Today was the middle of the trip rest and rejuvenate day. In the morning, we had two guest speakers from Florence, Linda and Lisa. They are counselors who work with immigrant prostitutes. It was interesting to hear about the inner workings of human trafficking and immigration as it relates to prostitution and slavery. Prostitution is legal in Italy but organized crime has its part in it. Women are either brought into slavery by immigration and being unable to find jobs or through trafficking from their home country. Lisa and Linda spoke specifically about Nigerian and Albanian prostitutes. Nigerians are the ones who immigrate while the Albanians are brought unaware of the future they will have in Italy. Once they become involved the money is needed too much by their family to do something else. This is where these ladies and their organization help the women. They work with them regarding health needs, counseling in the office, and even meeting them on the streets to help them realize their options. Some of these prostitutes don’t even understand what rights they have or the laws of the country. In Italy, if you denounce your pimp (who is involved with organized crime) and report this to the police, you automatically receive a green card to stay in Italy, legally. It was highly enlightening and tragic to realize what is going on, even in 2009.
After that we had a free afternoon and a few of us decided to visit the small town where we are staying, Reggello. My UAB friend Brie and I walked all around town visiting several spots. One of the places we went to was the church. This church was quite a different site compared to the ones yesterday, but it was still amazing. The church was buit in the 1200s, but the bell tower is from the 800s (the clock was added in the 1800s when they became “fashionable”). Italy is so rich with history it just takes your breath away as you enter a building. We continued walking around and visited the grocery store, pharmacy (I got some olive oil soap), and of course the gelatoria….just don’t seem to get tired of that! We hurried back only to realize we missed the bus (by about 30 minutes, I had the time wrong), so we had an hour to wait for the next one. But this gave us an opportunity to sit on a park bench and just watch this little city around us. It was great an
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