I Miss "Easy."

I love it here.  Let's just get that out of the way to start with.  What an amazing irreplaceable experience. And I promise to follow this blog post with one that shows more love and devotion to my lovely host city.

That said, there are things that I could do without associated with living here in Naples, and they for the most part fall into a singular camp-- I miss the conveniences and ease of living in America.

It's true, I miss EASY.

I miss Building Standards.  There is probably STILL a perfect faceprint of mine imprinted deeply on a glass door somewhere here in Naples.  Raised in the U.S., I have come to expect that exit doors swing out. (In the event of a fire, you need only to PUSH the door in order to escape.)  Oh, not so in Naples.  Doors swing in.  Doors swing on double hinges, doors open over stairs, are plastered shut, go nowhere.   Electricity is another mystifying cultural phenom.  Though the most expensive in all of Europe, Italys' electricity experiences constant surges and outages and is delivered through TWO types of "standard" outlets.  (Don't get me started on how TWO and STANDARD shouldn't really coexist in the same sentence)  Water?  Also an issue.  Though on the whole the water in the Naples area is considered "safe and usable", the "safe and usable" label comes with a lot of caveats.  It's safe, unless your water pressure gets low (which it does about 50% of the time)  When water pressure is low, the water system draws from wells which are contaminated not only with bacteria, but with the runoff from the plastic/tires/trash/fill in the blank burned above ground.  Therefore it is suggested that you drink bottled water.  Oh by the way, the water is so stinking hard with calcium and other minerals that your skin will literally shrink up and fall off and your hair will become the texture of firewood kindling.

I miss Courtesy.  Neopolitans are a generous-natured people.  I have been truly delighted by gifts of food, thoughtful comments and actions.  But beware.  Beneath the generous exterior of each and every Neopolitan lies an extraordinarily selfish mean-spirited honey-badger of an alter-ego.  Put the very same Italian person that just offered you homemade wine and veggies from their garden behind the wheel of a vehicle, and suddenly that person would put their sole grandbaby on the asphalt in front of your moving vehicle before they would allow you to merge into traffic before them.  Put them in a "line" (I use this term loosely) for an event and they will trample you and toss a cigarette butt in your diaper bag just to distract you so that they can squeeze ahead.  And boy!, make sure you count your change in every instance!  Never in my life have I had a shopkeeper short me several dollars purposefully and then glare at me balefully as if being shorted is completely expected.  And it happens all the time!  Arguing for correct change every day?  Yep!

I miss American Breakfast- Italians eat Espresso for breakfast.  Okay that isn't true.  They smoke a cigarette and have a cookie, too.  They just don't do breakfast.  In fact, I have had SEVERAL conversations with Italian locals (all looking at me in confused delight) as I describe the idea of toast with spread, omelets, and breakfast meat with juice to start the day.  I haven't had an egg cooked for me since I arrived in Italy.  If I want an egg, I cook it myself in my own kitchen in my own frying pan.  It's kind of sad.

And on this same thread of thought...

I miss American Lunch- I am sure that it is because of cultural modeling in the U.S. that I cannot seem to appreciate the "joy" of the three hour lunch.  I can't seem to stop tapping my fingers, looking over my shoulder to see whether there is a cook in the kitchen, and calculating the babysitting costs.  Sometimes you just want Panera in a to-go bag.

I miss Posted and Adhered-to Business Hours-Between Riposa (Rest time when businesses are closed-- from 1:30-4:30 OR SO every day), Ferragusto (Half of August when nearly every family operated store closes so that the family can go on vacation), Sunday afternoons off, no posted business hours, posted business hours but nobody there, and little signs on the front door "back in 10 minutes" but nobody back in 45, I spend more time travelling to and from closed stores than I do actually shopping.

And following...

