A winter in Sant ‘Agata: The best thing that ever happened to me

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Life in the village

There’s an old woman in this town, and every time I walk past her she seems to be screaming at her husband. And always, she stops yelling at him to turn to me, smile and say, “Salve.” She then immediately goes back to screaming at the poor man. That’s the kind of odd, friendly place this is.

This is life, but it feels like camp.

My appreciation and understanding for multi-linguistic people has progressed immensely since the day when I pulled my brother’s 5th grade classmate Sam, a South Korean, out of his class and dragged him through the elementary school hallways to interpret for a new Chinese student who was stumping the public school teachers. I recall, in first grade, literally tugging this poor kid by his coat, saying something like, “c’mon, we need you to help.” And Sam said, “I’m Korean, not Chinese, and I don’t even speak Korean.” “It’s in there somewhere,” I told him, “you just need to try.”

Introducing the characters

My Italian family is an odd group: a blind man (Vincenzo), an invalid (Lidia), a 6’4 American (mio) and a 4-foot Filipino (Mary Ann). We sound like the set-up for a good joke, but I think I’m the punch line.

Lidia

The characters in our home are quite amazing. My cousin Lidia is the head of our metropolitan household. She is an amazingly gracious woman, who dedicates every day to finding ways she can be helpful to the people she loves. I was the lucky recipient of many helpful favors during my time in Caraffa del Bianco. Though she is as generous and sweet as anyone on the planet, she is a terror if you cross her. I can happily claim that I was never the recipient of this furor, though I had the chance to observe it with amusement on a couple of occasions.
Speaking is not usually allowed in this house - only bellowing. Like thunder I hear it from two floors away, “MARY ANN!!!!!!!!” Lidia is not able to walk very well, so she finds it much easier to call for assistance from any part of the house.
More than anyone except my mother and my grandmother, Lidia has taken care of me and loved me as only real family can. Before I met her, it seemed inconceivable to me that someone could simply become that important in your life - out of nowhere at all. It seemed like every day, Lidia would ask me what I wanted to accomplish while I was living with her for those two months. And whatever my desire was, she would help me accomplish it - nothing too big, and nothing too small.

Randomly stopped by the police

One day Lidia was driving me to the neighboring town of Casignana, when we came to a carabinieri roadblock in the middle of the country road. For no apparent reason, he waved us over to the side. The carabinieri officer asked for our papers, and I produced my passport. Lidia, never having been stopped in the last 20-something years, didn’t have her ID. We left my passport with the officer, and he allowed us to drive home and get her ID. I laughed to myself, as all the way home Lidia drove like Dick Dastardly in the Mean Machine, honking at anyone who paused and shouting out the window to everyone she saw that she’d been stopped by the carabinieri!

Don’t even think about leaving early

One day Lidia got a phone call from Mary Ann, asking to be picked up in the nearby town, where she goes to driving school every day; the bus had left early and she had missed it. Lidia went down and picked her up (13km away), and they made dinner. After dinner, Lidia politely asked me to fetch the phone for her, and she called up the bus company. Once she was sure she had the right person on the phone, Lidia lit into him. Italians speak louder than Americans in everyday life. Italians can YELL about 10 times louder than Americans. I was holding my hands over my ears in the next room while she explained the inconvenience they had caused her. My favorite part was when, after a particularly biting phrase, she paused and asked, “capito?” Yes, I’m sure he understood. I’m pretty sure the mayor understood.

