All God’s children got shoes?

Tilburg University boasts a growing community of international students. At present, they constitute about seven per cent of the total student population! Among the wide variety of interests and experiences fostered by internationalization, there are at least two important features that all international students have in common. The first is that they bring with them a different baggage of customs, memories and stories particular to the communities in which they have been raised. The second one is that their personal experiences of young ‘movers’ made them a prime example of successful attempts to make use of mobility rights. I am part of the TiU community of expats and therefore these two features are common to me too. This the reason why I decided to write a post that combines sweet memories of my favorite Sicilian celebration with a bitter thought about the fact that there is a price to be paid for moving… and some paid it with their lives.

This post is about old traditional holidays and … new European graves.

4/ x

“ALL GOD’S CHILDREN GOT SHOES?’’

According to an official report, at present there are about 900 international students on Tilburg University’s campus. Another official report states that on April 13th 2015, more than 400 people drowned in a shipwreck off Libya. Few days later, on April 19th, another boat disaster happened: only 28 of about 850 migrants were rescued and able to reach the Italian coasts. This means that the number of ‘movers’ hosted, in just two days, by the Mediterranean Sea is bigger than the number of ‘movers’ currently hosted by TiU.

The number of Bachelor’s and Master’s programs in English offered by TiU is impressively high. Equally impressive is the possibility for students from all over the world to get access to Tilburg scholarships. And outside of the university bubble, Tilburg is changing too: new buildings are mushrooming to meet the increasing demand for student accommodation. Whereas the impact of expats on campus life in Tilburg is easily there for all of us to see, what about the ones who perish at the southern European borders? Is there a place where the dead claim ‘After all, we are here!’?

Rituals celebrating the Dead have been observed over the centuries and across the world. But when I was five or six years old I was not aware of these things… I only became familiar with ‘Trick or treat’ later on, by watching TV. And I discovered what ‘Día de Muertos’ means only when a secondary school teacher assigned me schoolwork about it. When I was five or six years old, I had no clue about the fact that the world can be very different from the one I was used to. I guess I did not grasp either what dying means. However, I loved the Dead: they did not scare me! All I knew, as a little girl raised in Ispica -a small town in the southern part of Sicily- was that, once a year, the Dead (‘I muorti’) come out from their world to bring toys to children. Back then, I woke up each 2nd November with the joyful certainty that there were presents from the Dead beside my bed. It was my favourite celebration! For me, it was better than Christmas, because grown up people do not get anything from the Dead … Revenge of the kids!!! And it was even better than my birthday because I was not the only one to get presents: my friends got toys too and we all shared new games. Children were allowed to bring their new toys and play when visiting the graveyards with family. That’s how my first memories of a cemetery are not depressing and sorrowful. My grandparents kept telling me how lucky I was: the Dead were getting rich and were able to afford toys… while, in the past; the Dead were poor and brought only sugar candies!

Indeed, time passes and people change. So do I. So do the Dead! Usually, towns change faster than cemeteries. This assumption does not hold true for Ispica, the little town where I was raised. There, children still get their presents from the Dead. But, something else is changing fast too in Ispica. It is happening in its cemetery: day by day, there are more and more Dead without a name. There, the graves of migrants drowned in shipwrecks are starting to line up. They finally found a place among us where borders do not matter. They found it when maybe it is too late for whatever place to matter. Children with new toys bring flowers to the Dead in these anonymous graves too, asking parents for their stories. Children are curious about why for these Dead there are not engraved stones but only a piece of paper with a picture of the blue sea. What shall we tell them?

We shall tell them that there is no place in Europe that is too far away from these graves to not pay them a visit!

c.

Suggested soundtrack:

“Dare to reach out your hand into the darkness, to pull another hand into the light.” – Norman B Rice (migrant drowned in Shipwreck on 23 August 2014)

ISPICA CEMETERY – 02.11.2016