Aisha the only pupil from Ginostra: 'I can't wait'

Who her new teacher will be does not yet know, but the adventure that awaits her does not worry her at all. On the contrary. She looks forward to September Aysha, not yet six years old and already with a record: being the (only) pupil of the smallest school in Europe. "I can't wait to go to school," she says. It was her parents, Raffa Bazine and Monica Abbate, he 40-year-old Tunisian, she 33-year-old Sicilian, who allowed her to 'win' the record. They are united by their mad love for Ginostra, the tiny village that is a kind of island on the island of Stromboli where they have decided to live.

'For us, this is the place of the soul,' they say. 'We are in love with our paradise, nature, the sea, even the volcano that looms over our homes. And we don't want to leave'. It's just that living in a very isolated centre, which can only be reached by sea, which in winter has about forty residents, a grocery store that is often closed and little else, creates some practical problems. For example, where to send Aysha, who will be in first grade in September, to school. "Stromboli is out of the question because the hydrofoil timetable cannot be reconciled with the lessons, Lipari would have been very difficult to reach, especially in winter, when connections by sea are at a standstill,' says the mother, who is the mayor's delegate in Ginostra, 'and we would have been forced to split up. My husband, who has a small construction company, would have had to stay here, me and the child would have had to move'. A hypothesis that the couple, who have been together since 2015 (Ginostra itself was the galeotte), did not want to consider.

And so, pen and paper in hand, the two wrote to the mayor and the head of the Lipari Comprehensive School, Patrizia Muscolino, and to the Messina Provincial School Office, recounting their problem and asking for a branch school to be opened in Ginostra. No sooner said than done. The proposal was accepted and from September Aysha will sit at her desk in the recently renovated premises of the Canonica. "We have been thinking about our daughter's education ever since Monica was pregnant," says Raffa. "My wife taught her to read and write fearing that she would have to do homeschooling, and we let her study English, but we always knew that the school would be a knot to untie in a serious way. Families also tend to leave the village because of the problem of their children's studies. Who knows if, knowing the great achievement we have achieved, there will be a reversal of the trend". Soon, perhaps, Aysha will have companions, although socialisation does not seem to be a problem. "She hangs out with peers who stay here even for months at a time, she has learnt a few words of German from the children of neighbours who holiday in Ginostra, she is a serene child," say her parents. "We have tried to reconcile our values, living in nature away from stress, with her needs. We try to give her experiences, we take her skating for kilometres, we let her stay with her grandparents in Barcellona Pozzo di Gotto'. Aysha is used to being outdoors, has a dog she adores, Sven (like the reindeer from Frozen), and is not bored.

"From September she will be confronted with the teacher," smiles Monica, who faces the inconveniences that living in Ginostra entails without becoming discouraged. 'In the end, everything here is less complicated than it seems,' she says, 'You just have to organise yourself. The community is small and we help each other. "Not that we don't quarrel,' she laughs, 'it's as if we were in a condominium, but we face problems together. She and her husband are involved in the Civil Defence, help out at the Medical Guard, tend the vegetable garden. A world that, with the new school for their daughter, is now ideal for them.