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Recordiad sain / Audio recording: Lina Canale
Oral history recording with Lina Canale. She was born in Cervaro in the Montecassino area of Italy and moved to the Rhondda with her new husband when she was 20. Part 2 of 3 (AV 11357 - 11359). Her husband, son and grandson have also been recorded as part of the project: See AV 11360 - AV 11362. Recorded as part of the Italian Memories in Wales project (2008-10), delivered by ACLI-ENAIP and funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund.
To begin with, Lina was very shy. In addition, she felt she had nothing to add to what Steve had already said because, in her view, he had spoken for both of them. But, as a first generation Italian, who lived in Italy through the second world war in one of the most conflicted parts of the country (in the Montecassino area), Lina had different life experiences at least until she reached her 20th birthday, which is when she left Cervaro and, with her new husband, came to Wales. She was the last of five children and during the war. Whilst her three brothers, to avoid capture by the Germans, took off in different directions, her parents Lina and her sister, went to Roma citta aperta ‘open city’. They lived in an apartment, previously evacuated by a Jew, with many other families. Each family took a room, and Lina's family did the best they could in the circumstances to overcome their daily struggle. On that occasion however, her mother had to sell the family jewels to survive. Lina remember that the German had taken her nice family farm in Cervaro because it was strategically situated. The Germans killed the animals, used their land and before they finally retreated, they mined it. As a result, Lina commented, her family could not work the fields for some time. She met her future husband, Steve, when she was just twenty. Three months later, they were married and he took her to live with him in the Rhondda Valley. For a considerable amount of time, Lina remembered feeling a little lost. Although her mother, before she was born, had lived in Britain for nine years, Lina did not know a single word of English. As she was trying to convey to me her frustration for what she went through at the time, she started elbowing quite energetically her husband (sitting just next to her) and said to me, ‘I used to do this to him all the time’ (that is, pushing him to translate to her what she was trying to grasp but she couldn’t understand). ‘I was like a child'. Gradually however, things got better and for twenty one years she was busy running a large and lively café, called 'the Festival' in the middle of the town. Then, when Mario, her son was old enough, the shop was sold and she began helping her husband selling ice cream. She could not drive, so, she used to spend long days in the idyllic, but rather isolated Brecon Beacons, waiting for her husband to come and pick her up later at the end of their working day. Sometimes she was afraid to be in such remote places all alone and in the dark. Nowadays, she goes back and forth to Italy with her husband and like her husband, she feels very much Italian in Italy and quite Welsh in Wales.