STEFANIA ROUSSELLE FOR “THE WORLD” By Stefania Rousselle
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PortraitFor this new series, journalist and director Stefania Rousselle sets off on the roads of France, with a simple question: "How are you?" ". This week, Daniel Bodi, 70, retired railway worker in Livernon, in the Lot.
“I remember my mother, who at 7 o'clock in the morning, shouted to my father while she was washing the laundry: 'I have nothing to cook! Go see if you kill me a rabbit!” He took his rifle, two cartridges, the hammer, and “Bang!”. Ten minutes later, he brought us one.
My father, his name was Manuel. He was Spanish. When Franco staged his coup, he had to escape. He was a Republican, and people like him, they got murdered. Like a hundred thousand other people, he had crossed the border. The French State gave them planks, nails, and they built their own huts on the beaches of Collioure, Argelès and Barcarès. My father ended up finding a job in a middle-class house here in the Lot. He tended the garden. And my mother, she had already been there for a few years. She took care of the children, the meals – everything a maid did. Her parents had put her there at 12, they had too many mouths to feed at home. My parents had my brother and settled in a small house which became the meeting point for the resistance fighters. I was born ten years later, on the farm they rented in Borne. In the spring, I watched the birds. The blackbirds made eggs with a blue shell. I watched the comings and goings of the magpies tending their chestnuts. And then I climbed the trees to look into their nest. I raised some too. My magpie, she was always riding on the dog's back!
Desire to work
My parents wanted me to study. They wanted me to be a teacher. They put me on board for that. And it was really not easy for people who had little means. Sheets, all that, it cost them dearly. But I didn't want to be dependent on them. I wanted to work. So when I was 17, I took my bike on a Sunday and went to see my brother's boss: “When can you start? – Right now." The next day, I became a transporter in a logging operation. And one day, I think it was a year after I started, I had a load of wood to transfer to wagons at Assier station. I arrived at 7 o'clock in the morning and at 10 o'clock in the evening I was still there. And there, there is a railroad worker passing by. He had stars on his cap, I thought he was a soldier: “But tell me? Here goes the overtime!” I was coming out of college, I didn't understand: "What do you mean, overtime?" I tell him that I earn 350 francs a month. “But it's not okay, this pay. You just have to come to us! "How is it with you?" “Bah, at the SNCF!”
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