When volunteers get home from a project, they often have to deal with the experiences and the emotions they have lived during the last few months. When we are on the field, we don’t always have time to realize what is really happening, we try to decode feelings and we keep them in a corner of our hearts, in order to face them one by one at home, calmly. At least, it is what I usually do.
Yesterday, I read this text I wrote in a very difficult moment of my stay in Lebanon and during Aleppo’s “final assault”. Living this event at the camp, close to people who still call Aleppo home, has been tough: going through the despatches, watching pictures, scrolling messages from people stuck there… What should I do other than hugging them and mixing my tears with theirs? I always tried to be strong, to bring them a smile or some music to dance together, but that night a heavy cloud laid on my thoughts and I wrote this; I’m still into what I wrote because sharing means even to suffer together in order to stand up again. Together.
Rafah, on the border with Egypt. On the border line Israel has carved itself a security strip by demdirty jobolishing all the houses of the Palestinians present on the area. The pump, that was used to flow away the sewers’ water that came from the Palestinian houses, is trapped under the rubble after the demolitions. Every time the workers try to fix it the Israeli army shoot at them and at the pump. It has been out of order for more than four months now. In the houses that face the security strip, the liquid sewage leaks from the toilet and, with the aid of the sun, the risk of an epidemic is higher every day.
OPERAZIONE COLOMBA