I miss Regular Business Protocol- Very often, during business hours, nobody answers the phone at a business.  I don't actually think I have ever had a voice mail service pick up.  If someone does indeed pick up the phone, it seems to rarely be a person that can actually help you.  Often it is the business persons' mother, or very young daughter who can only say "ca-ca" followed by muffled giggling.  I am told without fail  by whomever answers to call back later-- at which time nobody picks up when I call.  It's all rather confusing and frustrating.  I have gotten to the point where I rarely call anywhere anymore, opting instead to just show up in person.  This is also hit or miss.  If in person, the "not the right person to help you" person will usually try to take down my number to have the business person call me back, but then takes it down on a scrap of paper and stuffs it in their pocket...never to be seen again.

I miss Parking Lots- Never would I have told you that I would say this.  Who could miss a vast expanse of asphalt spread like cancer over every conceivable open space in a city?  Me, that's who!!  I have lost count of the number of times our family has completely abandoned plans to visit people or places simply because the last 100 yards of a trip became 30 miles and 3 hours of narrowly escaping transport by the jaws of life while braving traffic through infernal roundabouts, driving reverse direction on one-way cobblestone alleys trying to find a parking spot.  I'll pay anything!  Name your price!  I just want it to be walking distance and have my bumpers intact when I choose to leave!

I miss Smoking Laws- While I know a lot of people miss the haze of smoke that hangs in a sinister blue cloud in a crowded pub late on a Friday night, I think that even THOSE people would admit that the same sinister cloud does not belong in a hospital or elementary school.  Really guys?  Step AWAY from the front door of the preschool, and try to keep the butts off the playground.  My heavens.

I miss Trash Pickup- Every day my poor dear husband has to pack stinky trash into the trunk of his car and drive it to the dumpster.  If he fails, even one day, to make this trash pilgrimage (between 8pm and 8am according to Italian law), then the march of the 300 (Italian ants that is, though they make it feel like Spartan warriors with their tenacity and fearlessness) begins in our kitchen along all the walls and counters.

I miss TARGET - It actually makes me a little weepy even thinking about Target.  Once upon a time if I needed, I dunno, just fill-in-the-blank (batteries, diapers, mop-head replacements, deodorant, lightbulbs, toddler socks, a new bath mat, Oreo cookies, greeting cards, a medical prescription) I wouldn't have to spend an hour googling GPS coordinates and taking a survey amongst my English-speaking peers to determine when and where to acquire something.  Instead, I just went to Target, because YES, they had it, and YES, they were open.  Done.  You don't know what you got till it's gone, boys and girls.

But most of all-

I miss my Friends and Family back in the U.S. - It's so devastatingly difficult to call with the overlap of waking hours in the U.S. coinciding nearly perfectly with toddler-meltdown/dinner making hours in Italy.  I have made great friends here in Naples thank goodness, but I do miss keeping up regularly with everyone back home.  It's not that I don't love you. :)  Mwuah.

The Gypsy Problem

From the day I arrived in Italy, I was aware of them.  Bands of people living in squalor in makeshift homes beneath or nearby the freeways.  Dilapidated work vans, old RVs, even corrugated plastic and tarps serve as homes.  Hastily dug trenches for bathrooms.  No running water or electricity.  Matted, dirty, half-naked kids with no shoes.

Gypsies, I was told-- "Zingari", in Italian.  Beggars and thieves, the lot of them.  And I would drive on.

My experience with the gypsies here in Italy has been pretty limited.  Despite stories of muggings and pickpocketing, elaborately staged "accidents" after which only gypsies are witness and other such horrors-- I have been subject only to panhandling, and offers of a windshield wash for spare change.

Perhaps that is why I have had no interest in understanding these people or their lifestyle, motivation, or history.

My attitude changed last week when the largest of their camps, ensconced for months about 20 minutes away from my home beneath the freeway near a mall I rarely visit, was demolished.  The subsequent search for a new home led this group to settle in the median of the freeway on the exit where I drop my child off to school every morning.  The following day it had spread onto both sides of the freeway.  The day after, it included a field behind the main street.  Mothers with infants strapped to their chest walked down the middle of the main street.  Teen boys, barefoot and half-clad, swung their legs while seated on the freeway median.  Little kids burst onto the exit ramps and across into the fields beyond.

