Weeks 17 & 18; 18-2-22
Hello friends,
I'm fully leaning into being boosted, I feel like my world is opening back up again in so many ways. I'm writing this from a Freccia (high speed train) on my way to meet up with another Fulbrighter in Lecce.
After multiple drafts, I have finally settled on how best to organize my reflections on immigration, xenophobia and nationalism. I also recently completed my 7th(!) journal since I arrived here which prompted a big synthesis & indexing of themes moment, and a "from the journal."
Regarding COVID, things are beginning to feel fairly "normal" -- that is, new normal -- again. We've all got N95s on (called FFP2s here), and our outdoor mask mandate is scheduled to end on Feb 28. But for the most part, everyone is boosted and Omicron is on the downtrend. I've had some wild interactions in the classroom this week, but I'll include those in a future "Field Notes."
I had a lovely, solo walk in Napoli on Saturday. That is looking towards Posillipo from Chaia.
And in the other direction, towards Vesuvius, a cargo ship passing Castel dell'Ovo.
Unintentional selfie, I was aiming for the sunset.
Word pictures
- A day in the life: getting a text 5 minutes before leaving to go to school that my co-teacher would be absent; running a 2-hr lesson with a very disengaged/distracted substitute co-teacher, during which I both was asked if I've read the Unabomber Manifesto, and also needed to facilitate a conversation about why "white power" is NOT an appropriate team name for a game in class. After that lesson, getting a text that the teacher who usually drives me to the other school was also absent; texting my co-teacher for the next class that I'd be walking, and therefore arriving about 20 minutes late; rushing to school in the rain; getting a phone call as I was standing outside the school building to "torni a casa" because there was no water and they were sending all the students home. Once arriving home, deciding to run errands with my 4 extra hours, but finding that ALL the stores were closed (and being really confused about this because it was not a holiday?); then running into a co-teacher and being offered coffee; standing in line for 20 minutes outside the one produce store that was open for 1 potato and 3 apples while and old woman did what seemed like all her shopping for the entire month; then finally taking a nap before reading the rest of the evening.
- I've been joking that I'm losing my English. While walking lungomare, I passed somebody wearing a t-shirt with English words on it. I saw "Into-" and then could not figure out what the rest said. "Lerant, Lerant, Lerant" I repeated, with each step I ran. I spent 30 seconds trying to figure out why somebody would be into Lerant -- what is Lerant?! And then I realized it was one word (as you've probably figured out by now), "intolerant" . But it took me a concerningly long time to put it all together.
- An old man driving an old car blasting trap music driving back and forth along the lungomare on a particularly warm Saturday afternoon.
- Being asked by my students if American high school is anything like High School Musical... I am now half-tempted to do lessons based on Disney Channel Original Movies (as you know, I have an abundance of unwritten DCOM academic papers in my back pocket).
- In a funny update, last week I got the worst haircut I've ever gotten in my life. It was.... long on the sides and short on the top? I was very confused. It has since been fixed, and I will be going to a different hairdresser for the rest of my time here.
- I had my students play a vocabulary game that split each class into 2 teams. I asked all the teams to choose team names. Some favorites were, translated into English: Chicken vs Lasagna; Fire vs Rainbow; Escondido vs Alaska (this group really liked the geography lesson); Girls vs Animals (instead of boys, the class just happened to be sitting that way); Left vs Right (not political, again, the class just happened to be sitting that way and was feeling especially uncreative); and Buff vs Singers (this was in the liceo musicale, but I guess some of the students wanted to make sure that I knew they also workout).
- Going for a hike up on the mountain and abruptly turning on my heels and going back into town because I encountered some cinghiali, wild boars, on one of the hills. It was all at a distance, but I did scappare, scoot on out of there, very quickly when I realized why it smelled funky.
- I was invited for lunch with a colleague who was a substitute for one of my co-teachers. It was very impromptu. We were co-teaching the last hour. She asked me about my time in Mondragone, and I shared honestly that it has been difficult to meet people. She invited me over on the spot. She has this beautiful stereotypically-Italian home and two sweet sweet labs. It was a lovely time, and in moments like these I'm grateful to be in a small town rather than a city.
