Berlin-Barcelona, Washington-Cagliari, Larnaca-Taranto. Chapter 2.
A month in my life.
As my four readers know, (as Alessandro Manzoni wrote, but I am more humble and say four and not twenty-five) as a volunteer I transport organs from the hospitals of living, voluntary donors to the patients, often on the other side of the world. You can read my article on the subject here. My journeys are filled with the books I read, the books I listen to when I go running, the work I do remotely in airports, hotels, co-working spaces and bars, but first and foremost the people I talk to. And those I think of: the donor and the patient, two strangers living at opposite ends of the world whose destinies and genetic material will be forever united.
In this post, I would like to tell my four readers about special moments from three missions I carried out all in a single month of a particular year. Of course, I can’t share the specifics because the routes of our transports are kept strictly secret.
2. Washington DC, US — Cagliari, Italy
I arrive in Washington DC in the evening and leave the hotel in search of an American electrical adapter because I forgot mine. The hotel receptionist offers to accompany me and as we walk he tells me that he never talks to anyone and spends his evenings at home staring into space. He is a little older than my son, 23 years old. He keeps repeating that he is unlucky because he is black. I tell him that if I focused on the fact that I am a woman I would be ruined. He replies that being black in America is different because it is a nation founded on exploitation. He follows me to dinner and sits with me to talk while I eat, I lecture him telling him to go back to school and stop smoking pot because he only has one life to live to the fullest. I notice that I sound like my parents, and then he goes back to work.
The following day I take an eight-hour-long walk among the cherry blossom trees with my beloved Argentinean cousin Andrea who lives in Baltimore and her wonderful family. Her incredibly smart four-year-old daughter Emma chats with us constantly jumping from Italian (her father’s language) to Spanish (her mother’s language) to English (her language at school).
I spend the afternoon reading ‘Bush at War’ in front of the White House, where it feels like all the political protests of the world are focused on demanding justice from a hero who seems to inspire the trust of a surprisingly large swath of the population. In the book I find out, not to my surprise, that the CIA outsourced people to torture and kill suspected terrorists after the 9/11 attacks. Reading the book I also realise that none of the decision makers has read “No more Vietnams” by Richard Nixon and are therefore copy and pasting those same mistakes.
As I read, two policemen with ‘Secret Police’ written on their bulletproof vests are standing in front of me. I tell them that if they were really so secret they wouldn’t be broadcasting it. They give me a dirty look as a reply.
I chat with a man holding a sign in front of the White House that reads ‘Hate won’t make America Great Again’. He explains: “When I was young I thought all Americans were equal since we are all migrants! In college I realised that blacks were horribly ghettoised and disadvantaged, shut out of the right neighbourhoods and opportunities. I joined many others in the 1968 protests, thinking: when I am old I will tell my grandchildren about this absurd situation and the people who back then were still so incredibly stupidly racist. I am now 80 years old, still saying the same obvious crap. The fundamental problem is not capitalism, which might even work, but greed, which has no end. Greed ruins everything, and people losing out from it blame their misfortunes not on the greed-ridden system of the better-off but on the scapegoat of the less fortunate.”
The next morning, I do a two-day and one-night transport via Washington-Frankfurt, Frankfurt-Rome, Rome- Cagliari. When I arrive at the airport in Italy, running with an organ fridge in my hand, the policeman at the border control doesn’t even notice it and instead makes a nasty joke about my bare arms, asking me if I feel hot. Sometimes I wish I could wear a Burqa.
I deliver, exhausted, at night and am rewarded by being told that those tiny bags that I guarded with so much love would give life back to a small child, who would be operated on that same night. I tell the doctor to tell him that he will grow up to be a great scholar and will make the world a better place.
I imagine the doctors waking up the exhausted family and the sleepy child in the middle of the night and telling him that it has arrived. The miraculous gift from the other side of the world that will save their son’s life has arrived.
If you want to be part of this, register as a donor today in your national registry: https://lnkd.in/dWzArY4