Roberto Neumiller
SOS Sahel

Memory. I was on Facebook, browsing through a friend's profile who had posted photos from her trip to the beach, when suddenly I received a notification on my profile.

YOU HAVE BEEN TAGGED IN A PHOTO!

I quickly rushed to see which photo I was tagged in to check how I looked, if I looked good, if it was the New Year's Eve photos, if there were any mocking or approving comments....

I reached the indicated page and found this image. The first thing I thought was: it can't be a photograph; it must be a photo montage. How can they balance without falling? There are really too many of them! 

I was tagged in that photo together with many other friends and not, and the person who tagged us wrote something very unpleasant and racist, they wrote: go back home!

I saw that in small print on the photo, in the bottom right corner, there was something written, a name, "SOS Sahel". I went to check it out, and I discovered a website full of beautiful photos of this place called Sahel. I learned on Wikipedia that the Sahel is in Africa, and I understood many things.

We live in the fortunate part of the world, seeing these people so desperate as to board a truck 50 or maybe more all together, while instead here we are spending afternoons on Facebook, sending messages with iPhones....

This association, SOS Sahel, deals with Ethiopia, which Italy invaded during fascism, and so we all must feel guilty for what these people are going through, for the poverty and loneliness to which we have forced them.

Personally, after making this completely casual discovery, I felt ashamed. I was ashamed to be Italian. We talk about immigration, about illegal immigrants, but we never think about what is behind these people. These people come to Italy because they are fleeing their country, from wars, from hunger, from misery, from poverty. With what right can we tell them to go back? And then what do we do when they arrive in Italy, do we lock them up in detention centers? But why? What crime have they committed to be imprisoned?

What Italy does with detention centers is against human rights. It's impossible that no one talks about it and no one does anything. 

I am very superficial, but this photo, seemingly humorous, has changed the way we should see things; in a way, it changed me.

I am not very good at writing; I can't describe the photo and everything else well, but I wanted to make you reflect as I did, to make us understand how superficial we are about things. I want you to know this photo too, and maybe spread it, to show that all men are equal. There are no distinctions between white, black, yellow, red; all men are equal, and the earth belongs to no one. We shouldn't be afraid of foreigners because there's no reason to be.

There are many websites that deal with this topic, but I recommend visiting SOS Sahel, Roberto Neumiller's photographs are very touching.

I apologize if I am not very good at writing, but I hope my message has come across loud and clear. Thank you.