5-21 December 2007
When religion becomes artificial, art has a duty to rescue it. Art can show that the symbols which religions would have us believe literally true are actually figurative. Art can idealize those symbols, and so reveal the profound truths they contain. Richard Wagner (1813-1883), Religion and art (1880).
The adventurous days of investigation are over, and I am alone, back to an empty school.
It is a quiet and sunny afternoon of December, and a warm breeze reminds me the last days of August in Rome, when the sun seems to come closer to us, more vivid and more yellow, but with a tone of sadness, every day stronger and inexorable, as if it wanted to share with us the melancholy of the end of summer, and to offer its last beneficial rays of joy before leaving us alone in our autumnal regrets.
Instead, it is Christmas time, and I have to force my mind – so used to connect this holiday to cold weather, to traffic jams caused by neurotic mothers unable to find the presents which perfectly match the requests of their children (these times rulers of the family more than ever), and to a general good spirit of preparation and comfortably expected surprises – to realize that this is the same period that I waited for so long when I was a child, and that I, my brother and my parents spent in our country house near Rome.
How many sweet memories flow up to my mind, creating a stream of ancient images, sounds and scents, from which I try to extinguish part of my unquenchable thirst for pleasure: there stands the small emporium, where I or my brother were often sent to buy ham, bread, cheese, salt, olive oil and wine for our dinner; picture 1. a view of Ramiro beach.
here the kitchen, a marvelous mixture of furniture, keys, drawers, a large sink, an old wood stove, the small window on top, the telephone, scraps of papers written one year before, the cold and humid perfume of shade, and in general a holy confusion that made that kitchen so human, so full of small secrets, so comfortable!; here the rosemary tree on the corner, talking to me and only asking to wait; the night sky, washing the iced stars in the stingy air of January; the big cross on top of the hill watching us, and the excursions to the beautiful hilly surroundings; the deep smell of resin and burnt grass; the dark Chinese room (so called because of the oriental-style furniture that my Grandfather had brought from Malaysia. It is only when the different places of a house start to get their nicknames that we can call it ours; the house, then, lives and shares with us every little human experience, accident or reported story which has created those names; and will die with us if nobody continues the tradition, protecting it with a secret code known only by its legitimate inhabitants. Our country house, being very old, was full of nicknames that a stranger would consider funny or stupid, but that my family still finds perfectly normal: the “house of Carrozzo”, the “garden of Zio Memmo”, the “ONU” (UN in Italian) – so called for being a tiny room with no purpose, as useless as the United Nations, at least according to my Grandfather; etc.).
But the main event around which everything else was supposed to turn, still remains for me the preparation of the presepe, the material reproduction of Christ’s Nativity, in which my father personified St. Joseph’s carpentry skills, and my brother and I his little helpers and apprentices, in setting the tables, placing the cattle shed where Jesus was born, the small statues of Mary, Joseph, the cow and the donkey, the shepherds, the houses around shining with dim coloured electric lights, the hills and the fake river: three days of work (with many, many breaks in between) to celebrate the holiness of the family, and the final result was blessed by the mystic light that, during the day, filtered through the yellow glass of that tiny room’s window (the “ONU”) and gave the whole space a soft aura of gold, as a niche of a gothic church.
Of those forests of symbols that I can see (and that I feel the hard duty to translate from my conscience) when I look back into my memory, the ones regarding Christmas are rich and often mysterious, but here in Angola almost nothing helps me to recall them: only a small tropical tree decorated with blue lights makes me taste some bits of the incoming holiday, adding to the absence of its signs the exotic contradiction of a Christmas palm tree (as high as 60 cm) placed among baobabs and bougainvillea in bloom. And, naturally, my mother called me expressing the sadness of the first year in which we will not celebrate Christmas all together; once I will be so strong to pay back (and therefore, to be free from the guilt of inadequacy) all the love that she has given to me, a love so natural, without any condition, rooted into such a divine power, to guide a woman who had never touched a computer only few months ago to learn in a week the use of internet in order to communicate with her son. Now she uses the mouse, opens and closes programs, she writes emails and comments to my diary…
Anyway.
Back to my story. I have to tell something about the “investigation” made together with my students. It has been interesting and productive: as already said, the students had to lead a survey-style research about the conditions of health and nutrition, economy and employment, energy and transportation, education and culture, in some villages of the inland. Each group was composed by 8-9 elements and a teacher to help them in their research.
