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.