There are days when “Iddu” makes the school shake for hours. The glass vibrates, the doors move. But children and teachers don’t get scared. Because they know it’s just the Giant’s breath. We are in Stromboli. And “lddu”, the volcano, is more alive than ever.
Fear comes when there is too much silence. When the microshocks suddenly stop. Then it means that something is wrong. And that there could be an explosion. When this happens, the janitor rings the bell three times, pupils and teachers slip under the desks for a few minutes.
And when the ash cloud forms on the crater, we run to close the windows. In those cases it is forbidden to go out into the courtyard, the dust and small stones that fall from the sky are hot. But if, on the other hand, there is a stronger earthquake, then you get in line and go outside, to the collection point in the garden. And it happens several times a year. In the morning it happens to find the walls in front of the school covered with black dust and lava material: you need to clean. Everyone lends a hand: janitor, pupils, teachers. Every day, then, the children collect the ash, put it in transparent jars and write the date on the label: then they deliver them to the Ingv experts to help them in their research work.
The school is a low-rise, single-storey building. A white box, with colored bookcases and tiles on the floor, where the smell of sulfur mixes with the scent of the sea. There are a total of 50 pupils, including kindergarten, elementary and middle school, who work together in various multi-classes. “It is an anti-seismic structure – specifies the headmaster, Mirella Fanti – from here we see the mouth of the volcano that snorts. Some of our children attend the Milazzo office during the winter months, because the family moves to the mainland. But we have Lim, the computer lab, we do weekly video links to keep in touch. Long before Covid and dad “.
The children live in symbiosis with their island. Some have deep black eyes like the sea at night. From March onwards, at the first ray of sunshine, they take off their shoes and run barefoot. “They only keep them in class because we have imposed some rules – says Giovanna Pintabona, teacher of the media – When a new teacher arrives at the beginning they are closed, suspicious. But when they open up they become very loving. It’s as if they were all my children ”. “With these guys you can’t do 5 hours of classical lessons, seated – explains the manager – so history and geography are often done outdoors, with blue in the background and ‘Iddu’ behind. The volcano for them is an ever-present friend, they do not perceive it as a threat and always draw it with a red heart in the center “.
What is frightening is not the volcano – the teachers say in chorus – but the man. In May, the fire caused by a film crew that was shooting a fiction terrified the children, who were taken to the beach because the classrooms were filled with smoke. Then the flood, in July. The institute these days still hosts the Alpine troops who worked during the emergency.
Stromboli, a river of mud from the mountain with no trees left. “Left alone after the fire”
by Alessandra Ziniti
As soon as they arrived, the teachers were scared. “Once I communicated to a teacher that she had been assigned to Stromboli – recalls the principal – And she fell ill. But then he stopped for six years. The Aeolian Islands kidnap your heart and soul ”. Nina Gerbino has been teaching her maternal for 14 years now. She has 28 children to follow, along with another colleague. “I can’t go away anymore – she says – I’m fine here with my volcano, with my solitude. Even if in winter only a grocery store and a tobacconist are open. And even if the whole salary goes away between rent and various expenses. I know I live on a crater. Maybe I’m unconscious. But it is a challenge, here we have to invent something every day and keep the school open even if, perhaps, due to a storm, the other teachers were unable to arrive by hydrofoil ”.
“We live in a paradisiacal dimension – adds Professor Pintabona – the beach, the volcano, the fishermen who live barefoot. Time slows down, expands to infinity. In the summer we see tourists as if from behind glass, like a show that will soon end ”. Even the elementary school teacher, Angela Sidoti, came here by chance and decided to stay: “I was only here for a temporary post. It was 2004. I never left. This is the island: you cry when you arrive and when you have to leave. And I don’t want to leave again. This is my family”. Even when Iddu wakes up, even when he is scary.