Mary Ann

Mary Ann told me that one day she sat at the breakfast table and prayed to God, “When will I have someone to sit at this table with me” (because she brings Lidia and Vincenzo their breakfast in bed each morning). The next day I arrived.
Mary Ann is a shy and reserved person, with a sincere heart. She came from the Philippines just over a year ago to work as a housemaid for Lidia. This is very common in Southern Italy, and I also met Romanian and Ukrainian maids. Many of them have strong educations, but find it difficult to find work in their own countries. Mary Ann, just 22, finished college in the Philippines and, since arriving in Italy, has been supporting a family of maybe a dozen AND building her own house back home on a modest wage.
She told me that sometimes Filipino doctors will go to America to work inglorious positions just long enough to build their home in the Philippines, then return home to work their medical practice.
Mary Ann is my second sister. She teased me constantly, and found the most enterprising ways to distract me throughout my stay in Sant ‘Agata. She would often demand that I accompany her on expeditions, ordering me around with authority.
One thing I found very peculiar about her was the recurring theme of fear. One day I asked her if she stayed up very late at night, because I would always see the light on in her room when I walked by to use the restroom at 3am. She told me she slept with the light on, because she is afraid of the dark - always has been. I thought this was rather curious, as I had yet to meet an adult who had told me they were afraid of the dark. Over the next couple of weeks, I learned that Mary Ann was afraid of swimming, heights and bicycles as well (she is totally hating me right now for this posting). Her dad is a fisherman, with a small boat in the Philippines. I asked Mary Ann what she would do if she was out on the fishing boat and the lights went out? She didn’t like this scenario; she avoids the boat as well.

Vincenzo

Vincenzo is Lidia’s husband, a kind old gentleman. The texture in his voice reverberates in your belly when he shouts out a greeting to whoever walks in the door - just as soon as you tell him who it is. He relishes at every chance to say “good morning,” “hello,” or “goodbye.” I love watching the happy expression on his face while he instinctively cleans his fogged glasses, despite the fact that he cannot see. In the house, Vincenzo and I understand each other the least. My Italian isn’t good enough, and his English is almost non-existent. Almost every day at pranza, “V” would try to ask me about something. Usually I would not understand, and give the incorrect response. This would cause him to begin muttering “no capice un cazzo.” I think this was his favorite phrase.
His other favorite thing to exclaim is “Francescini!”

Francescini

Francesca is the young daughter of Lidia’s previous maid. An adorable five-year-old, she is seemingly the pride of the entire village. Lidia has pictures of Francesca in almost ever room of the house, and we never come home from the store without selecting at least a couple of candies or toys for her. A sweet and smart little girl, this child would turn pale and move away the first 10 times she came into my presence.
When she first met me, after I’d heard about her for weeks, she sat at the dinner table and gaped at me, refusing to eat her food. We repeated this drama once or twice, before we were finally able to play together at her house. I’d almost given up on the child, after an excessively skeptical look she’d given me while accepting my candy egg offerings, but she eventually seemed to come around.

Stefano

Our cousin Stefano visits often. He went with us to pick oranges, and when we were driving out of town, he insisted we stop so that he could chase a chicken back into his yard.
Here is this 70-year-old man running up a hill, chasing a rooster. It was absolutely hilarious. Stefano is a true character, a snapshot of a former time. He is generous to a fault, and gifted with many talents. His wife, Alba, is the most amazing artist in the village.
Once Stefano noticed me looking slightly bored at his house, and he decided to show me something marvelous. He led me out under the olive trees in his yard, and around the corner underneath the house. There sat, in immaculate condition, an untouched Plymouth Valiant, from about 1962. It had something like 100 miles on it. He could have showed me a freaking Stargate, and I wouldn’t have been more surprised. I just wanted to know HOW something like that could be here? He said he was keeping it, but was interested in how much a collection piece like that would be worth in America.
On another occasion, Stefano invited me to come with him to make olive oil at the local press. This took a few hours because of the line of customers, so we went off to pick some oranges and then he went to attend a funeral. It was Saturday. A couple of days later, Stefano picked me up and we went to prune his vineyards. He has at least four of them.
Pruning vineyards is a skill that requires a little practice. Knowing what and where to cut are the keys, and you can’t know for sure which ones to do until after you’ve seen a harvest before. I hadn’t seen one, and so I really didn’t know which branches would be producers, and which ones would just suck the nutrients away and produce nothing.

Family history

I got a taste of our ancient family life early on, when I met with another Scarfone named Antonio (Toto), who showed me our historic family residence turned art studio. He had created many pieces of art from scrap iron, and painted others. He showed me some fossils he had collected, and the old home dated back earlier than the 19th century.

