Page 29 - A Life - my Live - my path

Herding goats and sheep in Italy

would have had to explain the urgent need that had come
over me; something impossible to imagine even at the age
of 4. My mother, who had her days packed, had to stop
everything, and come and get me.

This remains one of the highlights of my life.

When I was 5, my mother gave me two jobs to do.
The first was to take the donkey to the fountain, some 300
metres from the house, to get water. The path was steep. She
hoisted me onto her back, without a saddle, close to her
mane, which I held on to tightly so that I wouldn't fall off.
The donkey knew the way. When my mother patted him on
the back, he started off and went all the way to the fountain

by himself. I didn't have to do anything. But when he got to
the trough, he'd stand in front of it and wait. To get him to
start drinking, I had to whistle. As long as the donkey heard
my whistles, he drank. As soon as I stopped, he stopped too.
This little game could go on for minutes. When he'd drunk
his fill, he'd set off for home. On one of these outings, on the
way back a few dozen metres from the house, the donkey saw
a nice green plant and bent down to eat it. Obviously, I
slipped down its neck and hit my head on a stone that was
just in the right place to break my fall.
The second - and very important - job was that if you had
a few goats and sheep, you had to take them to graze where
the grass was green. Given the seasons and temperatures,
there were not many meadows where the grass stayed green.

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