A double glimpse, this one, which flows through time, during two generations.
Anotietta was 22 in 1958, when she worked in the Colonia (Eng.: summer camp).
Federica, her daughter, was born in 1975.
Today, her glimpse recalls her mother’s, who passed away, and whose tale is very similar to that of many former “Enians”, who today remember the Village, in which they’ve lived, inside a new community, in this exciting and unique social experiment, wanted by Mattei, who was able to grant so much cohesion to the “Eni people”. A great many of them remember that unique experience, consumed in the fantastic station of Borca, an experience far off in time by now, kept safe in the past. Like so many of them, today Federica too wants to come back here, to come back home, she tells us, to see what’s moving today, in the village, and how, and why. In this far but not buried place, not anymore, for which hope is born again…
There is a photo, black and white: two girls, one smiles brightly, the other has an air of tiredness about her, of disenchant: perhaps she knows already, that life is going to be hard, that nothing is a given. One of them is my mum, the other I don’t know. Behind them, a scribbled note: Borca, August the 19th 1958. I find a postcard, too, black and white, Borca 942 meters above sea level, from the same week. My mum was 22, and she worked in the kitchen of the Colonia (Eng.: summer camp building), Eni Village. I recognize the dining room in a video from those years. It’s incredible when a photo is unfolded and it tells a story. This is mine. Today, my mother isn’t here anymore, at some point, that bright smile became the one of the girl beside her, faraway, tired, bitter. It’s a story that wants to come home. I’d like to go there, where my mum, an August night almost sixty years ago, wrote to my aunt: ‘…To let you know that I’m pretty fine, and that there’s a lot to do in this Colonia, but when the evening comes and we’re all together, keeping each other company, everything is okay again’. I know, now, that there’s something new: I’d like to visit the Colonia, today. What’s left of it, what changed, what value it has, and it gains back, that place, today. For me, too.
Federica
