Four girls are chatting on a bench in a courtyard. One of them is holding a small boy in her arms and another one is playing the guitar.
The girls are Eritreans who escaped from violent conflicts, and the courtyard is that of the Vizzini refugee center in Sicily, Italy.
"It has been two years since we left Eritrea," 20-year-old Salam told Xinhua. The girls said they reached Tripoli, where they were imprisoned for a year because of their Christian faith. In the end, around five months ago they managed to leave Libya paying around 1,000 U.S dollars each to attempt the perilous Mediterranean sea crossing.
They were rescued in a security operation conducted by Frontex, the European Union (EU) border security agency, to patrol borders and help save lives in the Mediterranean, Francesca Gilistro, head of the refugee center in Vizzini, a municipality with roughly 7,000 residents in southern Sicily, explained to Xinhua.
The second-level reception facility presently hosts a total of 26 recognized refugees, most of which are women, including six children. "Most of the migrants are hosted in the upper floor. Then we also give special assistance to those affected by mental disorders due to the violence suffered," Gilistro went on saying while showing Xinhua the names of the migrants - from Nigeria, Eritrea, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iran and Mali - written on their bedroom doors.
There was a pillow with a little cat design in one of the rooms. "Here is where little Abenisar sleeps," she noted. The small boy, who will turn three in January, every morning is taken to the kindergarten by one of the eight operators working at the center. "He already speaks Italian and is very naughty," she also added with a smile.
Senay, 29, is also Eritrean and is active part of center's everyday life. "Normally the migrants are hosted at second-level centers for six months. But Senay has started working here so that he has already been with us for three years," Gilistro said. "He helps with the various works, and is also responsible for the dogs," she said watching at him petting the head of a black dog adopted by the migrants.
"Many of the migrants suffer from panic attacks, crisis-related anxiety and other mental disorders when they get here," Gilistro, who is also a psychologist at the center, told Xinhua. "They may scream and tear their hair out, break objects and doors. Fortunately Senay has undergone successful rehabilitation and is feeling much better now," she noted.
Senay told Xinhua that he arrived in Italy five years ago after crossing many countries and hardly collecting 1,000 U.S. dollars to undertake the Mediterranean crossing from Libya. "I left with my friends, my parents are still in Eritrea. I came here to seek a better life," he said.
The migrants' stories are all the same full of sorrow and joy at the center, where they are offered the possibility to start an integration path. "These are their first handmade works," Gilistro said showing some decorative ceramics at the entrance of a nearby facility provided with classrooms, workshop tables and a large theater.
"They are taught Italian language here, while the ones with higher level of education are inserted in local public schools," she went on saying. At the weekend, the migrants are let free to travel by bus to the largest city nearby, Catania, where for example they can go to Church and meet friends.
Gilistro explained that the center, like all "Sprar" - protection system for asylum seekers and refugees - in Italy, is funded by the interior ministry which pays 35 euros (37.5 U.S. dollars) per day for each migrant, which include services, activities and salaries of the center's employees. Each migrant is given 1.5 euros (1.6 U.S. dollars) per day that they can spend or put aside.
"They feel safe here, but of course they think a lot of their countries of origin," she told Xinhua. In fact most of the migrants transiting in Sicily are willing to reach other European countries, where they can find a job and start a new life more easily, she noted.
But there are also successful stories of integration in Sicily, Gilistro highlighted. "Some time ago we hosted an Eritrean girl who was one of the 30 survivors of a tragic shipwreck in which 50 migrants died. Now she lives in Vizzini, where she has found a job as caregiver, and also a boyfriend from her same country," she said.
