ORTA DI ATELLA, Italy (CN) – Along the narrow country roads of southern Italy, there are African immigrants, most of them in their 20s and some even younger, on bicycles. They're going to and from work in fields and work sites.
They look so out of place in today's Italian countryside. After all, almost no one but cycling enthusiasts rides a bicycle, especially so far out in the countryside. Cars and trucks zoom by, the rush of wheels leaving these African cyclists wobbling.
These are narrow two-lane roads; there's hardly a shoulder. The sun beats down. Fields and orchards with maturing olives, grapes, tomatoes, watermelons, eggplants and peppers extend as far as the eye can see.
It's here in Italy's southern countryside, the heart of the country's agricultural sector, where tens of thousands of young African immigrants work as field hands and day laborers. And for so many of these men, their only means of transportation is a bicycle. Typically, they don't have the money and proper documents to own cars.
Strangely, these black men dressed in work clothes who labor against the pedals of beat-up mountain bikes and old upright town bikes, puffing and tottering through the countryside, evoke a bygone Italy – the Italy of “The Bicycle Thief,” the classic Italian post-World War II movie about a poor father who searches Rome for his stolen bicycle, his two-wheeled means of making a living.
At one time when Italy was poorer, as elderly Italians like to recount, the bountiful countryside was full of people walking and riding bicycles. There were field workers, postmen, veterinarians, students and knife grinders on bicycles, and many farmers walking, often leading donkeys. Today, though, it's almost exclusively Africans who go by bicycle or on foot through the countryside. Everyone else zips by in cars.
Theirs are lives of hardship and risk, African immigrants on bicycles told a Courthouse News reporter recently traveling through southern Italy.
Exploitation of immigrants in Italy's fields has been well-documented by nongovernment groups, news reports and police investigations.
But besides tough working conditions, another risk for these Africans is being hit by drivers while they ride to and from work. So far this year,at least seven Africans on bicycles have been hit by cars and killed, Italian news reports show. In July, several African field workers were struck by stone-throwing attackers as they rode bicycles in Foggia, a major agricultural province in the Puglia region.
Most of these men on bicycles arrived in Italy by way of treacherous journeys across the Sahara Desert from their homelands in sub-Saharan Africa and after making perilous crossings of the Mediterranean Sea in dinghies and rafts. Each one has a story of fleeing poverty, war, famine, abuse and other calamities.
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