- And speaking of small towns, this one is hands down the funniest Small Town Moment I've had since arriving here. While running last week, I stopped to stretch at one of the turnaround points of the lungomare. An older man on a bike asked if he could interrupt me. He asked me about my shoes and my running form, and then my accent gave me away. When I explained that I'm American but teach at the high school he responded, "Oh, I've heard about you!" I was expecting him to have a grandchild in one of my classes or a child who also works at the high school. But no, instead he said, "You had a difficult time getting your third vaccine!" I laughed, holding my very-red face in both my hands, and said, "I take it you work at the ASL?" (The ASL is the Agenzia Sanitaria Locale, local health department. They pronounce it as an acronym, though -- "azihl." Who decided that should be an acronym?!) He said no, he's retired and never worked there. He overheard two other people discussing my "case" in a cafe a few weeks ago. So I'm famous in Mondragone for the whole casino I went through for my vaccine (which I'll be outlining in more detail in my next newsletter).
The Fulbrighter who was here in Mondragone 3 years ago is now a high school Italian teacher in the US. She and I set up pen pals for our students. The first batch of letters arrived this week! I'm doing another collaboration with my high school for the seniors I teach, that one will be entirely in English.
A real live photo of me in a real live classroom with real live students! This is such an anomaly, usually the school is very strict about photos or audio that includes the students. However, this week I had my Fulbright midterm report and presentation, so the teacher agreed to take a photo with the letters.
A highlight from a reply letter -- "My favorite dish is pizza, but not the pizza you Americans eat, but the real Italian pizza.
Yep, sorry folks, you can't escape Wordle even in my newsletter. I will say, it's a great teaching tool for TESOL.
Reflections on immigration, nationalism, xenophobia
After many weeks of hinting at this section, we're finally here. I think I hyped it up too much. Nothing I'm about to say is groundbreaking. It's simply my noting the ways in which nationalism, racism and xenophobia, which we know are alive and well, have manifested in the parts of Mondragone which I've been privy to. This includes in-depth conversations with colleagues, passing conversations with strangers (cashier, taxi driver), and my experiences moving through the immigration paperwork process.
Mondragone is at a moment of transition. Many of the young white Italian Mondragonesi are electing to start their adult lives elsewhere -- mostly in cities in Northern Italy where jobs will pay them more for their multiple degrees. This had led to a common opinion that Mondragone is shrinking, that there is a mass exodus from Mondragone. However, this notion erases and denies the movement into Mondragone of populations of immigrants, some from Eastern Europe and some from Africa. They live in Mondragone, and have robust communities here. They also meet an essential need -- for labor, both in the countryside, working in agriculture, and in the city of Mondragone as laborers in trades and construction. Construction and agriculture are the two largest industries in Mondragone.
Many elements of this shift can be compared to the US -- the immigrant communities in Mondragone are very geographically segregated from the rest of Mondragone; the overall demographics of the town are starting to shift in a way that could be comparable to the way that parts of America are becoming majority BIPOC, if they are not already; and there is denial and vitriol, especially from older generations, towards both the trend as a whole and the individuals who constitute it. This last one in particular bridges the de facto/de jure gap, in that many older adults have positions of power within the local and regional offices that manage immigration paperwork. It also manifests, as does almost everything in life, in interpersonal connections.
I am going to share a few experiences I had that have led me to the reflections that I just shared. Some are experiences that I had while navigating the immigration process, and others are snippets of conversations that I've had or overheard.
On Bureaucracy
- I'll write much, much more about this next week, but it is a terrible system to navigate. None of the offices communicate with one another and often give directions that are directly in conflict with one another. I would be floundering if not for all the personal connections of the older adults in my life. I have struggled to do the bare minimum, paperwork-wise, AND I am moving through this system with white privilege, American citizenship, and English/Italian bilingualism.
- For the codice fiscale (the Italian equivalent of an SSN, essential to do anything in any office): I was originally told that it was impossible to schedule an appointment without a different immigration document (that takes months to process). My landlady asked a friend for a personal favor to schedule me an appointment, which did happen. When we arrived it turned out that my not having that document did not in fact matter, and we went forward with the process through the normal channel. When the immigration officer looked at my American passport, he repeated my Italian-American name 3 times, and then joked, "With a name like this, you could go without any of these documents your entire time here, and nobody would bat an eye."
