On Pentedattilo – Anna Dotti in Der Spiegel:

‘Pentedattilo is the name of the village in the very south of Italy where every third house no longer has a roof. It is home to 10 cats, one dog and three people. Every hour on the hour, the bell of the village church chimes just for them. When it rang out six time on a springtime evening in late April and the dog started barking, a dozen American tourists streamed out onto the terrace of a single-story white house.’

(…)

‘And to meet the two people who have decided to live their lives in the middle of nowhere: Rosa Aquilanti and Maka Tounkara. A woman from Italy, a former mail carrier in her mid-60s, and refugee from Mali in his mid-30s. Together, the two of them have become something of a tourist attraction on their own.’

(…)

‘Rosa Aquilanti was born in Italy on July 14, 1959, about one-and-a-half hours north of the capital Rome by car. Most people in Calabria call her Rossella.
Makandiana Tounkara was born in Mali on December 31, 1988, around three-and-a-half hours west of the capital Bamako by car. In Calabria, most people call him Maka, though Aquilanti frequently calls him Maki.
Aquilanti wanted to see the world, Tounkara did not. Aquilanti worked in northern Italy as a mail carrier after finishing school. Tounkara never went to school, instead working on his uncle’s farm, milking cows and camels even as a child. As soon as she had saved a bit of money, Aquilanti quit working and traveled through Italy, driven by curiosity and love. One time, the cows he was responsible for grazed on fields where they were not permitted. Tounkara would have had to pay – but he had no money. So he left his home village – out of necessity, he says.
Aquilanti says that when she was on the Sicilian island of Lipari, a friend told her about the abandoned village in Calabria. She traveled to Pentedattilo, she says, fell in love with the place and ultimately settled there. After a few years, she fell in love with a man and moved with him to Africo.
Tounkara, meanwhile, worked in the Malian capital of Bamako, then in Algeria and then in Libya, where he ended up in prison as a migrant. He says he was then bought free by a Libyan man and worked for him to pay off his debt. When he then wanted to return to Mali, he paid a migrant smuggler to take him there, since the war in northern Mali made it impossible to cross the border legally. But, he says, he was put into the wrong group of migrants. He made it to Sicily across the Mediterranean Sea and, a short time later, ended up in the refugee hostel in Africo.’

(…)

‘Tounkara says he admires Aquilanti for her humanity and her ability to accept him almost like a son. She likes life in Pentedattilo, says Aquilanti. She enjoys the direct ties to nature. Tounkara says that he enjoys working on the land there, but he would rather live in a city where there are more people. Or to have his own house in the village: Aquilanti, he says, is too messy for him.
Aquilanti says that she is happy that she never had children. Tounkara, though, says that if he had stayed in Mali, he would have married his girlfriend long ago and become a father. If Aquilanti could make a wish, she would wish for enough water in the heat of summer for her vegetable garden. If Tounkara could make a wish, he would wish for enough money to be able to send his mother to the Hajj in Mecca.
It's later in the evening and they have no guests for dinner. Aquilanti is sitting in the kitchen and eating a pork cutlet while Tounkara is washing carrots at the sink for his own dinner. Mutton is boiling in a pot. They never share a meal together.
She asks him: "Maki, when I die, will you leave Pentedattilo?” "I’m here because I enjoy helping you, Rossella. That’s the only reason,” Tounkara replies. "There are only rocks and holes here, holes and rocks.” When he leaves the kitchen, she says: He doesn’t know it, but when she dies, she will be leaving the house to him.’

Read the article here.

Strange bedfellows, but it seems to work.

I don’t think this is the solution for the depopulation in rural Italy among other parts of Europe.

But most probably solutions are not always needed.

The postponement of the total collapse will do in most cases.