‘A beautiful thing’ : the African migrants getting healthy food to Italians
After years of exploitation, former fruit pickers set up a co-operative near Rome selling vegetables and yoghurt. Now they are working ‘twice as hard’ to get supplies to families under lockdown.
Ismail bends over the vegetables in the middle of the field and shouts to his co-worker – “Lorè you’re doing nothing and your back already hurts?” – as he deftly separates a head of cauliflower from its long leaves and throws it into a waiting box.
His co-workers Lorenzo and Cheikh also get up, lifting boxes packed with produce after their morning’s work. Today the sun is shining here in Italy but there is no time to pause and enjoy it. Salad and spinach picked from other fields must be washed alongside the cabbages and cauliflowers; boxes for delivery have to be readied and loaded into the van.
This is Barikama, a co-operative started in 2011 by a group of young Africans. Many of the founders took part in the Rosarno revolt, an uprising in January 2010 in which hundreds of African fruit pickers whose labour was being exploited in Italy’s citrus groves rose up in support of a workmate seriously injured in a racist attack. The rebellion broke the silence surrounding the conditions of immigrant workers in the Italian countryside.
Ten years on, the members of Barikama find themselves on the frontline of Italy’s deadly battle against Covid-19. Every day, while the people in their community are in lockdown in their homes, Ismail and his colleagues are out in the field and in the warehouse, packing delivery boxes of vegetables and dairy products to help feed increasing numbers of local households.
“The demand is higher than ever because people can’t go out, we’re working twice as hard as we’ve ever done,” says Modibo, a 32-year-old from Mali who arrived in Lampedusa in 2008 and is one of the co-founders of the Barikama co-operative, which is based at Casale di Martignano, 22 miles from Rome.
“Every day all day is just farming and deliveries. Every day we’re getting new orders and we won’t stop working because people need us. Yet even though it is very hard, to feel useful to people in this awful moment, it makes me very happy.”
For Modibo and all the members of the co-operative this job is also a form of redemption from exploitation: “barikama” means “strength” or “resistance”in the Malian dialect Bamara.
The co-operative has its warehouse in Pigneto, a historic working-class neighbourhood of Rome.
At seven in the morning the sky begins to lighten. “Something has changed in our life,” says Modibo. “If you’re not rich, you can’t afford to heal yourself and buy medicines. If a person you love falls ill you can’t do anything, and you lose your mind.”
Each morning the young members of the Barikama co-operative meet at the warehouse to load the van and then divide their daily duties among field work, deliveries and taking food to local markets.
One of these is the Trieste market in Via Chiana. While normally the market bustles with customers, in the current lockdown only 24 people are allowed in at a time. Today it is Tony’s turn to man the Barikama stall. Tony arrived in Italy four years ago from Nigeria and shortly after began labouring in the tomato fields of Foggia alongside hundreds of other migrants and refugees. “In Foggia they gave €4 for each 350kg box filled, it was like a race,” he says.
Another co-operative member, Cheikh, was a football player in Senegal and studied biology at university. When he arrived in Italy in 2007 he worked in the fields to survive. “I looked around at the situation and always did the maths,” he says. “In Rosarno there were between 200 and 300 people working without contracts for over a month. It’s not possible that nobody noticed. How did they escape paying taxes on all that money they were making?”
The idea for the co-operative came from a friend at a social centre that the men attended after the 2010 Rosarno uprisings. All of the men knew how to farm. She suggested that they come together and start producing their own food. “At the beginning we were making our own yogurt and we managed to make only about €5 or €10 each, which at least allowed us to call home,” says Chiekh.
In 2014 they formed a co-operative and found a place to base themselves, the Casale di Martignano, a farmhouse in Martignano. They made agreements with the farm owners to start dairy farming, to rent the machinery to start producing yogurt and then to farm the property’s unused fields. Six years on, Barikama cultivates six hectares of orchards and produces up to 200 litres of yogurt a week.
In one of the fields, Cheikh checks the weight of the freshly packed crates before loading the van. The co-operative’s finances are managed carefully. Something is always set aside and the rest of the profits divided equally.
In one of the fields, Cheikh checks the weight of the freshly packed crates before loading the van. The co-operative’s finances are managed carefully. Something is always set aside and the rest of the profits divided equally.
According to Cheikh, the goal now is to gain more autonomy, extend distribution and increase wholesale sales to guarantee a stable salary for everyone.
“It’s not much, but 2019 went well, an average of €500 per month, €700 in the last months of the year,” he says with a smile. “In summer for a month we gave up wages, but we didn’t lose money.”
Now, they feel that they are performing a vital task in keeping their customers healthy in a time of extreme trauma and fear.
“It’s a beautiful thing that we are helping feed the community in these terrible times,” says Cheikh as he turns and gets back to work.
▻https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/01/a-beautiful-thing-the-african-migrants-getting-healthy-food-to-italians
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