Suddenly I was interested.  Isn't that the sad reflection that is reality.

Our local Facebook page, haunted by we Americans living abroad here in Naples, was full to bursting with commentary on the subject.  Some of the comments were informative, some shockingly hateful, most (reasonably so) full of fear for family and home.  I just had to do some research of my own.

Despite what I thought I knew about these people, here is what I learned.  These people are not a loose band of impoverished Eastern European immigrants, bonded together only by their common language and condition.  These are a "people" unto themselves-- a "clan" of sorts, that has existed for hundreds and hundreds of years.  There are at least 160,000 Roma Gypsies living in Italy. (This includes, of course, only those that want to be counted.  The actual numbers are far, far higher.)  There have been Gypsies in Italy for hundreds of years, but in the recent past, large numbers of them have immigrated to Western Europe due to political change in their home countries (Romania, Albania, Croatia, and others)

In their home countries, they existed much as they do here-- living on the fringe.  Some supported themselves with subsistence farming efforts, but generally the groups then and now support themselves via panhandling, dumpster diving, and small scale thievery. Some groups have more complex "operations" that include drug running and prostitution.  They cobble together "homes" from whatever materials that they can beg, borrow or steal.  Homes of plastic tarpaulin stand next to old RVs, work vans, and plywood forts.  I haven't been inside, but from what I have read there is some pretty clever engineering going on inside-- I have certainly seen my share of DirecTV satellite dishes tacked on cardboard roofing.  Inside the camps, there is a family and hierarchical structure that exists to keep the clan together.  It includes sharing of motherhood duties, food, and money.

There have been integration efforts put forth by the Italian government.  In some cities, barrack style housing has been provided by the government in an effort to improve the health of the camps (they have a ten-year lower life estimate because of living conditions), as well as to contain the camps away from residents enraged by the thefts, filth, and other problems associated with the camps.  Classroom education has been offered to a limited degree to some children living in camps.  More often than not, these efforts have been for naught.  Camps are often dismantled or destroyed by the groups, perhaps because they are located away from what they perceive as their true support?  The castoffs of others?  Opportunities to ask for change?)  Attendance to school programs never catches on either.  (Could it be that education of their children is a threat to their lifestyle?  What if their kids began to hope for something better?  Or, less cheerfully, perhaps the children couldn't bear to attend a school where they don't speak the language, and are considered dirty, smelly, and beneath human....)

Here in Italy, usually known as one of the more tolerant Western European countries to immigration, nearly 70% of the populace wants the Roma Gypsies "gone". (By what exact method, who knows?)  In the last several years, I think in great part due to the stresses of the painfully weak economy here in Southern Italy, Italians have directed perhaps a disproportionate amount of loathing towards the Romas.  Article after article can be found in online news sources about camps being deliberately burned down by residents in an attempt to "remove" the problem.

Here in Naples, I remained anxious and concerned about our own personal gypsy "problem."  The tone of of the families living in the area became less fearful and more mob.  I began to wonder what kind of a response we would, as Americans stationed overseas, launch against this "European Immigration Problem."

But, the next morning, they were gone.  No kids, no stray dogs, no RVs, just makeshift outhouses and trash remained.  Word is that the military police drove them out-- with an offer of a camp North of here, away from our homes and schools.  I may never know.

I have to say that I am glad.  And sad.

For me personally, I feel less threatened by the potential for problems associated with having this camp nearby.  I will also be relieved that the vicious and ugly dialogue that has been thrown around in the last week will die down in my immediate vicinity.

At the same time, the problem is not gone. It is just pressed back into the periphery, where it can exist side by side with my own happiness without interference.

And somehow I just don't feel very good about that.