Di fili e di segni

“A woman, a mother, a free spirit full of ideas, values, sacrifices and with many dreams”. This is how Roseline Eguabor, president of Sartoria Circolare Al Revés, describes herself. Born into a family of eight children in Nigeria, at the age of 5 Roseline was entrusted to an unknown “aunt”, where she worked as a maid until the age of 18. When, to avoid an early marriage and to continue studying, she found a way to leave Nigeria: she was promised that she could continue studying with the help of other Nigerians as long as she returned the sum advanced for the trip. Her fellow countrymen would have found her work. And instead, once in Italy, the promises were not kept. “From there I immediately understood that to stay in Italy, I had to start all over again”, says Roseline, recalling her worst and most painful moments, made of loneliness and resistance to verbal, psychological and physical abuse from the people she believed in.

And so Roseline learns the Italian language and after many sacrifices finds work as a socio-cultural mediator. A job that allows her to come into contact with many migrants, many of whom are destined for exploitation in Italy and other parts of Europe, and with whom she offers her experience, her story, her time, her listening. “We are all exes of something,” says Roseline, and it is precisely to give a new meaning and a new form to torn and frayed existences that she and other friends give life to the Sartoria Sociale, a place of meaning and exchange, where you come in for a repair or a purchase and you stay to mend lives, with needle, thread and the gift of yourself.