But the main event around which everything else was supposed to turn, still remains for me the preparation of the presepe, the material reproduction of Christ’s Nativity, in which my father personified St. Joseph’s carpentry skills, and my brother and I his little helpers and apprentices, in setting the tables, placing the cattle shed where Jesus was born, the small statues of Mary, Joseph, the cow and the donkey, the shepherds, the houses around shining with dim coloured electric lights, the hills and the fake river: three days of work (with many, many breaks in between) to celebrate the holiness of the family, and the final result was blessed by the mystic light that, during the day, filtered through the yellow glass of that tiny room’s window (the “ONU”) and gave the whole space a soft aura of gold, as a niche of a gothic church.
Of those forests of symbols that I can see (and that I feel the hard duty to translate from my conscience) when I look back into my memory, the ones regarding Christmas are rich and often mysterious, but here in Angola almost nothing helps me to recall them: only a small tropical tree decorated with blue lights makes me taste some bits of the incoming holiday, adding to the absence of its signs the exotic contradiction of a Christmas palm tree (as high as 60 cm) placed among baobabs and bougainvillea in bloom. And, naturally, my mother called me expressing the sadness of the first year in which we will not celebrate Christmas all together; once I will be so strong to pay back (and therefore, to be free from the guilt of inadequacy) all the love that she has given to me, a love so natural, without any condition, rooted into such a divine power, to guide a woman who had never touched a computer only few months ago to learn in a week the use of internet in order to communicate with her son. Now she uses the mouse, opens and closes programs, she writes emails and comments to my diary…
Anyway.
Back to my story. I have to tell something about the “investigation” made together with my students. It has been interesting and productive: as already said, the students had to lead a survey-style research about the conditions of health and nutrition, economy and employment, energy and transportation, education and culture, in some villages of the inland. Each group was composed by 8-9 elements and a teacher to help them in their research.picture 2. interviewing the headmaster of a local school.
Its purpose was to learn or improve their investigating skills and to get an idea of the hard conditions in which the inhabitants of the villages usually live, both experiences mandatory for a future teacher of the rural areas, who will have not only to give lessons, but also to mobilize and deal with the population. Therefore, for 12 days the students went interviewing the farmers and their large families, nurses (we couldn’t find any stable doctor), teachers, truck drivers, women (not an easy task) and local authorities. As I already expected, the farmers have been the most friendly and hospitable people, always available to answer to our questions in their simple and generous manners, which are the product of a tradition of solidarity that is the feature of any poor but sane environment. In general, however, out of the three villages where I have lived, at least two presented precarious conditions of water sanitation and health. In one case I have been offered a woman to marry by the Coordenador (the representative of each village in terms of administration, while the Soba attends the cultural functions – marriage, witchcraft (fetiço in Portuguese), funerals and other ceremonies). Being mostly villages of 2000-3000 people, after the initial fears everyone opens to the visitor and in a couple of days I felt at home, walking on the sand paths among the houses and greeting the families. 
As predictable, I have found much more kindness and (what instead I didn’t expect) an opener attitude there than in my school, where the arrogance of the teachers and the hypocrite respect of the students have often been an obstacle for me to establish a good relationship with both.
As predictable, I have found much more kindness and (what instead I didn’t expect) an opener attitude there than in my school, where the arrogance of the teachers and the hypocrite respect of the students have often been an obstacle for me to establish a good relationship with both.picture 3. a little church in the village of Tanque Serra.
Again, some doubts about the value of education (or at least a certain education) rose to my mind, together with the sadness of realizing, once more, that any development is necessarily accompanied by the loss or the corruption of innocence.
But an excursion we made one morning has been worth the price of the ticket. There is a short walk, under the beating sun, from a village called Bita Tanque, which leads to what used to be the summer estate of the first President of Angola (Agostinho Neto, the national hero, dead in 1979); naturally the President, also known as a poet, had a good taste for beauty, and from the fresh veranda of that house, which lies on top of a hill, one of the most beautiful views of Africa opens to the eyes, like a postcard from the Stone Age: beyond three parallel rivers (Lwei, Bengo and Kwanza) which run to the Ocean, the Quiçama tropical forest starts with its close line of trees in the front; on the left side, the purple plateaus of the inland of Angola appear distant on the horizon; on the right side, a gentle hill, spotted with vivid green bushes and baobabs, is topped by a brown village of straw, that the sun constantly floods with a golden stream of light.
