James Copnall

In a small Italian village, perched on a hillside above the Mediterranean Sea, I saw something that immediately transported me thousands of kilometres away.

It was a coffee pot – a bulging brown pot with a narrow spout and a semi-circular handle.

It looked like the sort of pot that would be used for elaborate ceremonies or simply an afternoon coffee in Eritrea, Ethiopia or Sudan.

The only difference? This pot wasn’t given pride of place on a silver platter, next to incense and a bowl of popcorn.

Instead, it was embedded in the wall of a house.

The house had recently been purchased by Philemon, a migrant who first came here a decade ago.

He was renovating the property before moving in, and he wanted a reminder of home for everyone to see.

I told Philemon I had lived in Sudan, and it looked very much like the sort of coffee pot – the jebena – I had often see there.

He laughed, and said the pot, like him, was from Eritrea, adding with a smile that it was Eritrea who had given that sort of coffee pot to Sudan, not the reverse.

Philemon is a long way from Eritrea, but his new house will always display part of the land he left.

Source: BBC