Pantanella, the abandoned ex-pasta factory in Rome
As a child growing up in a strongly religious family, I was
taught that everything opposite to the teachings of the Holy Bible,
including laziness, is a sin. I tried my best to live a clean life.
Without understanding that Israel, Jerusalem, and other biblical nations were on the same planet as our own, we were raised to think that they were all in heaven.
When I left my family looking for a job, I tried to be
sincere and avoid doing anything wrong, which could land me in jail. I read
that jail can change people’s attitudes for better or worse. But I wasn’t
interested in knowing the positive or negative influences of jail on people. My
only interest is in never being there because it’s not the right place for me.
In the year 1990, from Lagos, Nigeria, I made a transit in Rome on my way to Germany. In Rome, I was detained at Fiumicino airport. Italian immigration regularly does that to many foreigners, especially
Africans. Like a tourist, I walked around the airport lounge without a room to
sleep in or food for three days.
On the third day, I was really starving, so I
approached one of the immigration officials and said to him that I was hungry.
He looked at my face and asked me, “Am I your father?” Then he walked away.
Without knowing what the officials had in store for me, I
handed over an application for asylum as a journalist, and it worked, because I
have a few publications in my profession.
On the fourth day, from
nowhere came one of the immigration officers; he said to me, “Your application
has been accepted; today the police will come to take you to Rome.” I was
shocked beyond expression.
The good Samaritan didn’t only deliver the unexpected
message, but he pulled out from his pocket several notes and said to me, “I don’t want my colleagues to see me giving you money; buy some food to eat at
the airport.” I didn’t take the money.
I told him, “This important information
you have given to me has taken all the hunger away, thank you.” He walked away
with his money.
On the fourth day, the police came, just as the officer told
me, and took me in a police car to the city, Rome, and left me there to fight
for my survival.
Without anywhere to sleep, I passed all my nights at the
Central Train Station. Among other Africans, we watched a big television screen
during the day to forget our misery, and then at night, I went to sleep at my
hiding place. The police and the workers at the train station never discovered
the place where I slept.
After some time, I discovered places where I could eat every
day without paying for food. I could take my bath and put on some clothes. One such place was at ‘Via Dandolo.’
Daniela, the head of the Caritas (Charity) at
Via Dandolo, was a very good woman, but one of her female workers was a very
bad woman. A thief, since we had no address, our letters passed through the
Caritas at Via Dandola, and this woman took the opportunity to steal money from
our letters.
I caught her twice, so I wasn’t surprised when I lost the 10
pounds a friend sent me from England, but I didn’t tell Daniela about it.
Through Caritas, I had my initial lessons and attended classes to learn Italian.
I was one of the best immigrants who could write and speak the
language fluently, yet my life was miserable because I was still sleeping at
the train station.
In Rome, I was robbed, admitted, and operated on at a hospital,
but the nurse refused to touch me because of my color; thus, every morning
when on duty, she called someone to attend to me, but she had time for every
Italian patient at the hospital.
I was once sitting in the hospital’s garden
after the operation when an old Italian man, one of the patients, came close to
me, looked at my face, and said to me, “Marocchino motaccizoa.” – an
insult, after mistakenly taking me for a Moroccan. I didn’t say a word.
Then all of a sudden, as if it was announced on the radio,
all the immigrants in Rome without accommodation discovered an abandoned
pasta factory called ‘Pantanella.’ Pantanella is notoriously known for all
criminal activities, including drug peddling and crime, similar to the drug cartel
zones of Mexico.
One needs strength, courage, heart, and bravery to survive in
that place. Italians think they are brave, but many of them dare to pass Via
Casilina, the street where Pantanella is located, at night.
That was the place I lived and worked as a toilet cleaner
for thousands of immigrants, using six containers as toilets, to raise money to
feed them. I was employed by the Muslim head at the place. It’s terrible and
frightening to live at Pantenella.
It wasn’t a prison, but the place, I think, was tough like Alcatraz because of the criminal activities many illegal
immigrants engaged in.
The abandoned factory accommodated both soft and hardened
criminals from various countries, including Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Africa etc. I lived in Pantanella for four months, and the Italian
government, tired of the crimes going on in that abandoned pasta factory, ejected
all the foreigners.
However, the Italian government did something great for the
African immigrants. Something we weren’t expecting. The government paid for two
weeks to stay in a hotel for all the Africans, with the ultimatum that before
the two weeks expired, we should find a place on our own to live.
Through a very good and sympathetic woman called Nana (she died
in Rome a few years ago), I got a job as a houseboy to serve one journalist
called Claudio Lavazza, working at the television station TG2, belonging to the
former Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi.
He provided me with accommodation
and paid me well. Besides, he gave me the new version of the Fiat Cinque Cento
(500) to drive. It may be likely that I was the first Black man in the entirety of Italy to drive the new Fiat Cinque Cento when it first came out. I met other
journalist friends of Claudio, including Michele Cucuzza.
After three years, I said goodbye to Rome and returned to
Africa. I married and returned to Europe once again, but this time I chose Amsterdam.
‘Overseas Chronicle: The Rome and Amsterdam Experience’ is a book that once started, you’ll find it hard to put away because of the shocking, intriguing stories in the book.
Find out more about what happened to me
in Rome and later in Holland, which led me to detention in Amsterdam.