(TriceEdneyWire.com/GIN)—Two African migrant workers, escaping race riots in southern Italy, made a way out of no way when they turned adversity into a prospering business in a major Italian city.
Today their enterprise, called “Barikama” or “resistance” in the Bambara language, shows what can be done by migrants despite prejudice and low expectations in their new western homes.
Barikama, the brainchild of Suleiman Diara of Mali, produces organic yogurt and vegetables and delivers the products by bike. The agricultural co-operative is located near Rome. In 2008, Diara fled from Libya, the launch pad of thousands of Africans caught in the midst of wars, droughts, and oppressive regimes. His escape, aboard a leaky boat, carried him to Italy, where the young man found farmwork, picking fruit—a job held by many Africans without papers or funds.
“We slept in shacks made of cardboard and plastic tarps; we were like slaves,” Diara told the French news agency France24. When local residents turned against the migrants in 2010, the migrants were evacuated from the area. Diara left for Rome where he and a Gambian friend improvised with a few liters of milk.
“We began by making yogurt, because it’s easy to make,” he recalled. “In Africa, all you have to do is let the milk sit for a few hours, so that it curdles, and you’ve got yogurt. In the beginning, we made our yogurt in the shelter we were living in. Progressively, people started to hear about us and buy our product.”
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