Born twice

Being in the right place at the right time. Without wanting to, without having planned anything. And finding himself saving the lives of 47 people. God? Destiny? Providence?
Vito Fiorino doesn’t ask himself that question anymore. He only knows that that night of October 3, 2013 changed his life forever. He had lived on the island for years. He had chosen it as the place of his heart after years of working in the north. That evening he had gone out on his boat to go fishing with some friends.
It was getting late and the group had decided to sleep and wait at anchor for a new day to arrive. No one would have imagined finding themselves in the middle of the worst migrant shipwreck ever to have occurred in Lampedusa. “It was just after six and we heard voices,” Vito recalls today, “they sounded like seagulls, but they weren’t. In front of us we found hundreds of people who were about to drown and were asking for help. We were overcome with fear.”

At that point, what did you do?
We certainly couldn’t turn away. I thought about the values ​​that had always guided me and I decided not to listen to fear. We started helping those people. My boat was small, I thought I wouldn’t be able to take more than 4 or 5 castaways on board. In reality, I didn’t look at the numbers anymore. I only stopped when we realized that the boat couldn’t accommodate more.
In the end I saved 47: the oldest was 38, the youngest was 13 with a terrible story. He had escaped from Eritrea two years earlier, wandering in the desert. Now he lives in Stockholm.

From that moment on, a bond was born with all these kids. She is still in contact with them and often goes back to visit them in the Northern European countries where they live today…
It all started from an episode.
Once we arrived at the dock, one of the survivors pointed me out while talking on the phone with a friend. He used the word father. It’s the first word in English that I learned and that opened my heart. At that moment there was the happiness of having saved so many people, but that feeling became even greater when I felt somehow like a father to them. It was natural to continue having a relationship, just like a father who opens his arms to his children. It's crazy to think of this closeness with people I didn't even know. But that's exactly how it went.

Do you ever think about those who didn't make it?
Always, also because I think that more could have been done to save those people.
They are terrible stories. Among the corpses they also found the body of a woman with her son still attached to the umbilical cord. How can we accept situations like these? We must not stop remembering these stories. In Lampedusa we created a memorial to give a name to the dead who in some cases were only indicated by a number.

But behind the numbers there are always people. How has your life changed today?
Today I feel called to bear witness, to meet people, young people and children to make them reflect on this humanity that lives on our doorstep. After all, we are all a little migrants. I have always lived in the north, but I come from Puglia and I have sometimes been mistreated for my origins. I remember that for six years at the beginning I slept in a cellar in Sesto San Giovanni. I was little and I didn't realize, but my relatives suffered a lot. We must not forget these stories.
I always talk about them to the young people I meet. I want to make them understand in my small way that we need true and authentic testimonies, not fiction. Only the encounter with humanity can make us more human.

What feedback is it getting?
Beautiful. When I tell the drama of that night in Lampedusa, I see shining eyes, I receive hugs.
All this tells me that I must not stop. I will continue until the end.

Renato Bonomo
NP Focus
May 2024