My name is Annalena Tonelli

I was born in Forlií in Italy on 2 April 1943.I am involved in health services, but I am not a physician. I have a PhD in Law in Italy; I have a qualification to teach English in Kenyan Secondary Schools. I obtained certificates and diplomas for TB control from Kenya, Tropical and Community Medicine from England, and Leprosy treatment from Spain. I left Italy in January 1969. Since then I have lived to serve the Somalis. For thirty years, I have shared and lived with them except for short breaks due to unavoidable circumstances.

From the time I was a child, I chose to live for the others: the poor, the suffering, the abandoned, and the unloved and this is what I have been and will continue to be until the end of my life with the help of God. I wanted to follow Jesus Christ. Nothing else was of any interest to me: only Him and the poor in Him. For Him I have made the choice of radical poverty... even though I will never be so poor as the truly poor, the poor that fill every moment of my life.

I serve without a name: without the security of a religious order, without belonging to any organization, without a salary, and without putting aside money for a pension in my old age. I am not married because such is the joy I experience in my choice. I wanted to belong totally to God. I did not have the call to have a family of my own. And so it was, thanks to the grace of God.

I have friends who have been helping my people and I for thirty years now. Everything I have achieved I did because of them, especially the friends from Forlií, of the