- For that document that sometimes takes months, the permesso di soggiorno, permit to stay: I went to the police station. After waiting outside for 3 hours, when they called the names for my time slot, my name was fourth on the list. However in the waiting room, they selected me to go first. I was the only white person applying for the permesso in my time slot. And when I got to the window, they said they had remembered me from all the phone calls about my kit (apparently my host family, co-teacher, and the principal of the school had all called on my behalf, more on that in the next one). There were two problems: first, my application still had not arrived in the mail from Rome. They said that was not a problem, as I had copies of everything. And second, while I had brought a copy of my housing contract, it was not officially registered with the agenzia delle entrate. Let me stress that NOWHERE in any of the application instructions does it say that the contract must be registered. However, since so many of the older adults in my life were personal friends of the police officer, he decided to accept all the other components of my application, and send me for fingerprints, and then text my landlord (who is a friend) to get the registered contract scanned and emailed to him later. I then went to get my fingerprints taken, and we left. As we were leaving, the kit of somebody else in the room (with a Nigerian passport) also had not arrived yet, and the police officer was considering kicking him out and making him schedule another appointment in 4 weeks. For context, this is the document that all non-citizens are required to carry at all times, and the penalties are steep.
- The bottom line is that I've had a nightmare of a time moving through the system, with the assistance of 5 well-connected Mondragonesi who do not take any shit backing me up and asking for personal favors on my behalf. I cannot imagine navigating this system without these connections, as well as without all my privilege. Many more examples to come in my next newsletter that will underscore this point.
On interpersonal interactions
This one is more fragmented and will read more like word pictures. I really whittled these experiences down. There have been many.
- The Italian friend of a Fulbrighter being told not to get a house in Castel Volturno (neighboring town to the south of Mondragone with majority BIPOC/African immigrant population) explicitly and unashamedly because it's majority BIPOC; my own experiences of being told not to take the bus to Napoli because it goes through Castel Volturno.
- Similarly being told that Napoletani make fun of people who vacation in Mondragone, with heavy undertones of Mondragone being "less clean" of a beach because the town's demographics are shifting.
- SO MANY SENTENCES that have started with "I'm not racist" and then ended with things that were, in fact, racist (shocker).
- Being told by a taxi driver about her daughter who moved to Australia, met and fell in love with a Black man there, and rarely visits. She recounted that they do not like visiting Italy because her husband and their biracial children are treated worse in Italy than in Australia. The colleague was incredulous that her daughter was choosing not to put "family first."
- Being told by a cashier that it's a shame I'm in Mondragone and not one of the other (majority white) small towns, because in those other towns I do not need to worry about watching my bag or locking up my bike. "Si sta bene" -- "people are well" in those other towns.
- A colleague who is Italian, white, not bi-racial, but who uses one of the darker skintone emojis when texting. This same colleague is very willing to use the word "colonialism" in reference to the unification of Italy, but not in reference to Ethiopia or, you know, the global south.
Phew! Wow, that was long. Thank you for bearing with me for all of that. I have many more reflections on moments of racism and xenophobia that I've witnessed and overheard in my time here. I think I will, again, push those to another time.
I recently found a bike on facebook marketplace! I took a train to a random suburb to get it, and then waited at the station for 3 hours for the train back. It was a beautiful spring day, I actually felt warm outside. Here's a shot of my bike on the train. And for all my public transit enthusiast friends, bike aside, I hope this train photo brings you some joy. (I will say, this is one of the newer treni regionali.) I will likely do a newsletter on public transit before I leave.
I went lungomare yesterday to write in my journal and soak in the good weather. Right below where I was sitting, there were 2 little dune sprouts in the sand. In this photo they are just shadows. But much like the snails on the Peroni bottle a few weeks ago, it was a moment of noticing life even in its tiniest forms.
Another section of my commute -- this is the one with the least sidewalk. I think what makes it even worse is that it has a curb, but no sidewalk. Please also enjoy the tractor.
From the journal
These ones are not all that cohesive, but have been building up for a few weeks now.
- I'm getting more comfortable from a culture shock perspective. Some things that are no longer striking to me: road signs, landscape, language, where to buy things, the fact that going to the Poste for anything is going to take an entire afternoon, the stray animals (still sad), the driving. I'm missing some of those extra sharp observations on cultural difference that I had in the very beginning. And, I'm relieved that it's less exhausting simply to exist.