Toto Scarfone,

my artist cousin
Toto was my best friend as I lived in Calabria. A happy middle-aged man with a goofy grin, he was always looking for excuses to steal me away. He’d meet me in the main square after church and invite me to dinner with his wife, Carmella. Carmella is pretty in the classical Italian way, and overly accommodating to her guests. She bustles around the kitchen, searching for something else to put in front of you. It didn’t help that I was never hungry when I visited - I’d been too well fed by Lidia and Mary Ann. Carmella’s adorable, one-toothed mother would lounge on her downstairs couch all day, and then retire to bed up the spiraling metal staircase in their living room.
Toto didn’t speak any English. He’d try so hard to communicate with me, and often it ended up in hand gestures and him pretending he was going to slug me because it frustrated him so much not to be able to express himself. He’d wave his fist at me like Ralph Kramden, and swear that one day I’d learn better Italian.
Once he took me riding around the region, showing me astonishing vistas that stretched out for many miles. I told him how beautiful his home was, but Toto only hungered for America. He’d talk about America like it was the Promised Land. I guess it still is for some, but I can’t think of many places in America that were as raw and beautiful as his own back yard. Behind one of these vistas, he showed me a tiny stone house with only two rooms, where he said seven children had once been raised together. He said all of them had moved away, contributing to Southern Italy’s depopulation problem. Some had moved north. Some had moved to America, others to Australia.
Later, he took me down to a medicinal spring, where sulfuric mud clumped at the bottom of a cement-cased pool. I decided to return later and collect some of it for my mother.

Laughing and rolling with my cousin Fabio Scarfone

My cousin Fabio is fantastic. He took Mary Ann and I out all around Caraffa/Sant ‘Agata in Lidia’s van. We ran up to the top of the local mountain, on some of the absolute worst “roads” on the planet. I don’t know where it happened, but one of these roads actually scraped something under the car, and we later found out that the repairs cost Lidia a good $500. At the top of Aspromonte Park, Fabio picked up Mary Ann and scared the living daylights out of her, making like he was going to toss her over. She laughed and fell all over him and they tumbled to the ground like children.
I stood over the edge of the mountain and admired life. Cool, brilliant life. Like sun falling on the surface of the ocean, some kind of wonderful grace has put me HERE, in this unbelievable spot, with the kindest creatures in the universe - human beings. New friends and new experiences every single day, with my only challenge to keep existing, to keep feeling, to keep appreciating people for who and what and all that they are.
We decided to go for pizza. We’d often gone to the local pizza parlor, located in a building owned in part by Lidia. This time we went all the way to the next town over, and dined at a special restaurant that they sometimes visited. It had a confused Old West theme, with a big old clock that said “Dodge City” on it. The teenage girls with their dates kept looking over at Fabio and I, and I decided to make faces out of boredom. I got a real kick when I noticed this pizzeria in southern Italy featured a special “Robespierre” cut of steak. I guessed that many missed the “Reign of Terror” reference, but that’s got to be a damn good cut of steak.
On the way home we decided to do something bold; Fabio and I went kart racing. We arrived after hours, but knocked on the door and haggled with the family that lived there, and they let us do about thirty minutes around the track, sliding and skidding, slamming and spinning. It was rugged and manly, and we really dug it. It had been at least 15 years since I raced like that.

Romano Scarfone, my musical cousin

My 40-something cousin Romano is a classically styled Italian folk musician. He arranges and instructs music in our little village, occupying one of the best and only pieces of commercial real estate in the town plaza. He wears sharp glasses, resting over his trademark mustache, and never takes off his leather jacket. His head is shaved smooth. A dignified fedora would look good with his coat, but never seems to wear one around me. Romano plays the guitar and some brass instruments. He recorded an album in Canada a couple of years back, utilizing some electronic accompaniment. The album itself is quite a thing to listen to, and his bear heart reveals itself in his happy way.
I’d always try to catch him for his brief performances so I could shuffle around and listen to the musicians. Usually they just wanted to hang around outside, talking and smoking. It was fun in any case, and I met many great people there.

Church meeting, off the rails Italian style

I am at a church meeting that has gotten out of control. I love this guy who is sitting in a chair causing the biggest objections.
Firstly, I love the shape of his head. His name is Francesco, and he is the choir director. As he talks, he moves around in his chair, and motions with his hand in a way that matches the flow of his words, like he is conducting a symphony of life as it comes from him. I love it.
Throughout it all, the mothers in the room keep objecting angrily to his comments. It seems strange because his tone is so gregarious. People are actually yelling at each other in church, and it makes me smile to see such passion in these walls. In America church meetings are categorically the least exciting meetings on the planet. Maybe it would be fun to be a journalist around here - fun up until ‘Ndrangheta put a bullet in me.

