variety of answers and contrapositions emerged from such clearness. There were also a lot of ignorance and unforgivable shallowness, quietly admitted saying, “I don’t know”. Now, at the end of the week those ideas have lost their clearness and have become more confused. (“I’ve realised it’s very hard, you have to look inside yourself…” “I did not realise that there were so many foreigners”). Anyway much more enthusiasm came out of this “confusion”, and it gives us the strength to face an unknown way.

The reflection over the formative experience continued in the following days, too, both in the activities of the project and in the meetings organized to build the “House of Cultures”. This is that place where you can meet people coming from different countries and different cultures. But it is another long long way to cover and we are only at the beginning.
For what concerns our “novel” I will now report a little game that took place in January, during one of the meetings of our project. I’ve asked all the participants to write on a sheet of paper a reflection or an episode they thought would be interesting to tell. Then I took all these brief thoughts and saw if it would have been possible to combine them in a unique story. I think it worked. Here’s the story I wrote by mixing their writings. It’s a little tale within the novel.
 

Which are our mistakes?

A teacher asked herself this question while she was thinking about an unpleasant episode happened at school to an Albanian girl, a pupil of her class. We can use it as a title.
 “At that moment I fell so useless and unfit: the activities, games, routes…the life stories: what were all these things for? Seemingly all is alright: the girl is quiet, she is happy to go to school, she works and plays, and she learnt Italian. But such a harsh sentence hurt me and it still weights a ton in my mind. Which are our mistakes? How can we help her to fit-in and not to find an environment that only looks kind?
It is immediately clear, by spontaneous admission, how in many activities a more complex and harder situation stands behind the appearances of the nice words used. Interculture is not only a good intention but a long way to cover.

“When I began to work on intercultural projects ? another teacher says ? all I had was a lot of confused ideas and a mind open to new experiences. Many inputs came, but they weren’t always useful for the pupils, mainly because of the lack of time and personal organization. Meanwhile the “personal forming” process has continued and I realize interculture enters my life day by day.” The attention is focused on the “personal forming” process, on a work which first involves ourselves, asks for continuity, day by day, and is in conflict with our time organization. Perhaps we should change our plans, just like some of our foreign friends said in the interviews.

In these two first reflections there are many contradictory elements. They seem to be incomplete ideas collected halfway, when new discoveries and old feelings are intertwined.
“Abdul is a Moroccan boy. He is in our school since last year. He has got a very serious behavior towards school and life. When another pupil told him ‘if you are hungry during the Ramadan go to bed. So you will sleep and you won’t feel your hunger!’ he answered ‘ in this way Ramadan looses his value’. It was a great lesson from a boy who is only thirteen years old.”

‘In this way Ramadan looses his value’. This answer is suitable for our interest in interculture, when we make the mistake of using rhetorical sentences, when we are interested in it only because of a duty: “we must accept diversity because it makes rich”. Here is another interesting sentence: “in the relationship between people belonging to different cultures and ethnic groups there can be a deeper feeling than in a monoculture. But the margins of unknowable, of shadow are still important even after a long time.”

The shadow margins shadow. Here is another good sentence. In this walk I’m having inside the words of the others I’ve been lucky to often encounter simple and effective expressions. But let’s now go back to our good intensions, because that’s where our intercultural journey starts from: “Future plans? Preliminary knowledge of the Portuguese language in a game’s form (as experimented last year in the training course) then a Brazilian tale-recipe to realize with the children and the parents.” They’re not only school projects, but also personal ones: “I hope that Cristin’s daughter -from Central Africa- will go to school with my child and I hope that they will be friends”.

It is more for the children than for them: to carry on the route that their parents have begun. In the intercultural route good intentions, new projects, reflections upon oneself, the illusion to understand all at sudden, the satisfaction for a little step, all is well combined and mixed: “ I brought them to a meeting with a witness who lived with Yanoman for eighteen years: great interest, wonder, attention. This happened because it wasn’t only information but KNOWLEDGE and they were motivated TO KNW MORE AND MORE…That is what they said after this experience: they changed their behavior towards difference. Because it is only when you know you can respect, welcome, communicate with other people....  I changed a lot too”.

