“Giulio, old mouse, where did you hide yourself?”. The deposit chief Seium Baraki is proud of showing his authority and he is happy that he can do that in fluent italian, that he learned 60 years ago at the primary school “Vittorio Emanuele” of Asmara.
Giulio is coming out of the boiler of the Breda, he is small and wrinkly, is walking with jumps, like a faulty engine; he could have eighty years, his black skin is grey for the soot. The deposit chief points at him laughing: “His name was Abraha Ikuar; but the italians started to call him Abraha Giulio, at the end he became Giulio and stop for everybody, also for us eritreans” The small man, bent by the arthritis, should have heard this story an infinity of times, but he is still patient: “yes, the italians used to tell me: “Giulio, old mouse, come here, disassemble, scrape, clean. I did not get angry, it was so then..and it is so also now.
 

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Dromedaries and rails.
Left, the map of Eritrea, former italian colony between Sudan and Ethiopia. The railway Massaua-Asmara was built by the italian soldiers between 1887 and 1911. Lenghtened until Agordat and then fallen into ruins , the railway became a pathway for the nomadic tribes (photo above). For the rebuiding the old sleepers have been recovered that had been used in the independence war bunkers, and also the old locomotives (bottom left).