The Cook, the Carpenter and the Migrants

Available for over a year

As the first port of call for most of the boats that survive the journey from North Africa, Italy has more first-hand experience than most European countries of the Mediterranean migrant crisis. Emma-Jane Kirby meets ordinary Italians to hear about the practicalities of the arrival of so many desperate people and how they are coping emotionally seeing such sadness and suffering in close proximity. Housewife Maria Gratzia is a volunteer chef with a big heart and a big voice. Each week she doles out hundreds of kilos of pasta to the newly arrived migrants. Emma talks to a grave digger who has buried many of the bodies washed up on the beach, a hospital director who has had to completely reorganise his hospital to cope with the new patients, an optician who rescued dozens of drowning migrants on a weekend sailing trip and a carpenter who makes crosses for migrants from the wrecks of the boats that brought them to Europe.