Another report: “A memory? A sort of justified suspicion of the foreigners towards the interviewers, last April. Their wish to “fit-in” in order to be accepted by the new country.”

“I had prejudices. The training course upon interculture, the famous “intercultural week” of last April, made me change my point of view. In particular the experience of the interviews definitely changed my way to approach foreign people…(even if) I am still scared from some behaviors, above all towards women.”

In other occasions the experience is much more indirect, through stories and photos, with a particular curiosity that stimulates a new open-mindedness towards another dimension: “it is natural for me to reflect upon this aspect: how the birth takes place in different cultures. I had the possibility to see some photos concerning African women delivering their babies in their country. They were really beautiful. That gave me a warm sensation. It seemed to involve me in the positive experience of giving life to a new person. In this country the relationship between mother and child is fundamental. The baby receives a welcome full of kindness and attention. I guess that we should discover this aspect again in our West culture.”

Other experiences are more connected to the professional world and offer a different kind of difficulties: “the intercultural problem emerged quickly. There were some relatives of that girl at the conference. They did not have any parental authority so we asked them to exit. They got incensed because they were delegates of the family. When we overcame this obstacle there were other problems too…we could not face them. So they went away without signing anything. The communication was very difficult and the main problem was that none was able to understand and to enter the others’ point of view.”

Unfortunately, our way to think doesn’t help us to enter the others’ point of view. Here we are again: there is a difference among first successes (“I changed a lot, me too”), good intentions (“everyone coming from everywhere has got something special that he/she can offer to the other people: it is sufficient to observe, to hear and to put oneself in the other’s point of view”), and real difficulties, who is still someone unknown.

So, our route inside interculture and inside ourselves starts again: “ A multiethnic reality, just like ours, with many Rom pupils, needs a continuous debate with the others. But it needs above all a debate with ourselves, our prejudices, the ideas coming from our cultural environment.”

Sometimes the questions we make are naïf or they are influenced by our point of view, by the words we are used to say. For example the word ‘integration’: “Their wish to fit-in in order to be accepted from the host country” or “How can we help her to fit-in and not to find an environment that only looks kind?”

What does integration really mean? In another reflection there is a doubt: “I read some books about Gypsies, their habits, their history and I asked myself if it is right to make them fit-in in our  “gagè” culture. In this way they will slowly and inexorably loose all their past. When they accept one of our rules, is it a “success” or a defeat?”

I repeat it once again: what does integration really mean? And welcome, to know, to observe, to hear, what do they mean? “You only have to hear”, someone wrote naively. Even these two common words, to observe and to hear, can hide a whole universe of situations and perceptions. For example, who observes and who is observed?

When I gave back to my colleagues this collage, realised with their own words (it was a game but also a sort of “robbery” of their ideas) I added my personal memory to beg their pardon. A long time ago I moved to Rome to attend University courses. I shared my room with a Masai from Sudan, who was my same age. I usually took part to solidarity activities concerning people coming from that country. One of them became a friend of mine: he was having his degree in economics. I remember that, when we walked together in the streets, some people had no edifying comments upon us. I also remember my sensations caused by people’s glances: there were no funny glances. All seemed to be quite normal but I could feel something strange.  I have never told it to my friend and I must admit that I have never realised if they were really the others or if it was my fault. Nowadays I still feel the same when I am with my black friends coming from Africa or other countries of the world. This makes me think of a novel from Pap Khouma, “I, elephant seller”. In this book Pap, a Senegalese, tells his life in Italy, at the beginning as a stowaway, with all his efforts to “become invisible”.

This little story inside the “novel” required just a few minutes to be written and just a few hours to be collected and mixed. In this way, it seems to be just a little literary device, but it shows a whole universe of thoughts and stories: these are the same stories that we carry on, wherever we go. And if we had the whole year to tell each other our stories, instead of a few minutes!
 

