The cover of the book by Don Ennio Stamile.
They are called Concasseur The children of the village of Paouignan, in Benin, who begin very young to split granite stones. Don Ennio Stamile, priest of the diocese of San Marco Argentano-Scalea and regional contact person of the Libera in Calabria association, in 2007 founded the Volunteer Association San Benedetto Abate and often visited the African country, where some development projects were started, “Including the orphanage managed by Augustinian nuns in Sakété, which houses several dozen children”. He wanted to tell this invisible reality in the volume Lazare. Dreams of a Concasseur Published by Castelvecchi (pp. 128, € 16.50): “The proceeds from sales will be entirely donated to the village of Paouignan, where we were the first time in November 2022”, specifies Don Stamile, where “we wake up with the bitter taste of fatigue, which accompanies you from the early hours of dawn until the sunset of the sun. Too strong is the fear of not giving up that little pennies that allow you to live another day. For all the inhabitants of the village, the future has no history and the past is without memory. The rain is scarce and the earth has everything, even the tears, “he says in the book. «Even if considered a mother, he knows how to donate only dust and sometimes mud. It is red as the color of the sun at sunset, like the blood that often flows from the fragile fingers of Concasseurso they call them the children of that village, who begin to split stones to two years ».
In this village, to which the San Benedetto Abate Association intends to provide “a spaccapietre machine to prevent the children from doing it, after receiving the authorization of the-items”, there is nothing, “apart from the school. No health care, if something goes wrong, we rely on the healer on duty. In order to survive in the village of Paouignan, stones must be split, from the first years of life. A job that accompanies everyone’s existence, since you are able to hold a hammer in hand, about two years, until hands and arms are too weak to be able to hold it. A routine that marks the days and in every corner of that amendment, from sunrise to sunset, you can hear the unmistakable noise of the metal. Almost like small rinses, those hammered fill every moment of the day, until the sunlight gives in the dark of the night ».
Lazare, who is only one of the children exploited in the juvenile work, was 13 years old when Don Stamile knew him personally in 2023: he and many others reduce the stones in fragments then sold to the building industry for the production of reinforced concrete. The boys split the smaller stones before dawn, from 5 to 7 in the morning, and after school from 15 to 18.30; The gain of the sale of the stone is very small (€ 1,20 for four basins of material) and goes to the family. To document the situation, too The photographic exhibition “Dreams of Stone” with the shots of Emanuele Giacomini, set up from 25 July until 7 September in the Church of Calvary in Bonifati (Cosenza) as part of the 16th edition of the Benedictine Culture Week, This year on the theme “Ponti builders. For unarmed and disarming peace”. “The photographs can be purchased,” Don Stamile informs. “Also in this case, the proceeds will be donated to our project dedicated to the village of Paouignan for the purchase of a Spaccapietre machine, which will allow you to relieve children’s work”.
(In the photo above, the Children Spaccapietre)
