By Silvia Marchetti, CNN – As dozens of Italian towns sell off old houses on the cheap, foreigners who rush to grab one are often in search of a year-round sunshine spot, a vacation retreat, or just to live their Italian dream.
But one American family has done it to start a new life far from the United States.
In 2019, the Dawkins family – Nadine, 59, her husband, Kim, 61, and their children Lorenzo, 29, and DeNae, 27 – bought a charming home in the town of Latronico. In the southern region of Basilicata, the town of 4,000 inhabitants is located within the pristine Pollino National Park and surrounded by hot springs.
They got excited after reading CNN’s article about Latronico’s initiative to sell cheap houses that are already inhabitable, rather than ruins for one euro, or a little over a dollar. The town advertises available properties on a dedicated website.
Reading the article at her home in El Paso, Texas, Nadine Dawkins, a retired former soldier and businesswoman, felt the pull of her ancestry.
Her great-great-grandfather was Italian and came to America in the 19th century.
“After hearing my nonna’s stories, I always felt a connection to Italy,” she tells CNN Travel.
“As a soldier stationed in the region many years later, I vowed to return. Years more, my husband and I brought our children over to see where they hailed from.”
Her Italian ancestor took on an American name when he landed in the States: Clint Jeffrey. Nadine doesn’t know much about her great-great-grandmother, Lucinda, who was an enslaved woman on an Arkansas plantation when Jeffreybought her, and “lived out the rest of his days with her,” she says.
“Unfortunately, I have no additional information about Lucinda. All I know is that she was a slave, and he purchased her. My grandmother and great-grandmother never told me anything else about her. I believe it was because of such atrocities that slavery, and the memories of it had on them; because of course being born in the 1800s and early 1900s was a hard time for all Black people in America.”
The family decided they wanted to leave the US in 2020, following the murder of George Floyd.
“[It] showed the world how we as Black people in America have been treated for centuries,” says Nadine.
“All the racism, all the divisiveness, all the hate that the last administration brought to the forefront” has caused an “exodus” from America of Black people who have the means to do so, she says.
“Basically, police brutality towards Black people, mass shootings from domestic terrorists, and just the overall hate in this country is why we are leaving the USA.”
Their move follows Nadine’s 30-year career in the military, while Kim Dawkins works for the US government.
The family will be shortly moving to Panama before taking the final leap across the Atlantic to Latronico.
Nadine doesn’t know where exactly her ancestor hailed from, but snapping up one of Latronico’s cheap homes seemed like a good way to reconnect with her roots.
“I was up in the middle of the night during Covid, with lots of time to read, when I came across the CNN story. Immediately we sent an email to the deputy mayor Vincenzo Castellano and looked at properties online.
“We didn’t expect it – he contacted us the very next day. We set up a video call, he sent us a video of our selected home. That sealed our fate: We bought the house sight unseen, without going to Italy,” she recalls.