From here: results of Lleida
Part two

The team work continued with the second training course in Lleida, in the month of April 2000, an year after the first experience in Jesi. We used for the second time the questionnaire, we changed some of the questions and widened the number of participants to this dialogue or voyage. This time the group was mostly composed by Spaniards (about 25 persons) but, at the same time, it was more international thanks to the participation of 9 Italians, 2 Swedes, a French and a German. Only 4 or 5 persons had taken part to the meeting last year. The teachers were, this time, less than a half. But even if the composition of the group was very different, the answers to the questionnaire were very similar. One common opinion: the immigrant child represents a difficulty for the school when he has problems of discipline. Other aspects such as learning problems, difficulties in the relationships with other children or the difference of age between him and the other schoolmates seem to be less difficult to handle. In the school, the child settles in with more difficulty when he has problems in his behaviour, even if he has sufficient economic conditions and a good level of the language: that's the opinion of our group. Children who mostly have difficulties with the language or with social conditions have less problems in fitting in, compared to the others. Apart from this consideration which deals with behavioural aspects, at the same time we perceive as a strong need the fact of helping children learn the language, and helping  the parents of the children learn the language, too. The intercultural activities within the class or the knowledge of the culture of the country of origin of the child are both very important (it's obvious since our group is made of teachers and "educators").
The answers concerning the level of agreement to the common opinions in the society are very interesting, too. Above all, this time too, as we had already seen in Jesi last year, there is a number of opinions we all unanimously share. They concern more rhetorical, "programmatic" convictions, for example: "The foreign children in the school are a richness even if they make whole job more complex" or "the school has an important role in fighting against prejudices but the family and the media have to give an important contribution to that" or, finally, that in this situation we have to "redefine the objectives and the competence of the school".
At this point I would like to make a remark. When we ask "do you think that the integration of foreign children in the school is a problem?", most of the people answer, without any fear: "It's not a problem, it's a defy!". In conclusion, we all agree on the intentions and the programs. It's easy to find an agreement. The differences appear when personal convictions or complicated social conditions come into play. They need a deeper knowledge or judgement.
For example, in the questionnaire, this time, we have included a new question concerning the most important features of a multicultural society: the tolerance towards the others, the integration of the others or the interchange with the others, in which we have to stake ourselves, too? The group was split in three quasi-equal parts. For example, also the question: "the schooling of the foreign children make the whole job more difficult", splits the group in two parts.
Almost everyone agrees on the fact that the best societies are those where many ethnic groups live; but, at the same time, about two thirds of the group specify that they don't think the immigration from the third world produces more advantages than disadvantages. Moreover, if his/her own son or daughter would marry a "coloured" person, this would create some problems. The majority shares the opinion that, before we accept and introduce strangers, we have to prepare the social and material conditions which allow their integration; at the same time, the majority doesn't agree on the expulsion of the migrants who have no job contract. A third part of the group agrees with the fact that the excessive number of immigrants contributes to the growth of delinquency, and a fifth part of the group declares they don't like "extra-Europeans". These different answers, sometimes in disagreement, don't divide the group into homogeneous and opposite subgroups. They always mix together in different combinations. Our answers don't tend to find the "racists" among us, they mostly help us detect "our contradictions" or our "difficulties in the judgement". Beyond the general agreement on the programs and the good intentions, our deeper convictions have to be discovered, tested, compared to the experience. The days we passed together in Lleida gave us an opportunity of living, in the praxis, our theoretical ideas and also to deeper understand them. It's only a part of our journey and the results are never definitive, they always give us some starting points, then we have to go ahead.
It's the same we can experience in our society. The racism doesn't come out from nothing. These sensations of closing, of scare, first reside in our personal being, with other ideas or experiences. Only when the negative social experiences let them come out and bind them in an ideology, in a theory or in a structured system of beliefs, they become racism. But their starting points such as sensations, ignorance, contradictions or fears are the same we sometimes share, beyond our good theoretical (or rhetorical) intentions. It's a social and cultural process. We have to favour a positive evolution through the creation of the suitable conditions.