I am not an Italian Woman!

Ah Italy, again. Teaching spoiled Italian children. Again. Pasta, Mozzarella, Prosciutto, again.

So I flew into Milan and a few days later I was thankfully out of Milan, in a car with a 7 year old, a 4 year old and their parents on our way to a villa next to Lake Garda, while they loudly belted out “Mamma Mia in that mumbling sort of way when you have no idea what the words really are. The "babies" hummed along and everyone danced in their seats. Ah yes, i thought, this is the life. Sunshine finally, food, champagne (no, not champagne, Prosecco, Champagne is specifically from the Provence of Champagne in France, I must not forget this or I will, yet again, upset some Italians) and at this fancy villa there was a huge swimming pool, the first outdoor swimming pool i have entered since November, NOVEMBER? Really? How long it has been that I have been cold, it is June now and i have been in countries and places in so many clothes layered upon clothes and now I am sweltering in the heat of Italy with a bag full of clothes that are now rendered useless.

There are 2 kinds of camps one can teach on in Italy. A City Camp or a Summer Camp. City camps are more common and it is sort of like a day camp where we teach children from 9am to 5pm and then go home to an Italian host family. Not all the families that one stays with are rich but at least almost always they live like they are rich, eat fancy things, drink fancy things and obviously, wear fancy things.

I remember 2 years ago sitting on a train in Italy on the way to some place or other and i remember seeing a woman walk onto the train. Her face was carefully drawn on with makeup, her mouth pointing down in some sort of contemptuous snarl, nails manicured to perfection, heels reaching skyward and i knew that morning and every morning there had been a precise process of outfit decision making. I sat there thinking, looking at my dirty feet, "I am so happy that i was not born an Italian woman".

ah yes, Italy again.

It's amazing how one changes in 2 years, here i am in the same place (more or less doing the same thing) and i feel as if i am a completely different person. 2 years ago, i was perhaps more adaptable to the Italian way of life. Two years ago if i was given chocolate biscuits, Nutella, espresso and milk for breakfast i would have a accepted it gratefully and been excited about the sugar injection I was giving myself. Then I would deal with hunger pains until lunch when we could eat something “real” such as a bowl of pasta, some white bread with olive oil and some sort of meat.

Well as much as I have an affection for white pasta and white bread I cannot deny how heavy and unhealthy it makes you feel, and now, being vegetarian the Italians think that I need a special substitute for the meat so they either create a whole other meal (like a second pasta) OR they give me a huge hunk of cheese. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE cheese, but a huge hunk of dried lunch cheese that they give us at camp cafettaria’s is not the Italian cheese that bounce around one’s dreams.

The fight to be healthy is almost a losing battle in Italy for they cannot comprehend why one would want fruity yoghurt and muesli for breakfast? And why would you not want to eat hot dry chips for lunch? Seeing the chips come toward me I hastily asked for half a portion, she gave me the same as the children, seeing a child’s portion as half an adults portion (which was NO child’s portion) and the other server, thinking i was being underfed, tipped the rest of her chips on my plate.

But no it isn’t just food that I feel like I am battling against. It is that wonderful useless thing called fashion. I began my journey in Milan and I am still near Milan in some little town or other and the obsession to look good is like a disease spread among all Italians. My first school was a Catholic school full of nuns and I thought my camp director was joking when she said we had to wear pants down to our shins, closed shoes and t shirts with sleeves. For the first time in 7 months I am in a hot country and they are telling me i have to cover up? So the camp director phoned my host parents saying i NEED longer shorts and so we went on a special family shopping trip to one of the biggest malls in Europe.

Malls make me uncomfortable, shopping for clothes makes me uncomfortable, well especially when I’m with someone else’s mother who is firstly Italian and secondly buying me clothes. SO we went to H&M, bypassed all the pretty clothes and they proceeded to buy me the ugliest pair of 3 quarter pants i had seen in my life for the sum total of about R250. When they saw that I did not have love in my eyes for these pants they told me they were “beautiful” and I could also wear them out with the family to restaurants etc. they were cargo pants, they were ugly but they were a gift, an expensive gift and feeling like a spoiled child I squashed my feelings of "I don’t want this" accepted it and wore it for the rest of the week.

but this kind of mentality with looking good begins to seep into you. The Italian women and men look so beautiful and elegant in their outfits and, well, I don’t always want to look like a dirty hippie, especially when I am going out with a very well to do Italian family. However, i have been living out of a bag mainly geared for winter for the past 7 months and this obviously makes such things a little difficult. One night I had conjured some sort of nice outfit out of my meager clothes and when my host father saw me he said ' Wow Mary you look-a nice" but when he saw me put on my green slipslops just before we left he was not impressed. "Mary, imagine a beautiful mountain. and at the mountain you see the mountain is-a not real, iz-a fake mountain" and I understood that somehow my green slip slops was devastatingly ruining the effect of what I was wearing.

AAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

So we had some sort of “discussion” about how looking good is a matter of perception and I happen to like my green slip slops and I think I look nice. Well he sort of humoured my ideas but his point was firm, one should not wear second rate shoes out in high society (Or in any society at that). And all I could think was and I wanted to say “I AM NOT AN ITALIAN WOMAN AND I NEVER WILL BE”. Furthermore, I never have been one to waste much time on appearance but I realized that this i almost a cultural identity. The Irish live to get drunk, the Italians live to look good. Terrible generalizations I know, but let me just leave them hanging there for now.

Ah yes Italy, you are funny creature. That was my first camp. I have moved to another small town now but I am now living with another camp tutor in a little flat where we eat breakfast and vegetables and fruit and nuts and honey, gearing up with some healthy non-white-pasta food before we go back to live with Italian families. And we have freedom to do whatever we wish at night, to sleep, to nap, and on Friday we took a trip to the old town of Bergamo, high on a hill, piazza’s of music, drinking wine in a box listening to a Spanish guitar watching little statues lighted by churches and reveling in the magic of a summer’s night in Italy.

And yesterday we went to Lake Garda, big pristine waters, full of tourists and sexy Italians. Oh they are all sexy, I look at girls here and their faces and I wonder how they choose who gets to be a top model and who doesn’t. Their bodies are perfect, their faces structured to perfection, it is both tiring and interesting. I mean how are they ALL good looking and WHERE are the Italians that do not make the cut? Are they crying at home? It is a strange phenomenon and a part of me looks upon their bodies with a mingle of jealousy and another part of me just thinks THANK GOD I AM NOT ITALIAN! I can eat their food, I can try to speak their language but I do not have to BE Italian, I do not have to make sure I do not mix 2 different types of pasta in one pot, I do not have to uphold the fashion of the day, I do not have to be chiseled to perfection. Thank you South Africa, that for all your foibles you allow me to be anything, really, that I want.

And I am still wearing my green slip slops and no one is asking me to do otherwise, except for the despairing, disparaging looks of the Italian women who pass me by.

and it's so green. so freaking green

Oh silly Ireland. what a funny country it is.

i never meant to be in Ireland. It was not a country i envisaged being in and when justifying the choice i suppose i came to that of "Ireland is supposed to be green . and well, i like green". So one day I found myself at the Dublin airport, thinking "Oh. So this is Ireland." I kept on hearing funny lilting accents around me, some nonsensical words that i could only conjecture was SUPPOSED to be maybe some version of English

Strange country, so cold. It's "Summer" now and i am still holding onto hoodies, jeans, shoes an socks. People talk about the weather all the time, if it's warm they say "Ah now, it's going to rain soon" and if it's rainy and cold they say, "ah yes, Summer was short this year, it wil be winter soon."
but. ok let me backtrack

I arrived and was escorted by my Irish friend, Olwyn to her home in Thomastown. i knew she had moved recently but what i came into was something i never expected. She lived in a mill, a big old stone mill, with hall-sized rooms converted into different living areas. for the equivalent of R2000 a month she had a humongous bedroom lounge area, a next door room of similar size, a hall-like play area, a kitchen, bathroom. this place is not a normal place to live, the mill is old, dusty and magical, with a bee hive in one of the window sills and old candles discarded on the floor and a bath that never really gets hot. if it was winter in Ireland this place would be perhaps a portion of hell to live in. the windows don't close properly and the stone restricts all heat. in fact a friend who used to live there said he built a huge tent around the little wood stove and a portion of the room to try keep the heat in and spent most of the winter shivering in bed. its cold alright but. it's magic. wooden secret stairways connects one living space to another and the "mill folk" are all artists, writers and musicians, they eat together, they play music together and they amble sleepily through their days.

this sleepy lifestyle suited me for a while, to wake up slowly, to play the guitar for a while and then embark upon my morning amble through fields of sheep and cows, through nettles and thistles and fording the river. so pretty, the sun was shining for the first two weeks, i was barefoot and cycling and alive.

but the peace couldn't and never does last forever. i had come to Ireland as a waiting period before i was to go to Italy. with a South African passport one needs a tourist visa to go to Italy, something i was aware of but supposed that i would procure in Ireland. not so, there are all sorts of mad obstacles which do not want to give a tourist visa to a South African that is not a resident in Ireland. furthermore, there are insurance issues where travel insurance is only given to a person if they are leaving and flying back to their own country. wow. madness. so many things seemed to be adamant in not helping me. it's a long story and it made me really angry and worried and frustrated and sleepless in the midst of Thomastown peace. after considering all options, even that of flying home and then back to Italy, I got my parents involved and a lot of tricky organisation later, i finally have a visa in my passport a week before i embark towards Italy. anyway all this aside what really struck me about the situation was that for the first time in my life i really felt the absolute ridiculous hell that is discrimination. i know it is perhaps on a superficial level, i want a visa to go to Italy as i am dedicating my life to having an excellent time all the time and i am privileged enough to make this happen BUT again and again through this process i wanted to ask "WHAT is wrong with ME that you will let the drunken Irish lad down the street into your country with no problem but because i was born somewhere else i am not granted permission to easily enter?"

