About a year
ago, when I was walking across the north of Italy, a friend and I stayed for a
few days with a family in the village of Montecchio Precalcino. In the short
time that we spent with Sabina, Roberto, and Sabina’s sons, Alessandro and
Christopher, we felt we had each gained a family. Indeed, over the next eight
months, as I walked through the Balkans into Turkey, then travelled on to
Egypt, Sabina was always there for me as though she were family. When overwhelmed by doubt, Sabina always sent an encouraging
word. One night in my tent in frozen Bulgaria I was overcome by a feeling of
utter desolation. I sent out a few SMS messages, hoping for any kind of a
response, and Sabina was the only one who answered, all the way from Italy. When
faced with financial difficulty Sabina helped me out with money; I never had to
ask for it. The last donation I received while on my ‘peace walk’ was from
Sabina; I would have arrived in Italy absolutely broke without it.
It’s no
wonder then that Sabina and her family have been here for me in getting started
on this new journey. While I was still in Egypt Sabina invited me to stay in
Montecchio for as long as I needed to should I return to Italy. When I asked
her if there was any short-term work available there, she said she’d look into
it, and she did. As a result, for the
past three weeks I’ve been living with Sabina and her family and for the past
two weeks I’ve been working on a nearby organic farm, earning enough money to
get me cycling and back on the road.
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I’m up
before seven, but not for the farm work. I meditiate for 30 minutes with
Roberto and Alessandro before having breakfast. Roberto seems like a guy who
would meditate; he’s softspoken and spends much of his day quietly working in
the garden and tending to household chores. Alessandro, Sabina’s 18 year old
son, does not seem like a guy who’d be interested in meditation; he’s a heavy
metal guitarist. But there we all sit each morning, in a little semi-circle,
focusing on our breathing and trying to detach ourselves from our thoughts.
I set off
for work at a quarter to nine. It’s late in the morning by farming standards,
but Pierluigi is merciful to his short-term migrant laborer. I cycle up a steep
hill from Sabina’s house, and within ten minutes I’m at the patch of land where
Pierluigi and I have recently planted lettuce and cabbage. It’s not quite nine
o’clock when I get there, and as I stretch the hose out from the water tank that
Pier has brought in with a tractor, I admire the view from the hilltop. Then
for the next hour and a half, I carefully and quietly water the seedlings until
the water tank is empty. On this particular morning, I sing a bit, and I feel
grateful, and I am consciously happy for the first time in months. I’ve been brooding since Cairo, but that
heaviness is gone. The feelings of loss and disappointment at the end of my
last journey have vanished. The past is finished. New horizons lie ahead, but
my renewed happiness comes from the present moment, and not from an overly optimistic
view of the future. Whatever the future
brings, I’ll take.
After
stowing the water hose I hop on Knulp and cycle down the steep hill to
Pierluigi’s organic farm in the village. But for one stretch of rough asphalt,
I let Knulp fly down the hill without braking, feeling the wind in my face and
enjoying the silence of motorless speed. At the bottom I cross the road leading
into the village and onto a perpendicular lane that borders the farm. A right
turn puts me on a grassy lane taking me past rows of tomatoes and beans where
three white chickens congregate every morning. As always, the chickens sprint directly
away from my bicycle, and as long as they keep in front of it I keep up my
speed, relishing in the brief chase. They finally break right or left and only
then do I slow down to coast into Pierluigi’s driveway.
Before I’m
able to get to my late morning work, which today will consist of stacking
firewood and digging up potatoes, Pierluigi’s mother shuffles out of the house.
I always hear her before I see her as she likes to chat, and as always she’s
chatting about how hot it is and that I should have something to drink. Though
it is only 10:30 in the morning she offers me a choice, water or beer. For now
I choose the water. I’ll be driving the old Fiat tractor to load up firewood,
and it’s best that I have my wits when I back into the narrow garage to unload.
As I thank Pier’s mother for the water and walk away towards the Fiat, she’s
still chatting.
For the next
hour and a half I drive the tractor back and forth along a 30 meter stretch,
loading the firewood piled outside, throttling past a half dozen bee hives,
then backing carefully into the garage where I neatly stack the wood. Nearly
every time I back into the garage, there’s Pierluigi’s mother again, chatting
away despite my lack of comprehension, and offering water or beer. With thirty
minutes left in the morning’s work I park the tractor and head to the potato
patch with a wheelbarrow and pitchfork. Yesterday I was digging up red
potatoes, which were small and scanty because of the winter’s excess of rain
and the summer’s lack of it. But today I’m digging up yellow potatoes, which,
though small, are surfacing with every turn of the fork. In just a few minutes
I’ve already got a small load of them in the wheelbarrow, and when I push it back to the house, there is Pierluigi’s mom, a bottle of water in one hand
and a big beer in the other. She looks at the potatoes with a smile and chats
away. I’m sitting down to gulp the beer when Pierluigi arrives from his morning
at the organic farmer’s cooperative. He gulps a beer down himself, rolls his
eyes and laughs a bit as his mother shuffles about, talking, then he asks me to
be back in a couple of hours. We’ll be working with the bees this afternoon. But before I go Pierluigi’s mother gives me an
ice cream, which I wash down with the last of my beer.
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I am as
grateful for the employment Pierluigi has given me as I am for Sabina’s having
asked for it on my behalf. The work that I am doing for him, he normally does
on his own, or with the help of one of his sisters. He wants to help me to get
to Syria though, and he doesn’t mind paying me to lighten his heavy work load.
