Description of the integration initiative implemented
Upon her arrival in Italy, our interviewee was involved into the SPRAR programme, i.e. Protection System for Asylum Seekers and Refugees: within the project, she was involved in social integration programmes and language courses promoted by the Asylum System, which altogether has played a great weight in her life experience in Italy. Very soon, and along with the institutional support, she put in play all of her own coping strategies and tools so as to achieve a higher degree of integration and socio-economic self-confidence.

Personal story
Our interlocutress is a young Somali woman (36) who shared her life story with us.
She left Somalia with her sister when she was 18. They were moving by land, step by step, from Somalia to Ethiopia, from Ethiopia to Sudan, from Sudan to Libya … and finally to Italy. At every stage of their journey they had to pay. In Somalia and Ethiopia, they were moving by bus or other means. In Sudan, instead, you must walk for 9-10 hours at night through the desert, avoiding cities … you must always move in group, 27-30 people. In the desert between Sudan and Libya, the traffickers just took the car and drove away, they left them while they were sleeping. After that, they walked for some two days ... two young men died. They arrived at an oil refinery in the desert, where they were assisted. Police was called, and they ended up in jail for four months ... those were prisons separated by gender, where the prettiest girls used to be taken away and raped. A guy bought them, as you’re not in jail for a crime. After that, he asked for money to release them, actually he wanted the phone number to call home, to their family, to get money sent to release them...
It took a lot of time to get from South to North Libya, and finally to the embarkation point... Once there, they had to wait for the sea to calm down … meanwhile, they had been locked in a house with other men and women for almost a year – you couldn’t go out from there for fear of ending up in jail. Then, they were put into a container, and asked not to make noise … a 4-month-old baby girl was given a small bottle of tranquilliser as she was crying – the child didn’t speak or eat for a week, and now that she’s 9 years old she still doesn't speak.
No one saw them landing, they arrived in a city, in Sicily … it was 2007 … eventually, police arrived and took them to a reception centre in Trapani where they stayed for 20 days. “As soon as we got our residence permits, they let us out of the door at 5 in the morning without knowing a word of Italian, with nothing, no money... We walked, and once reached the station, which was rather far, we took a random train without knowing where we would arrive to, and we got to Palermo...” In Palermo, they were hosted for two days by a group of nuns who advised them to go to Florence ... “by the way, the nuns forced us to pray before meals.” With 20 euros each, offered by the convent, they had to find a train ticket ... After some two days, they left for Florence where a youngster fetched them at the station, and hosted at his place in Signa: “after four days, he said we had to leave as he couldn't host us any longer. We didn’t know where to go, and he introduced us to a Somali girl … she accompanied me to Ciompi Square to file my asylum application.”
“Anyway, I didn't know where to stay as they would have taken me in after two days.” Through the project [referring to SPRAR*], our interviewee was accommodated in Carmignano, she didn't even know where was that place … “it was a house in the country, isolated, cold, without blankets” … Then, a SPRAR social worker (f) accompanied her to Prato without explaining how to go back, and “I still didn't know a word of Italian, only a little Arabic and a little English. So, I spent a night out in the open.” The next morning, she managed to contact the social worker (f) through personal contacts of a Somali mediator (f), out of the SPRAR programme, and to get herself back home [*Protection System for Asylum Seekers and Refugees].
In that period, she started taking Italian courses two days a week … she didn't know how to spend her time – all day chatting at internet points … actually, once having chatted for too long, she missed the last bus. She didn’t know what to do, then she saw a woman with a veil, and approached her – she was Somali: “I asked if I could go to her place, and this is how the friendship with her family started … besides, they paid me a private Italian-language course in exchange for babysitting” …
Her sister, who refused to stay in Italy, went to Holland with a humanitarian permit … she got married there, and had a baby with a Somali man having Dutch papers. She was brought back from Holland to Italy by plane … in Rome, she was given a permit … after that, she left for Switzerland with her husband.
Over the years, our interviewee has become fluent in Italian, and trained in social work, so she works now as a mediator and social worker with asylum seekers and refugees. Given her expertise, she makes some remarks on the Asylum System in Italy, as follows.
Judging by her own experience, the priority is to find a person who will help you at the beginning, who will guide you, inform you ... who will take into account the situation of Sub-Saharan migrants … “I mean, it has become normal to see people in pain, crying, and no one pays any attention to it.” And, newcomers need information, even the most trivial one, such as: "What is the health card? What is it for? Where do I get my health card? … Can I have a travel document? How far can I get with this ticket?” Another essential thing is a place to sleep: the places are few and little known. Moreover, there is a need for vocational training courses enabling people to start working. The workers [referring to SPRAR social workers] are not good at languages, not even English, and do not have adequate training…
As for women, one has to be even more careful with them being they more vulnerable subjects … and many places are full of men, instead [referring to shelters] … an “open-door service for women” would be needed, a place where they could take a shower, have a rest, access information, etc.
No strong community exists, some people have been living here in Italy for a long time, and many of them – esp. women – work as caregivers, others have arrived now, and several are living in squats. To boot, the relationships between people from different regions [of Somalia] are conflicting – north, south, centre. Finally, there are people who are used to war, who perceive it as normal, without being used to laws, to a State, not even to being helped, hence they do not look favourably on the people who do so.

Analysis of the initiative and individual story
The narratives collected among women native to Sub-Saharan Africa, who experienced long journeys through the Sahara Desert and the Mediterranean, provide an opportunity to shed light on diverse issues concerning their life in Africa, and their migration paths towards Europe. In the absence of data by gender (as frequently occurring), these narratives represent sources that offer valuable elements for an analysis of their native contexts, migration projects, long land and sea journeys, pathways to integration in host societies, as well as of more personal – both positive and negative – experiences that women migrants native to the Sub-Saharan Africa have to undergo on their way to Europe. As a such, this life story, as told by a young Somali woman, is rather revealing as it conveys much significant information about the entire phenomenon. In terms of analysis, another important is the following: our interviewee highlights the fact that people here, in Italy, often do not have a thorough understanding of what is really going on in Africa, and especially in its Sub-Saharan regions; many people have a partial knowledge of the situation or just imagine that there is hunger, armed conflicts, political instability etc.; yet, they do not know the real hell that torments the African continent, a hell that is raging over there by way of a number of infernal situations that millions of people have to face on a daily basis. This is why she feels, in terms of a success story, that her migratory experience – with all of its challenges and difficulties – had brought her about embracing the salvation. Accordingly, her experience can be split into two important stages: the first one that regards her journey up to her arrival in Italy; the second covers the set of professional, linguistic, and sociocultural pathways that have taken her to a gradual fulfilment in terms of her social and working integration in Italy.

Results and Impact
Our Somali interlocutress ceaselessly reminds that she has found salvation in Italy. In practical terms, the set of resilience factors that have brought her story about seeing successful outcomes are to be taken into account. In conclusion, the interviewee is: a recognised refugee; fluent in Italian; a mediator and social worker working with asylum seekers and refugees; and actively involved in sociocultural and political life, and in campaigns on migrations, esp. female migrations and related topic.