Africa in the heart
My name is Giorgio Casolari and I love Africa. It was 2006 and on a cold winter afternoon in Porto Sant’Elpidio, in the Marche, at the end of a Christian seminar, the speaker proposed distance adoptions through a French NGO in favor of boys in Kinshasa in the DRC, everything was masculine, there was no talk of girls, it almost seemed that the problem of the “street children” that in Kinshasa are the Shégué, was exclusively a male problem.
Beside me were my daughters at the time Rachele, almost 10 years old, and Beatrice, less than 5 years old, whenI asked if it was possible to adopt girls and not boys… but I was given a chilling answer: “an unprotected girl in Kinshasa at 12 is already an experienced prostitute”.
So I decided to do something and in December 2007 I made my first visit to Equatorial Africa. Left
the cold and clean Bologna, I found myself in a moving nightmare, where everything seemed surreal, from the suffocating wet heat, to the lack of electricity and
running water, physical and moral dirt at every level but everything seemed “nothing” when I listened Maman Hélène (kivuvu.net) who with her white smile and reassuring voice had to convince me that this was normal and not a bad dream!
Maman Hélène is an extraordinary woman who, flanked by other extraordinary women, lives and
struggles with these realities where women are worth little.
For almost a year, I was supporting the mission of Bana Ya Kivuvu at a distance and then I went there to see in person and for the first time, the three orphan girls I was supporting, Lilly, Noella and Flore Enguke, adopted in my heart and before God according to “Roman law” Today Lilly, Noella and Flore Enguke, are three women who I continue to help monthly. Over the years many things have changed and have evolved within the mission of Bana Ya Kivuvu.
Important to say that in 2010 was born the “maison des filles” baptized “Havre de paix” and whose goal is to offer protection to dozens of girls who would end up slaves of someone….
I have always been a dreamer and some dreams have become reality, I never stop dreaming so when I read the project, of the Africa Project Foundation, I returned to dream of a dignified life for Africans on their land with their families, I have known hundreds and helped dozens in the last thirty years, from the detention centers of Ceuta and Melilla where hell is a daily reality, up to reception centers in Calabria where they are killed on “slow fire” forcing them to do nothing for years waiting for a residence permit that is rarely granted to them, to then see, in the daily lives of our beautiful cities, how discrimination often does not give dignity and equal opportunities to many honest African workers, net of too many parasites that are found in all the tribes and nations of the world….