The Simple Life

How is this for harkening back to a simpler life - Lidia wasn’t feeling well, so she called the doctor. Within 10 minutes, there were two doctors who arrived with their bags (both female). Not only were they able to help her, but it was also convenient because Lidia had a birthday present for one of the doctors (whom she had known her whole life): a pearl necklace.

The only thing happening around here is death

There are many community bulletin boards around, and honestly, just about any stonewall will serve as one if you need it to; I discovered this when I went out to post signs for my English lessons. However, the only things you will ever find on the bulletin boards are funeral notices. It seemed that in this small community, with all the young people either at college or moving north for work, the only thing anyone was doing was dying. It was a bit like Molokai, where everyone in the community would stop to read the funeral notice, and they almost always knew the person. When a funeral procession came through town, people would line up along the dirty, narrow streets, and horns would play as they motored the casket slowly up to the old church.

My English teaching disaster

So after weeks of talk and promotion, I went to teach whoever might show up. While I’m walking up to the oratorio, I see Sylvia, the little girl who had repeated her interest many times. She was walking with her friend and I hoped that they would both come to the class. It was about 20 minutes early for the class at this point.
She disappeared for a short while, and then came back and was trying to tell me something, but I couldn’t understand. She then said something like she had heard that the class would be at Lidia’s house, and I told her that was wrong, and that I was teaching it NOW, right here at the oratorio. Then she kept trying to tell me something else. There were some teenage kids outside, and so I went to invite them in and ask if they wanted to learn English. They laughed at first, but when I told them it was free, they came inside.
They quickly took over the room, and they started to joke around. And it wasn’t clear whether they wanted a lesson or not. It occurred to me that even if they weren’t serious, if I made it fun, they may develop an interest in learning English. However, it was soon clear that they already had a level of English above what I had planned to teach for the day. One of them translated what Sylvia was trying to tell me: that she didn’t want to take my class anymore.
So Sylvia left and the boys left too. I felt defeated and lay down on the couch, hoping and wondering if anyone else would come.
There are a few moments in life, when it is impossible to tell if you would prefer to feel lonely, or experience humiliating company.
While I lay on the couch, the boys came back and said something about me looking sad. So they decided to have a “lesson.”
The boys came in and took over the room again. I finally got them to sit down, and decided to play some English music they might recognize. I put on the Beatles and they perked up. I asked if they understood the lyrics to the songs, and they said they did. That pretty much told me that I wouldn’t be able to teach them anything that night.
I read my intro to the lesson. Instead of listening and asking questions, they applauded when I finished reading it in Italian; that wasn’t what I was looking for.
They became more obnoxious. One of them, Giuseppe, started railing about how he was the greatest calico player in all of Italy. After I got them to repeat what I said (call and response), I tried to wrap up the lesson. Everything they said was so LOUD.
I’d had enough, and started to say the lesson was over. One of the kids reached in another kid’s backpack and pulled out a notepad. He distributed the paper to all of the other kids and he said, “Now we’re going to write about ourselves.” I said that was a good idea, if they wanted to do that. They soon gave up on writing about themselves, in fact each one of them wrote about two words and gave up. Not that they had much chance, considering Giuseppe was yelling the whole time.
Then Giuseppe said I should give them a sentence to write. I did, they said it was too hard. So I insisted that the lesson was over, after taking a picture of me with all of my “students”, and worked to get them out the door. Before leaving though, they chased each other around the room until someone touched the glass on the TV stand, and it popped off and part of it broke. Finally, they left.
A couple of the younger kids are good kids. They were very concerned that I “liked them.” I told them I did, and they all added me on Facebook by the end of the night. They really wanted a copy of the picture I’d taken.

The Calabrian mindset

Perhaps as a way to move beyond the poverty and the absent road maintenance crews, the citizenry have demonstrated surprising examples of coping. Where someone had scratched off or somehow removed the numbers from a sign to guide people to the highway, someone took it upon themselves to re-write “106” as best they could, with their own, unprofessional means.
Here in Italy, the vehicles you see most often are: Pandas, Apes and Mules, so the roads are literally a zoo. I named my VW back at home “The Camel.”

