I left the first time with a good dose of unconsciousness mixed with carelessness. I left probably not fully comprehending the intensity of emotions I would have felt once arrived in At-Tuwani. I didn’t understand that it couldn’t just be three months, a relatively small chapter in my life. I didn’t know that that departure, so unaware and naive, would have led me to today. After, nothing has ever been done ingenuously and nothing has ever been easy.

It hasn’t been easy to see my parents’ reaction to the “mum, dad, I’m going back and I will stay for two years”, I was aware that I has hurt them and gave them pain. I will forever remember that moment in which I clearly felt that I was torned in two: on one side them, and on the other simply the foggy image in my eyes of Aboud and Meriam, my neighbours’ toddlers in this village. They won, I’m here in At-Tuwani.

Rome, 03/01/2017 – Presentation of the book Badheea, written by Mattia Civico. The book tells about the Italian initiative to open humanitarian corridor meant to welcome Syrian refugees who fled to Lebanon. One year later, Mattia Civico writes about the expirience. During the presentation, Abu Rabiya, one of the Syrian who reached Italy through the humanitarin corridor, addresses a speech to Italian people, associations and isntitutions.

Palestinian students under settlers violence and military negligence
SUMMARY OF THE 2016-2017 SCHOOL YEAR – 1 st SEMESTER
Period: 2016/08/28 – 2017/01/10

Children from the Palestinian villages of Tuba and Maghayir Al-Abeed began the first semester of the 2016-17 school year with Israeali soldiers escorting them to their school in the nearby Palestinian village of At-Tuwani. This is the thirteenth continuous year that these children have needed a military escort in order to walk to school safely.
To get to school the children must walk along a road which once provided easy travel between the villages, but which now runs between the Israeli settlement of Ma’on and the illegal outpost of Havat Ma’on. For the past thirteen years violent behavior by settlers from the outpost, the existence of which is illegal under both Israeli and International law, has made the road inaccessible to Palestinians. Even escorted by Israeli soldiers the schoolchildren continue to face the possibility of violence, harassment and intimidation as they walk to and from school.

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.