A toothless smile
Hi, I’m Davide Pignata. I was almost 8 years old when ASCS was born. At that age I had a toothless smile. Fixed teeth slowly grew over the holes left by baby teeth. I was almost 8 years old when ASCS was born. At that age I had a toothless smile. Fixed teeth slowly grew over the holes left by baby teeth.
8 years ago I met ASCS. Since then, in a way, I have relived the dynamic, in this non-dental case, of the fall of the unstable, believed fixed, and the slow growth of the unexpected.
I had just graduated from high school when I met the Scalabrinians and ASCS youth work in Puglia at Camp Io Ci Sto. The wind from the Borgo Mezzanone track threw the dusty concreteness of caporalato in my face, evidence of the labyrinths of injustice underlying our system of consumption.
Over the next three summers I returned again to the Gargano, feeling uncomfortable and in the right place at the same time. This feeling, of uncomfortableness and home, is a constant with my ASCS companions and fellow travelers. I found it again on the Balkan route, when, at the end of a journey that started in Gaziantep and ended in Trieste, I saw growing in us the deep sense of injustice in the face of the walls of black Europe. I found it again in Bolivia, feeling brothers and sisters the inhabitants of a home not my own. I found it again, finally, in Trieste, Ceuta and Calais, where, squeezed on the border they try to build small shared spaces of solidarity.
The people I met with ASCS radically changed my life, opening up avenues still only brightly sketched.
I wish ASCS continued discomfort, creating, at the same time, flashes of home and community.