Feast Day

Cannon blasts woke me up this morning. No, I’m not in Bosnia yet, but here in Sant ‘Agata, it is our saint’s feast day.
The church is very interesting. There is this painting on the ceiling that I cannot decipher. It looks like Jesus, but feminine, and it seems to have a breast bared and he’s holding things I don’t recognize and wearing a crown, and behind him there is a mean and ugly looking kid holding a crucifix in one hand, and what looks like a steel lasso in the other. Lots of colors, very confusing. I later learned that this was the life of Sant ‘Agata.
Saint Agatha of Sicily had a strange and terrible life. (pretty common among saints).
She was a very early Saint, receiving her martyrdom in 253. She was a 20-year-old virgin, who refused to worship the local idol. She apparently gave these deep, philosophical arguments to back up her stance. She was tormented by a king or some kind of authority figure who wanted her. When she rejected him, he tortured her by cutting off her breasts, which apparently grew back after an aspiration of another saint. Then they made her roll naked on hot coals, but that didn’t work. I’m not sure how they actually finished her off. Anyway, the painting on the ceiling of our church is so weird, especially the little gremlin character holding the crucifix behind her.

Making pasta

I had asked about making pasta earlier, and here we were doing it. I assisted. I rolled out the stands on a block of wood placed on my knees, while Lidia pressed them against another piece of grooved wood to give the pasts texture. The ingredients are as simple as you could imagine - eggs and flour. When our pasta was laid out, it was boiled, then eaten with pleasure.

A visit to a Calabrian psyche ward

As we entered the psychiatric ward, I noted the change in the temperature, as the breeze somehow blew freely through the hallway, whistling as it went in an eerie and cinematic fashion. A group of people hung outside the door, and I couldn’t tell if they were waiting to enter, waiting for someone to exit, or waiting to be admitted themselves.
I tapped on the glass door, and a man with a white coat and ring of keys opened it for us. Inside, there hovered a man in the corner with his shoulders permanently lunging forward, his face and eyebrows sagging like they weighed six times what they should. He stumbled forward and greeted us.
Another man lurched across the clinically white hallway like a zombie, his shirt tousled and untucked outside of his pants.
We met Lidia’s cousin, who really seemed to be the most “normal” character in the place. He was obviously under heavy medication. He politely greeted us and I introduced myself. He seemed like a genuinely nice person, and I hoped to see him released soon.

February is the perfect time to visit a Sulfur spring

Waking up early one morning, I decided I’d like to collect mud from the medicinal sulfur spring below the town of Casignana, and mail it to my mother. I straddled my Vespa, and rode off with a plastic container. The water wasn’t too chilly, and the sun was as warm as anywhere in Europe gets in February. The cloudy water has that familiar smell that reminds you of rotten eggs, just like every other sulfur spring in the world. At the bottom, my feet balanced themselves on the slippery soils, between the sharp rocks. I liked the feel of it between my cold toes. As I used the metal tool to scrape some of the mud off the bottom, the water became opaque with swirls of soil.
I covered my chest and face with the mud, and took an extreme picture of myself in this very happy state.

That’s way too much wood to dump in the street

I woke up one morning to the sound of conversation downstairs. Someone was talking to Lidia. Basically, I discovered that she had bought about 2-3 years’ worth of wood (legno), and this old guy was delivering it. Actually, the wood had been delivered in the street out front: about a shipping container load. This man named Philip, about 60 years old, was wheeling it around our home (and down the 20 steps) by himself with a single wheelbarrow. I assumed naturally that I should help, as this would take all day with two people working at it. Nope. He’s doing it by himself. Never seen anything like this. I took a picture of the mess. Should take him a week.