- As many of you know, I have a heavy tendency towards minimalism -- I hate shopping/buying clothing, I rarely accept gifts, and my family refers to my childhood bedroom as "the hotel room" because it's empty. Contrary to that mentality, I have strong urges to make this apartment "homier." (For example, wanting to get a nice tea kettle, then remembering how silly that is because I would not bring it back to America.) I am not sure that I'll still feel this way when I get back to the States, and am closer to my communities, but I've thought multiple times that I want the next apartment I live in to be "a pain to move out of."
- I recently applied to the Fulbright-EU annual conference. Up until 2020, this was in-person in Belgium, but this year the conference is online. I did apply, but I'm disappointed to miss the opportunity to go in person. It has me reflecting broadly on the importance of physicality -- I have so many memories of riding in a car or walking down a street, watching the trees or buildings or fields go by. There is a level of spatial awareness -- the layout, where light and shadows fall, where people congregate and how traffic moves, the affect (don't get me started on affect). I do not have these same types of memories for places I've only seen through Zoom. Similarly, I'm reflecting on some of the most prominent scents here in Mondragone -- stufa/camino smoke; cigarette smoke; this one specific clothing detergent that a lot of people use; the soapy, fishy water on the sidewalk outside the pescherie; the diesel engines of the 3-wheeled trucks and farm equipment; the smell of dew up on the mountain; the sea; rotting fish in the trashcans along the beach; heavy cologne. I am excited to return to America and smell the scents that I've been missing, but have never been acutely aware enough of to identify.
- Wanting a visual lexicon more rooted in my own lived experience -- I was recently trying to visualize the relationship between a few academic concepts, and the image I kept coming back to was of a fern opening. But it was very digital: the colors were blue and orange, and it was cartoonish. Clearly an animation. I was disappointed that my brain was unable to conceptualize these relationships through an image that I'd seen in the real world, not on a screen. While the internet can be a wonderful tool and can expand frame of reference in powerful ways, I want to be more intentional about seeking out in-person experiences that will expand my visual lexicon.
- Last one -- while on a solo adventure into the Napoli suburbs, I noticed a tendency to pull out my journal multiple times per hour to record every thought. My first thought was that it felt tedious; my second thought was that it felt good to value my thoughts enough to dedicate the time and journal space to recording them.
From my encounter with cinghiali, wild boars, from a distance. I did not stop to take a picture until I was further away. The cinghiali are the two black specks on the top of the crest of the hill.
This was the view on the way up.
And on the way down I found a warning sign that I'd missed.
I completed an IRS online training for required disclosure for a non-profit that I'm helping to start. This one is definitely the Italian food.
I mentioned that IT band pain in the last email. On my way to Napoli last weekend, I had run out of time to ice my knee. So I brought this bag of frozen peas with me to the bus stop, on the bus, and then to the train station.
I know I said this in my last letter, but I'm anticipating that some folks who are on this listserv might not agree with everything I've said. I also said this, but to reiterate it, I'm speaking from my own experiences only, and my conversations around this topic may deepen as my relationships here do, too. That said, the existence of systemic racism is not going to change through deeper conversations here in Mondragone. And, there is nuance here. There are many students and colleagues with whom I've spoken about the fact that racism is alive and well here in Italy, and we've had some wonderful, meandering conversations about comparative politics in Italy and America, in the context of race, racism, migration and xenophobia. I would so welcome the opportunity to engage with you on some of the elements of this newsletter that you'd like to talk about more. As always, please do not hesitate to respond. PROOF THIS
Con tranquillita`,
Antonella
Appendix: Ground Rules
- This is a time for me of reconnecting with a number of practices that have been interrupted by the pandemic; by the 3-part-time-jobs, recent-humanities-grad, gig-economy work routine that I've just left; and by the inevitable ebb and flow of intersecting needs. This is just that -- a practice, a practice of connection, a practice of reflection, a practice of synthesis, a practice of perspective.
- This is not meant to replace my 1:1 interactions!
- This should serve me. There is no right or wrong way for me to structure these. Like my bullet journal, if the structure becomes cumbersome, it means my needs are shifting and I need to re-evaluate what I am including and how I am preparing to write.
- This is not a finished product, ever, by any standard. I will not fret over punctuation, word choice, or syntax. There are many spaces in my life where those things do matter, quite a lot, but they are not a priority here.
In case you missed it!
Here is the link to the archive of my past newsletters.