Baunei in mourning for Baba, the Senegalese carpenter who died after 12 years of agony

The news of the death of " Baba ", the Senegalese carpenter living in Baunei since 2005, and since 2010 enticed by the after-effects of carbon monoxide poisoning, spread quickly in the mountain center, where the unfortunate immigrant he had moved after finding a job in a carpentry shop.

Integration

Mbaye Casse, for all "Baba", was 55 years old and throughout Ogliastra he has been a positive example of possible integration for years. A young carpenter in Senegal, at the beginning of the 2000s he arrived in Novara, and like many of his compatriots, he made a living as a street vendor. In 2005 he landed in Sardinia and one day, along the Via Orientale Sarda in Baunei, he found himself in front of Walter Pusole's carpentry . The love for the profession he left in Senegal leads him to offer himself as a helper: Pusole takes the proposal seriously and hires him. Baba becomes one of the family in the home of Walter and Carmen, the wife of the Baunese carpenter, who together help him obtain a residence permit.

Meanwhile Baba, thanks to the interest of the then parish priest Don Piergiorgio Pisu. he goes to live in a house owned by the parish of Baunei, in the historic center. On February 19, 2010 , the tragedy : the fumes of a brazier cause him a carbon monoxide poisoning that makes him fall into a coma that will last eleven months . In the meantime, his wife Fatu also arrives in Baunei, together with their two sons Amarì and Papi and the little girl of the house, Codu. Baba awakens from a coma, but nothing will ever be the same again. The family is integrated, Amarì and Papi play soccer in the country's amateur team, but Baba is enticed. Thursday the sad conclusion of a story that in 2005 seemed to have a potentially happy ending.

Come back in

Yesterday morning Amarì and Papi returned to Baunei from Northern Italy, where they found work, to share the pain with their mother and sister, who remained in the village. Walter and Carmen, in contact with the representatives of the Senegalese community in Sardinia, are following all the procedures for organizing the transport of the body to Senegal, where Baba, the carpenter who became an itinerant and who returned a carpenter to Baunei, will rest forever in the city. natal, Diurbel, 150 kilometers from Dakar.

Giampaolo Porcu