The International Day of Solidarity is celebrated on August 31 to raise awareness and stimulate the issue. In honor of this day, here is the review of What’s in your suitcase ?, a special issue that teaches us to be in solidarity
“The word solidarity has worn out a little and is sometimes misinterpreted, but it indicates much more than a few sporadic acts of generosity. It requires creating a new mentality that thinks in terms of community, of the priority of everyone’s life with respect to the appropriation of goods by some ”.
Pope francesco
The plot | Review What’s in your suitcase ?: solidarity day
The volpe, the chicken and the rabbit they see the arrival of one foreign, a strange, tired and dirty animal with a big suitcase. Intrigued, they decide to see what’s in there and break the suitcase. What they discover is truly a surprise and leads them to want to repair the damage caused. The friendship that is created is, for the stranger, a new home.
The world in a suitcase | Review What’s in your suitcase ?: solidarity day
The fox, the hen, the rabbit are animals common, known and which, therefore, do not arouse fear. The foreigner, on the other hand, it is not clear where he comes from, he is dirty and nobody knows him. The stranger is scary because stranger and even that huge suitcase he carries with him is frightening. As often happens fear is overcome with arrogance, with the force, in a group, because in a group you can hide behind someone else’s finger, you can strut and get hurt much more easily.
This is what the animals, the fox, the hen and the rabbit do. Careless and disrespectful of the newcomer and guided by unhealthy curiosity, they decide to break that dirty suitcase that the strange animal had brought. In so doing, they also break his world. Yes, because there were the goods, few to enter all, of that new arrival so apparently strange. The world in a suitcase, too small to even fill one.
The awareness of having destroyed something important pushes animals to do everything to repair the damage. The commitment will lead them to unite and open the doors to the different.
Distrust, fear and suspicion | Review What’s in your suitcase ?: solidarity day
The author, Chris Naylor-Ballesteros, claims to have relied on the emergency refugees. It is not difficult to imagine the metaphors he talks about and which, reading the register, tell the vicissitudes of our protagonists.
The foreigner is the refugee: dirty, tired, strange and with a small suitcase in his hand. We are the three animals. We are the rich, the common ones, the ones everyone knows and no one would ever suspect. We are the ones who suspect the different, the lonely, the dirty and what the foreigner experiences is what the refugee has to endure: being deprived of his life, his possessions and his affections.
This is what happens to those who arrive in a foreign country scared but excited about the life to come. It is seen with distrust, with fear, with suspected. What will there ever be in that suitcase? It must be discovered, it must be opened, it must be destroyed.
And here, the register differs from reality, at least from what is often reality: animals show solidarity. They realize what they have done and try to remedy, they know, help, appreciate the stranger. They find out what it is empathy, the compassion and the real one friendship.
We decide the fear of the unknown, of the stranger, of what is unknown. The unknown is such until you decide to know him.
International solidarity day
It was first established on 31 August 2005 by the UN but is remembered a further time on December 20 to coincide with the day of the creation of Bottom from Solidarity Global.
Points in favor
- A significant, metaphorical but flowing register
- Understandable to everyone, even to children
- Treats important issues with delicacy and touches everyone’s minds