Follina, a journey of hope for an eighteen year old who arrived with nothing, only with a t-shirt and a pair of pants on, trimmed.
FOLLINA. “Water, water”. These are the first words that an Afghan boy of almost eighteen pronounced in his language, making himself understood with his gestures, after having struggled to get out of a truck loaded with wood just arrived to unload Wood in Follina at De Mari.
The Croatian truck driver who was unloading the pallets hadn’t noticed anything. Paola De Mari, the owner, on the other hand, while she was going to the warehouse, saw a little boy crouched on the ground, near the truck tire, and at first thought he was a helper. Then he realized what was happening. The 20-year-old truck driver did not speak Italian, because he was Croatian, and the boy used to express himself with gestures.
He had no mask, he was hungry and thirsty. “I made him wash his hands” he says “then I gave him a bottle of water because I didn’t have any food”. The first words he said to me, the only ones I understood, were “Call police, call police”. He thought he had arrived in Croatia, I told him he was in Italy.
At that point the woman called the carabinieri, who refreshed him, identified and subsequently contacted the Prefecture in agreement with which the boy was taken to a reception facility.