Today Linkedin reminds me that I have been part of CELIM for 27 years! Actually, the story began a few years earlier when, together with Paola, we wanted to embark on this adventure that became life.

The 27 months in Siavonga were a turning point: the first steps as a family in a reality as real and strong as the Zambian one marked and changed us. Encountering dignity in spite of poverty, touching human frailty attached to a wire or a passage to the hospital, the unpredictability of the success of our efforts related to rains or the illness of a charismatic figure, the helplessness in the face of tragedies hitherto only imagined, guided our choices and the life we decided to live upon our return.

Those years we carry them with us as a cherished memory, but they were the basis of our children’s education and the beacon to follow in our daily choices.

Thank you CELIM for welcoming us and accompanying us on this journey of ours that … is our life!

Davide Raffa
Zambia