ROMA – “Here is the control unit, here is the doorbell, I connected the switch to the light bulb… it works!”. It is not easy to mount a general on a Din bar, install the circuit breakers with different amperages, put the circuit breakers, a bridge, choose the cables, of the right color, to be inserted in the terminals, the inputs, the outputs. And it’s not even easy to make a rose of white satin petals to sew on a wedding dress for a high fashion atelier. If from the window, before the greenery outside, you can see the bars, perhaps it is even more difficult. “But they say they pay well, so it’s my job!”.
Fabiola, gray sweatshirt, large hands, pigtail above the shave, laughs as he screws the components of the electrical panel he built from scratch. “Have you ever seen a female electrician? She – she bursts in – Here I want to be the first to come to your house”. In front of her, in addition to her commands, she still has two years to serve in the Rebibbia women’s prison. “But this way I finally feel like I’m doing something useful,” she says as she presses the switch.
Studying as workers
With 13 other inmates she is at the last lesson of a course organized by ANCE Roma – Acer with CefmeCtp which taught the inmates the fundamentals of electricity and is now also training plumbers and construction workers. The laboratory entered the prison thanks to “Second Chance”, the association founded by the journalist Flavia Filippi to give an opportunity for a future to those in prison and, on the other hand, to make companies aware of the Smuraglia law which offers benefits to those who hire, even part time or fixed-term, prisoners under article 21, i.e. those admitted to work external.
Glory She has long fuchsia braids, she was a hairdresser outside and still does it here, in the prison. While she cuts, washes and colors her classmates, she has learned to connect the cables without shorting out the system. Linda she used to be a body shop mechanic, but here she found “something to do that can always be useful and now I want to continue the course, learn more, maybe even make it a job”. Loredana she’s a shopper, another is a cook, yet another was a bartender, an aspiring photomodel. “It’s a man’s job, yes, but we do it better, cleaner, more tidy, look at that,” says Marta, while she shows the cable box. When she explains Mariano, the master electrician, silence falls on three quarters of the room. “Excuse me, can you explain to me again that those two were talking?”. “Blame it on them for not paying attention.” “See, we’re already in trouble here on our own.”
Make a new life
It’s not school, there’s no bell at the end, you’re not going home. After 48 hours of lessons in a few weeks, however, they are not satisfied. They still ask because when the out-of-here arrives for the 370 female inmates of Rebibbia, they will have to start a new life.
“Work in construction involves manual skills, it requires effort, but the satisfaction you get from it is great and has to do, in my opinion, with building your own identity – explains the president of Ance Roma-Acer, Antonio Ciucci – We hope that this project can give new stimuli to female prisoners and constitute an important step in their life journey.”
“Second Chance” has already helped Betty, Susan, Lidia, Patricia called Zuccherina. “They put great professionalism into it, always involved, always asking questions,” says Mariano. “It’s the way in which the prison and the association try to teach a trade, to create soft skills – says the director Nadia Fontana – To find a stimulus to turn their lives upside down, something that triggers in them a movement for redemption.”
A thread of hope
Four doors down is the tailor’s shop. A large room equipped with 12 women, they have been coming here since Christmas, they will finish in June. They sew handbags, tolfe, dresses, flowers to tack onto clothes. “Staying here relaxes me and makes me proud to see the result of what I do, touch it with my hands, I’ve been working in the prison tailor shop for two years, we make trousers for the workers,” she says MarianeveNeapolitan, with her long curly hair.
“We try to operate by working as a Chinese drop on culture in forms other than the canonical ones given that the majority of inmates have never gone to school – explains the director again – So let’s combine reading, writing, theatre, yoga to very practical activities, we try to relaunch cultural growth through manual activity”. It doesn’t always succeed. There are relapses, the obstacles of documents, the many companies that do not trust ex-prisoners, the social discomfort, the absence of any network beyond the bars, the limits to the rehabilitative function of detention.
“But spending time like this, doing things, is therapeutic. The dream is to make a dress for each of them and have them show off, let’s see if they will be allowed…”, she says Chiara Valentini, wedding dress designer with an atelier in the Prati district who teaches at the Academy of Fashion and Costume and comes to Rebibbia as a volunteer to draw sketches and guide the hand of those who take up needle and thread for the first time. As Anna: “I made myself a brown skirt, I wanted to wear it to the interview with my husband, in the end I didn’t wear it anymore, it didn’t turn out very well, it was a little crooked, I put it on in the ward. But now that I go home and have learned I want to sew flowers for each curtain. I made one in pink satin for my daughter’s 14th birthday, how exciting.”
Lucia she has been doing this job for 8 years already, she is sure that it will take her away from here, away from Rebibbia, now she dreams in front of a wedding dress: “But it’s not for me, yes I’m too old, it’s for her”. Georgie she is a Romanian girl with blue eyes, she has been sewing since she was little, out of passion, “I made my own clothes. But here we work together, we make friends, we keep each other company. And maybe yes, when I go out I’ll put the dress on myself, it’s beautiful.”
At the back of the room, sitting at the sewing machine, there is Giana, Bosnian Roma. She has 8 years left to get out, a number of crimes, she has 14 children, only three are still minors, she hasn’t seen them for two years. She learned to be a seamstress at the Icam in Milan when she gave birth to her last child, who she kept with her for 5 and a half years. “I made three bags to put my things in. I understood a lot of things in here. I want to continue doing this, backpacks, bags, for my children, for my grandchildren, maybe I’ll even sell them. Let’s hope so…”.
#Fabiola #Glory #Giana #Electricians #seamstresses #inmates #Rebibbia #chance
– 2024-05-01 18:04:34