I stood, fascinated by that vision, and in particular by the secret pleasure promised (but, sadly, inaccessible) by that hill and its tender village, for an undefined time, when my students forced me to continue our walk going down the steep slope until the river Lwei. We descended the slope. It was incredibly hot, and we rested at half way, together with a silent group of cows, under the fresh shade of a baobab; there, as soon as I noticed the long lianas covering, like petrified tears, the trees around us, the same pleasure perceived before awakened in my mind, and I could only understand it superficially: the joy of being part of an ancient and pure Nature, who watches the World from a forgotten era without the need of developing her prehistoric beauty, its power lying in its firm, indefinable Age; the calm wisdom of the baobab trees that, having seen everything happening from Time to Time, tenderly smile at any little human occurrence passing by, justifying our lives and listening to the secret desperation of our minds in a respectful silence.
But that is only part of the feeling I shared with myself – a feeling that I still cannot explain more deeply. And, again, I have to wait. We went on, among the high grass. Soon we reached the small river Lwei, that we crossed by a wooden canoe. On the other side of the stream we finally ate our sweet mangoes and chewed some sugar canes. A bath into the river and we returned to our base.
But an excursion we made one morning has been worth the price of the ticket. There is a short walk, under the beating sun, from a village called Bita Tanque, which leads to what used to be the summer estate of the first President of Angola (Agostinho Neto, the national hero, dead in 1979); naturally the President, also known as a poet, had a good taste for beauty, and from the fresh veranda of that house, which lies on top of a hill, one of the most beautiful views of Africa opens to the eyes, like a postcard from the Stone Age: beyond three parallel rivers (Lwei, Bengo and Kwanza) which run to the Ocean, the Quiçama tropical forest starts with its close line of trees in the front; on the left side, the purple plateaus of the inland of Angola appear distant on the horizon; on the right side, a gentle hill, spotted with vivid green bushes and baobabs, is topped by a brown village of straw, that the sun constantly floods with a golden stream of light.
I stood, fascinated by that vision, and in particular by the secret pleasure promised (but, sadly, inaccessible) by that hill and its tender village, for an undefined time, when my students forced me to continue our walk going down the steep slope until the river Lwei. We descended the slope. It was incredibly hot, and we rested at half way, together with a silent group of cows, under the fresh shade of a baobab; there, as soon as I noticed the long lianas covering, like petrified tears, the trees around us, the same pleasure perceived before awakened in my mind, and I could only understand it superficially: the joy of being part of an ancient and pure Nature, who watches the World from a forgotten era without the need of developing her prehistoric beauty, its power lying in its firm, indefinable Age; the calm wisdom of the baobab trees that, having seen everything happening from Time to Time, tenderly smile at any little human occurrence passing by, justifying our lives and listening to the secret desperation of our minds in a respectful silence.
But that is only part of the feeling I shared with myself – a feeling that I still cannot explain more deeply. And, again, I have to wait. We went on, among the high grass. Soon we reached the small river Lwei, that we crossed by a wooden canoe. On the other side of the stream we finally ate our sweet mangoes and chewed some sugar canes. A bath into the river and we returned to our base.picture 4. a coloured morning queue for water in the village of Bita Tanque.
Naturally, apart from beautiful trips and people’s hospitality, the material conditions of the rural areas are rather hard, starting with lack of food, precarious hygiene standards, and, most of all, the water: everybody in the villages told me that the water comes directly from the river, so it is fine to drink it. I’m a half-depressed European in search for adventure, therefore I proudly accepted this statement as true, not caring of any risk for my health. Very soon, I got high fevers and a noisy belly, with the result of not being able to go anywhere for a couple of days except to the toilet, which instead became my most visited friend. Very stupidly, I hadn’t taken with me any medicine, due to the overexcitement for the trip. The return journey to the school completed the work: having finished the money (another thing I hadn’t thought about), I got some lifts to get to the coast (in Angola it’s very easy to hitchhike), and especially one ride on the back of a Toyota pick-up, which reached top speeds on the uneven roads of soil, shattered my already damaged bourgeois white ass. I thanked God when we arrived and I lifted my shaking thumb in reply to the satisfied driver. A profound pity probably moved a taxi driver to collect and deliver the remaining pieces of me to the school.