I enjoy working for him, as he is easygoing and intelligent. And though he is
an organic farmer who is open to new ideas and theories, he’s got both feet on
the ground. He works hard and his farm is productive. I’ve seen too many pretentious
New Age permaculture or organic farmers whose farms are covered in weeds and producing very
little because they spend more time on the djembe chanting for fertility than
getting their hands dirty. Pier gets dirty though, and I get dirty with him,
and when the work’s done we have a beer and a smoke and a few laughs. No
subject is taboo, and our conversation will range from that of the typical
laborer’s bawdy talk to the finer points of beekeeping to esoteric Tibetan longevity
exercises to Rudolph Steiner on education or organic farming.
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I cycle back
up the hill to Sabina’s, where the youngest son, 15 year old Christopher, has
prepared lunch for the family. Sabina is back from work, Roberto has come in
from the garden, and Alessandro has returned from his on-the-job training as an
accountant. Just as one would never guess that Alessandro meditates, one would
never guess he’s training to be an accountant with his long hair, sunglasses,
knee-length shorts and Converse All Stars. He prefers playing with his brother in their heavy metal band to
the thought of being an accountant, but he also prefers the idea of having some
kind of meaningful work to a life dedicated soley to heavy metal. But it won't be accounting, he says.
Afterwards I
race down the hill on Knulp, again speeding down the grassy lane at Pierluigi’s
and chasing the white chickens. Pierluigi is already putting on gloves and his
beekeeping hat, which looks like a Spanish equestrian’s hat with a net. It is
hard to imagine Pier as a Spanish equestrian though. He's a bit too heavy for that.
Pier has already trained
me in the basics of honey extraction, and I follow him out to the hives which
are only some 15 meters from the house. As he pries open the top of the hive I shoot
a little smoke into the opening with a bellows to calm down the bees. I am
unprotected but not very worried about being stung as I’ve found Pier’s bees to
be as easygoing as he is. My first time watching Pier do his work I kept well
away until Pier’s mother arrived, chatting away and marching up to the hive to
pick up two honey-laden frames. Bees zipped around her but she kept chatting
and ignoring the bees as she brought the frames into the garage. Since then
I’ve felt cowardly not to march up to the hive as she does. I try to be quiet
though, and a little slower in my movements than Pier’s mom.
Once we’ve
got the first two frames out of the hive I carry them into a room to slice off
the edge of the honeycomb so the honey can be extracted in a centifugal drum.
As I slice, honey oozes out onto a tray and I can’t help but use my fingers to
gobble it up. Parts of the honeycomb fall on to the tray as well, and I shove
them into my mouth. The last time Pier was doing this job I had the honey and
wax all to myself until some kids came in to compete with me. I’d found myself
shamelessly consuming the honey as fast as I could to keep it from the boys.
They’d been eating ice cream, so I’d thought it only fair. After slicing off
the wax from the frames I put four of them into the centrifugal drum and turn
the crank handle to get them spinning. In just a few minutes I reverse the
frames, then a few minutes later remove them. They are feather light now, revealing
empty honeycombs. The honey they contained is at the bottom of the drum. I then
empty the drum to fill a large honey pot and repeat the process several more
times. As a bee has entered the room, enticed by the honey, I close the doors
and windows. Pier had warned me to do this as the bee will tell his buddies about
where the stolen honey’s been taken and they’ll all return to take it back. I’m
mischievously curious, and I’d like to see all the bees swarm into the room for
their honey, but I’ve done my job and the lone bee will have to do his best to
carry the honey back on his own.
I spend the
last few hours of my workday in an open field, planting fennel and more
cabbage. Pierluigi and I have measured out the distances between rows, and he’s
given me a tape measure to measure out the distance between seedlings, in this
case 50 cm or more. I’ve got several hundred to plant, and it’s nearly 40
degrees (C) so it’s the hardest work of the day. Unlike the little household
garden where planting is slow and leisurely, this planting is done quickly or
it will never get done. Every once in a while I have to stop to stand erect
though. I may not feel 53, but I am. Other small breaks occur when Pierluigi’s
mother makes her way from the house to the middle of the field where I’m
planting. She’s got a cold bottle of water and a glass, and her chatting is
never annoying. It is always a harbinger of refreshment.
Once the
work is finished, Pierluigi and I sit in the same room where I did the honey
extraction, drinking a beer and talking some more. His sisters arrive, and some
nieces and nephews, and his brother and some in-laws, and there is some
argument about what to plant next and where. Pierluigi’s mother and the oldest
sister are ganging up on him. He looks at me and rolls his eyes.
“Yes, yes,
yes, yes… si mama! Mama mia!” he says laughing with exasperation. Apparently
his mother and sister have got their way.
I’m digging
the whole scene, and I’m happy to be in Montecchio Precalcino.
*******************************************************************************
But I'll be leaving this little paradise in two days. I'll hop on Knulp and speed down the hill before turning right towards Vicenza, then Mantova, Piacenza, Milan, Como and into the Alps, to Basel, and to Paris, hopefully by the 20th of August or thereabouts. Then to Syria.
As I'll be officially starting my cycling trek to Syria from Sabina's house on Wednesday morning, those of you who would like to donate 10 or 20 dollars or euros to International Rescue Committee, or to Polish Humanitarian Action are welcome to do so. The money will not go to me, but to those organizations, and the money will help victims of the war in Syria. These people have suffered unimaginable loss through no fault of their own; they're caught in the middle of a sectarian war, so let's do just a little something to help them.
To donate just look to the right at 'How to donate', select the NGO you prefer, and the NGO's page will take you from there.
Thanks!
