Caritas - Reflections

The first person I ever met in Caritas was Musa, from Nigeria. As I passed his table my eyes drifted over him and then caught on to his. I walked over and asked if I could sit. He nodded kindly and five minutes later we were in deep conversation about our favorite reggae artists and had already gone over politics and the role of the USA in the global economy. Eventually our discussion came to language. “If I could learn Italian maybe I could get a job,” he said.

It was then that I truly realized what a position some of these people were in. Musa had arrived from a totally different culture, landing in one of the most racist societies in Europe, without even enough money for a dictionary. And so I offered, and from then on my supply of dictionaries has been relatively constant.