The
sidewalks are coated in ash and lined with garbage sacks. Rain has been falling heavily, but every so
often the clouds part, revealing a smoking Mount Etna. The rain collects and flows through the
streets in rivers because there are no drainage routes. Sicily seems to be brooding, and so am I.
I
left Salento on Monday evening, after a series of heartfelt goodbyes and many
earnest promises to write and return.
Even as I was packing up my room, I was already beginning to miss waking
at dawn to milk the sheep, seeing the Salento sunrise, going to pasture with
Domenico and making ricotta in the echoing, music-hall dairy where we would
sing opera at the top of our lungs and press curds into hard rounds. I was already missing Mari and the way she
would make sarcastic jokes and laugh with her whole body. I was already missing Antonio’s jazz playlists
and kitchen-dancing and the eternal flow of friends who would gather at the
house every night. I miss helping with
the lamb birthings (I pulled an amniotic sack off of a suffocating lamb the
other day!) and I miss the tranquility of the Salento region.
But
sometimes, when travelling, we must leave places that make us very happy,
risking comfort for the potential of encountering something equally as essential. And so, I took a night bus to Messina, and
then south to Pisano at the foot of Mount Etna to start anew at Sotto I Pini, a small farm and Bed and
Breakfast within view of the Ionian Sea.
I
am unenthusiastic because there is very little work here, and the family who I
am living with seems to be scrounging for things for me to do. It does not help that the rain has prevented
me from working in the small vegetable garden, where at least I know I can be
useful. I think what gets to me is that
I feel as though I am wasting my precious time and theirs—that a true exchange
of ideas, knowledge, and culture is not something I can expect at this farm. Naturally,
I plan on moving along quite soon. I am in touch with several other WWOOFing
farms in the area and I believe I can relocate within the next few days.
There
are two small children that live here, however, whom I know I will miss. Okay—miss
may be too strong of a word. This afternoon
alone I have been socked, bit, licked, impaled by an umbrella, tackled and
screamed at, mostly by the two-and-a-half year old Giuseppe. The six year old
Teresa is a tomboy and very sweet (and seems to like me an awful lot). The other WWOOFer here seems easily stressed
by the children and their bipolar tendencies (gleefully entertained by a
coloring book one minute, angrily brandishing an umbrella the next), but I
actually don’t mind the chaos. The trick
to remaining calm is two-fold: a) don’t take the temper tantrum personally and
b) remind yourself and be thankful that you are not their mother.
To be continued...