Independent trucking services

So in a poor, isolated place like this, when people still need to send things to their family, how do you afford to do it? You enterprise. Especially with fuel as expensive as it is. Here in Calabria they independently conspire to move their own produce and goods - without an organized company.
Because we were going to Locri to visit Mary Ann’s cousins, Stefano hitched a ride with us to deliver a package to his family in Pisa. When he got in the car with us, he gifted delicious, local chocolate panatone cakes to each of us (Mary Ann and me).
We helped him load his packages (two giant, heavy boxes of Oranges) into the back of the van (small, 5-seater hatchback Opel). He led us to this place, up the mountain. I thought we were going to deliver them to a house, and was admiring the stunning view from our ridge over the valley - when we arrived at a crowded alleyway, where all sorts of people were loading a truck. Upon further investigation, it became clear that this was an underground shipping scheme of loosely organized people joining together to move product inexpensively. It was fantastic, and apparently organized by what we used to call in Hawaii “the coconut wireless.” Very cool. I asked Stefano how much it cost to move those two big boxes, and he said the total was €20.

My AMERICAN Dinner

I am totally drinking a BUDWEISER right now. The taste of America! I never drink them when I’m in America, but there’s something comforting about it here.
Budweiser was the perfect accompaniment to the American dinner I made during my first week at the home. I decided to thank my gracious family by preparing Cheeseburgers, French fries and corn. We invited Sylvanna and Michele (who had first encountered me) for the dinner, and I put on my best western-American accent.
Mary Ann prepared one dish, and hers was still cooking though my burgers were finished and warming in the oven. I began to panic… they needed to be served or they would be ruined! I tried desperately to communicate this, but Mary Ann didn’t understand me, and Lidia couldn’t seem to grasp it. I poured over each page in the big English-Italian dictionary we’d borrowed from Sylvanna, and eventually found the word for “ruined.” When I said the word, she immediately snapped into action and ordered for mealtime. The burgers, albeit with an inappropriate cheese accompaniment, were served and modestly appreciated by the crowd gathered there. Sylvanna wasn’t eating meat, but Michele seemed to enjoy them. My guests looked suspiciously at the food, eating our most common and delicious American cuisine politely, as if I was serving them fermented shark.
But their hesitation simply meant more for Michele and me, and we clinked our Budweisers together in a toast, and dug in. It would be months before I ate another cheeseburger.

Longing for ordinary life

As I study Italian with Rosetta Stone, I peer into the lives of ordinary citizens, doing ordinary things. Many of them married. Many of them have children. Perhaps because I am so anchor free at this moment, I hunger for that kind of solid grounding. I hunger to have someone I love with me every single day. I look into each scene, each living room, and I imagine myself there. I imagine how good it must feel to have that dependable love every night lying next to you, to have it in the morning when you wake up, and to have it across the dinner table when you return in the evening.

A taste of Hawaii

It’s Filipina Karaoke night! I’m in Locri with a house full of Filipinas singing karaoke just like on Molokai. I think Mary Ann she said two of them are her cousins, and the rest are friends of theirs. They also work as housemaids, and they only get Sundays off. The three of them rent a home for their clothes and their things. It comes to €50 each for the month. Once a week they get together and PARTY. They have Italian boyfriends, and they are all very cool.
The boyfriends took me down to the corner to buy some brioches, and then made Italian-style ice cream sandwiches, slicing open the brioche and filling it with gelato.
I talked for a long while with one of the boyfriends, Raffaele. He was a big Italian who speaks great English and was living and working in Norway. Pretty cool guy. He was all over one of the cousins, Mary Louise.

Postcard Fiasco Part I

Once I finally felt settled here, I wanted to send postcards from Caraffa back to my family and a few friends back at home. This turned out to be quite difficult. I visited every store in the village, and finally the municipale headquarters asking if anyone knew where I could get a postcard. At the municipale, the entire staff about eight came in from the balcony where they were having a group-smoking break that lasted God-knows-how-long and put their heads together to make phone calls. After about 3 or 4 calls, one of them turned to me and said, “Tu conoce Maria Gracias?” I said “Si, lei habite alcanta de mio”. Talk about a small town? With 700 people living here, the only person who has postcards is my neighbor!

Postcard Fiasco Part II

Once the cards were in my possession, I made a conceited effort to fill every square centimeter with something meaningful - because I KNEW I wouldn’t be sending out any more cards from Sant ‘Agata or Caraffa. I proudly took them to the post office and asked for some international postcard stamps. The man there told me they didn’t have any €.83 stamps in stock, so he began placing 2 €.47 stamps on each one, covering up a huge portion of my writing. I stopped him and began my first argument in Italian. It was wonderful. I used all the hand motions I’d been observing for weeks. Throwing them up and banging them down. I eventually said “Fine, I’ll go to Casignana then!” and stormed out. Lidia and I went to Casignana, and eventually discovered that they didn’t have €.83 postage there either. Luckily, our friend Pietro was driving to the regional city of Locri later that day, 40 km away. So, if you received a postcard from Caraffa del Bianco, this was the effort that went into sending it to you.

