Кадр выше наш. Полное медиа с Facebook запрошено — подставим его сюда, как только приедет.
Valentina Ferrari
When I saw **€11,760** on my screen, my hands started shaking so badly that I almost dropped my phone. I bit my lip, closed my eyes, then opened them again — the number was still there. My name is Elina, I’m 39 years old, and I’m used to believing that miracles don’t happen in life. But that evening, a miracle knocked on the door of my old, broken phone. Hi. My name is Valentina Ferrari, and I live in Rome. For the past six years, I worked as a hotel cleaner. Three shifts a week, sometimes six, with no days off. No right to get sick. No room for mistakes. Other people’s rooms, other people’s beds, other people’s dirty towels. I washed the floors, changed the sheets, cleaned the bathrooms, and sometimes cried in the mop closet when no one was watching. My children saw me exhausted, confused, and empty. I’m divorced. I’m raising two teenagers — a 14-year-old son and a 16-year-old daughter. My ex-husband pays for food, but it barely covers school expenses. I can’t even remember the last time I bought something for myself. Even a coffee at a café had become a luxury. Rent. Electricity bills. My daughter’s school debt. Microloans I took out to pay off previous microloans. It was a spiral. Every month I would sit down with a calculator and realize that, once again, I wouldn’t make it to the end of the month. We ate pasta with oil three times a week. I sold my gold earrings — the only thing I had left from my grandmother. One evening, after a 14-hour shift, I was lying in the dark and couldn’t sleep. I was scrolling through Facebook because it was the only way I could switch my mind off. And I came across a post from a man. He was sitting in his car, holding his phone, and writing: > “Friends, I’m not a blogger. I’m just an ordinary worker from Naples. But two months ago, I started playing Chicken Road — a game where a chicken crosses the road and you bet on whether it will make it. It sounds crazy, but I’ve won more than I earned in a year working construction. I
