What happened when migrants moved into my family’s Sicilian village

Refugees are breathing vibrant new life into the dying home town of Lorenzo Tondo’s father-in-law. If only Italy’s ascendant rightwingers saw it that way

At the same time every afternoon, while seated on the same bench, my father-in-law, Rosario Buttaci, silently watches John Babalola Wale and his family climb the steep walkway in the village of Sutera that leads from Piazza Europa to the old Arab quarter of Rabato.

In Rosario’s day, the “foreigner” who came to this picturesque Sicilian village was likely to be from Palermo, 100km away, or nearby Agrigento. But Wale, 35, is from Ekiti state in Nigeria, and he reached Sutera four months ago after a trek covering 6,000km. He lives with his wife and a son, like dozens of other African people seeking asylum who have come from another continent with their families to live here.

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/2PVT4CR
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