Uncomplication = increased memory capacity

Walking home one day, I realized that I was able to remember many items that ordinarily I wouldn’t even try to remember - like phone numbers and lists and notes to write down since I came here. I have a theory that it is tied to the uncomplication of my life here; the uncomplicated life leads to improved memory.
That makes a lot of sense, I think. Suddenly your brain isn’t full of all this stupid, useless junk that adds no substance and it frees up your RAM. Is this a new theory - that brains have RAM and ROM?
And while I was walking, I realized 1) how I can have this life if I want it; It isn’t expensive, and it really is beautiful, and 2) this place NEEDS Italian-Americans to move here. The culture is dying from a low birthrate, and MY ANCESTRAL home is being filled up with whoever wants to come here, having it’s native culture replaced by that of immigrants.
I woke up this morning and knew exactly what I want to say in my book. My message to European Americans is:
If life seems to hard, and it’s too complicated and challenging, and you find that you don’t get any real fulfillment from the trappings of American life - leave it.
Your European homeland needs you. It is becoming depopulated. It is losing that culture which is YOUR CULTURE. Immigrants are coming here for opportunity by the boatload, and you could be one of them.
Evaluate what you really appreciate in life. Evaluate the stresses from your way of life. Does it balance? Or could you live a simpler life in the land of your forefathers?

Leaving a little of my dad behind

Before leaving Sant ‘Agata, I tossed some of Dad’s ashes off the viewpoint that Lidia had showed me. It was the most beautiful day I’d seen. I asked two kids to take a photo of me in front of the Vespa and the view, and they did. The kids came and watched as I threw dad’s ashes out, kind of an odd-family audience. They’re probably related to me too, though they don’t know it. Philipe and Giovanni (Joe and Phil). I got some on them in the wind, I think, in a Lebowski-esque fashion. They didn’t seem to care. I was happy that I was able to explain everything to them in Italian, and to ask questions and appreciate their answers. It made me want to attend elementary school here for a week like Billy Madison.
In the end, life in Sant ‘Agata/Caraffa was as natural and beautiful as anywhere in the world. But it was a specific a type of life that only exists in this one special place.
I love and thank all the wonderful people I met there, and hope and plan to see them again before I forget all of my Italian ☺

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Photos

Mudman
Anybody want some mud?

English Class
My english students

RoofingTile
They keep the food warm by serving it in roofing concrete roofing tiles.

B-Vine
Here's me, pruning the vines of my family's old vineyard.

Cousin Stefano
Stefano, under a tree with some sheep.

Stef prune
Stefano taught me how to prune the vineyard.

restaurant
We visited this restaurant for Vincenzo's Birthday.

Locri Crew
The best Filipino Karaoke stars in all of Locri!

Woodsman
Filip moved this wood, gloveless for two days.

B-olives
About to make some Olive Oil.

OilDude
Guy making oil, dumping olives into the press.

Pepperoncini
Hot and delicious.

Making Pasta
Lidia teaching me how to roll pasta.

Rocco2
Rocco making Riccota

B-Riccota
Eating some fine Riccota

RoccoCheese
Rocco, Serving me his hot fresh cheese.

Collinaview
View of my favorite Collina

Favate
My sulfur spring

Comments

[Nicole]

Awakening?
Your experiences of self are so inspiring. I am happy that the people places and things are creating an impact on the man that you are becoming.This in itself with attract the mate you are destined to be with for a lifetime.Molokai is always in the back of my mind and how closer to the truth in myself I was there.I wish I had embraced my fear of the things I thought I was living without and drew closer the things I was living with. Keep me posted my friend......

[Susan]

A great story
You did a great job telling your story with the pictures and video. I hope to visit Italy and try to find out where my grandfather was from. So far I know Caraffa, but not which one. I am more eager now to visit than ever. Thank you