The point of a team is to work together and try to help each other. This is what I’m trying to do here
Nathali is from the Brazilian city of Mococa, a small municipality in the state of São Paulo, and her link to Italy is deeper than she thought at first. She moved in Lodi, close to Milan, for an exchange period during her PhD, and once there she discovered that the parents of her mother’s grandparents were Italians. A distant kinship that makes her stay in Italy deeply meaningful to her even because her ancestors came from an area really close to where she lives now.
“In Brazil we say tataravós where “avó” means grandfather and tataravó is the father of the father of my grandfather…it’s like the destiny is playing with me. I’m very glad to visit and live here for one year.”
She left Mococa to follow her studies at a very young age. She graduated in her bachelor in vet in Londrina, Paraná State, and she did both her master and residency in Uberaba, Minas Gerais State. The latter is a two-year period of specialization on “big animals” like equine, ovine, bovine and caprine. But on one animal she has always been fascinated with: the horse. She attended a training period at the “Universidade do Estado de São Paulo” of Jaboticabal and in that occasion she saw for the first time a treadmill room for horses. Thereafter, she understood she could connect her love for horses and her interest in physiotherapy with a PhD in Equine Exercise Physiology.
Physiology studies the behaviour of the entire body and the influence that external environments have on them, and the Equine Exercise Physiology focuses on the understanding of the equine athlete and on how it responds to exercise and training. In Jaboticabal, Nathali and her team work in a laboratory equipped with a treadmill for horses, necessary to evaluate the training and physical conditions. This area of study is important to understand how to help horses during physiotherapy, together with the acquaint exercise physiology of the horse. This last theme is the focus of her research period in Lodi together with the evaluation of pain, welfare and behavior of the equine.
Nevertheless, her arrival here was not the easiest. She had different problems with the application of the visa because of a problematic communication between the University of Jaboticabal and the one of Milan. This took so much time that she had to change her exchange period. At a certain point, fed up, she took the initiative and physically went to the Italian Consulate without that document, and it worked. She obtained her visa in a week. It took a lot of time also the issuance of her permit to stay in Italy. She also tells of having heard about many Brazilians who receive the permit to stay only when they are already back in their country and to have lived a much more difficult life while they were here in Italy.
The research of an apartment was not easy. The arrangements made turned out to be false upon her arrival in Lodi, she had to pay a higher rent price than the one agreed upon. She now lives closer to university, she moves by bike and what determines a significant positive effect along her path is her teamwork. They helped her a lot with everything from the Italian language, to how to pay the rent and the electricity bills. Sometimes they helped even if she did not ask for it.
“They are special to me, I’m grateful. They treat me very well, they are all very kind. Their support is essential”.
Even because of these relations, Nathali was happy to request an extension of her exchange period. The reason was that she needed more time for the analysis of the data collected, but she is happy to work some more months with them doing experiments and data collections.
In this way she is even improving her Italian that sometimes uses instead of English because it is more similar to Portuguese, “a mess”. At the beginning, outside the university circle, Italian was an issue for her. It is not easy to find people that speak English in Lodi and sometimes she felt that people were annoyed by her. They turned the language gap in an obstacle. Nevertheless, she really likes Lodi and its calm lifestyle that reminds her of her city, Mococa. On weekends she visits other cities, and she had the chance to visit Rome and it was like a dream for her. What she loves the most about Italy is its history that is everywhere, she noticed that every place, and even each food, has a history behind.
“When you see an Italian, it’s like talking to a book of Italian history. They know the reason why a place was built or renamed in a certain way. This is interesting, wonderful”.
What she misses the most about Brazil, after her family, her dog, the sun and the “churrasco”, a Brazilian dish, is the natural propensity of people to help others. Of course this cannot be generalized, but according to Nathali, in Brazil if you need help, people are happier to help you. In her opinion we all have to work together and help each other because “today I may need your help and next year you may need mine”.
She does this bringing with her at work the desire to work as a team, as she was used to in Jaboticabal. Even if it is a characteristic that the Italian team already has, she does not like to limit herself to her work, and she is used to offer her help especially for data collections.
“We can do more than only our part. This is the sense of a team, work together and try to help each other. This is something I’m trying to do here”.
Over time, they created an environment of exchange of knowledge, thoughts, backgrounds. She is learning a lot with her supervisor here and her aim is to bring all what she is studying back to Brazil. It will be very important for her team to have some new researches available, and she will try to apply in the laboratory all that she is learning here.
Nathali is enthusiastic about “Scienza Migrante 2.0” project. She thinks that it can help foreigners here in Italy to better organize themselves and be ready for what awaits them at their arrival. “We need to be aware, prepared, work as a team and enjoy the journey and everything that comes to us and…enjoy the Italian people”.
She loves Italy and the Italians. She thinks that when you find the right people, they welcome you as your family. In her future she would like to return to Italy but most importantly, she is planning to attend some horse riding courses so that, finally, she will know something about these beautiful animals from a different perspective.