i have learnt a lot about Ireland in being here of course and people keep on talking about the glory days of the "Celtic Tiger," when everyone had everything and could buy fancy cars and go on skiing trips and were the latest outfits and other such stuff. And, well, we all know how this story goes, recession hit and this is not how Ireland is anymore, people don't have money to do whatever they want, most people are steeped in debt with loans and mortgages and still further, it is more lucrative to be on the dol than to get a real job. so i have met many young capable people simply bumming around and collecting unemployment from the government. And it's not like it's a bad living, it's a very very good living. actually it works out, that if you had a job, at least a part time job you would earn a lot less than if you were purely on the dol doing nothing. which in two senses infuriates me, as i watch young Irish men drink the governments money away when i know people at home in South African cannot actually get a job or provide enough money for their children's care but furthermore i KNOW that with an Irish passport the entire world and jobs are open to you, you simply have to go online, fly to Europe, teach a bit of English or get a job on a ski resort or SOMETHING and it's possible to save money and and and ARG! so much opportunity and they. just. don't. want. to. and i feel like every time i go somewhere i have to struggle with my passport to prove that i am not going to come wreck havoc in a country and. well, it is humbling but. it is hurtful. it is frustrating. and ultimately, it is wrong.

But anyway, after sleeping, eating, playing music, listening to music, reading, drinking and all that fabulous holiday stuff i was done! And two and a half weeks later i moved to the farm. The farmer is an Irish lady called Sinead who besides growing and handling a farm all on her own with the help of the current "wwoofer" or volunteer is interested in all sorts of things from herbalism to Shamanism to tag rugby. We get on well, working daily in the fields, hoeing, planting, watering, collecting eggs, driving the tractor (one of my favourite activities) and harvesting the food. It is mainly a vegetable farm with fabulous amazing seasonal vegetables. I have always been a "eat what is cheapest and most available" sort of girl but now i am allowed the chance to eat the finest quality freshly grown from our farm everyday i fear i may think twice about the rubbishy vegetables i will buy at a supermarket. What a change from America! the eggs are REAL, things taste, coriander, dill, onions, SPRING onions. Every week or so a new vegetable is ready to be harvested and eaten. Yesterday we started picking courgettes! and the garlic and carrots have just begun to be ready. I have never really grown things before, the absolute joy and amazement that comes from things that simply grow from water and sunlight and glorious air. that is life. that is magic.

I had been feeling guilty being in Ireland for so long and not seeing any of the country besides little Thomastown and Kilkenny (which are 20 minutes away from each other). So a friend of mine showed up for a visit and all of a sudden i had that travel buddy i needed to do lots of exciting things. So we hooked a ride to Doolin to go visit the famed Cliffs of Moher with Sinead my farmer. Honestly i was somewhat determined to not really be impressed. And when we got there i was further not impressed, i mean WHAT are the point of cliffs when they are fenced off and you can't really feel like you are on a cliff? but presently we walked past the tourist centre and the swarming tourists themselves to the "no trespassing" sign, climbed over it and the real beauty began. After walking a kilometre or 2 or 3 the tourists trickled away and it was just us and the cliffs, the wind, the crashing sea. glorious. We continued our walk another couple k around the cliffs into some unpronounceable town and tried to hitchhike back to Doolin then make our way to Galway to visit a friend.

So let me say another thing about Ireland. So many people have told me "Oh i went to Ireland once a few years back, hitchhiked all around it, Irish people are the nicest people on earth." They were right in a sense, Irish people are really really really nice, in fact they are really chatty, you can fall into a chat with the road worker on the street as you go by or the old lady in the supermarket discussing different types of yoghurts. But they don't pick up hitchhikers anymore. Back to the Celtic Tiger,, no one needed to hitch coz now they had cars and with this everyone became suspicious of hitchhikers. We waited for a long time for a few lifts but, in saying this, it is true that the person who DOES break the mold and picks you up is going to well, either kill you OR be that stellar awesomeness that i suppose i want anyway. In general the latter was true and we were picked up by a Finish girl on her way from Finland to Portugal visiting friends on the way, camping and playing golf. And then a Swiss couple in a lovely green hippie van. A Slovakian who took us to his wife's bakery and bought us coffee, an 87 year old Hotel Owner who had 8 children ("that i know of," he said) and a drummer/ Organic farmer. One of my favourite lifts was from a man with an horse empty cart. From looking into his car it was clear he didn't have space for us, full of hammers and saws and mess of every size and shape. I thought he wanted us to get into the horse cart but no he told us to sit on top of all the rubbish in the back so cross legged on a plastic drum we held onto whatever we could as he roared us closer to Galway. We walked, we sang songs, we got to Galway, and we got back to Kilkenny from Galway, seeing little Irish towns , meeting lovely people in their cars and arriving home very tired after a fabulous weekend.

Ah yes, it's been good, i consistently find it amazing how lovely people are and how well things work out. this country isn't warm, but it is definitely warm in the hearts of people, as drunk and useless as some of them can be. but before i came here i knew Ireland was green. Oh and it's green so green.