Multicultural Italy

This month I will try to keep a little history lesson. I will try to be as less boring as possible and I hope it will be an interesting reading. 

I'm not sure if anyone of you ever noticed this, but when I tell something about my homecountry I very often don't say "In Italy we...", "In Italy it happens that..." or "In Italy it's like...". Most of the times I say something like "Where I come from...".
Also, when I meet new people I usually introduce myself with "I'm from Italy" instead of "I'm Italian".
You will be wondering what the matter is, I come from Italy so saying one or the other one doesn't make any difference. Well I tell you that it makes a lot of difference.

Let's take a look at this picture:

  

That's the map of the languages spoken in Italy beside Italian. I live in Veneto, pretty much the green area up-right marked with "VE". If we now virtually delete Italian language from everybody's mind and we move myself to the area just next to Veneto marked with "LO" I would have some serious problems communicating with the people who lives there. Actually, I would understand not a single word of what they say.

Maybe you are now asking yourself how that is even possible. Well, that's possible because Italy as a politc state has been created just in 1861.
And believe me, though it is very celebrated period it wasn't a nice chapter in history: it all happened through wars and fake referendums, all that being driven by foreign powers like United Kingdom, France and Masonic Lodges.
I will just tell you that Massimo d'Azeglio, one of the main protagonists of the unification, once said "We have made Italy. Now we must make Italians". I am not kidding. That is a real quote.
But please, don't make me enter the details.

Anyway, before that there were many different states. And of course different states mean also different languages, cultures, traditions, food. Differences that of course has been softened a lot in 153 years (on purpose because do you remember? They have to make Italians now), but that still exist.
Personally I really like this multiculturality we have, I think it's great. What I don't like is how this multiculturality is handled.

I have been told that here in Finland Saami people are very well respected. Lucky them to be in Finland! In Italy if I walk into some public place (post office, tax offices, job interview, etc...) and I start talking Venetian I am instantly marked as a dumb redneck that can't even speak Italian. I think it's a very racist thing. But it happens daily, though.


Right now I am trying to think what a foreign person (not necessarily a Finn) thinks when he hears the word "Italy". Excluding bad things such as mafia and Berlusconi, and things like pasta, pizza and mandolino I guess he would thinks about stuff like:
- Roman Empire and related things (Colosseum, gladiators, etc...)
- Some iconic Renaissance art (Birth of Venus, Michelangelo's David and  the Creation of Abraham are just the first I can that came into my mind)
- Some random famous cities like Roma, Venezia, Firenze, Milano, etc...

The point is that, technically, none of these things are really "italian" because they were created centuries before Italy as a political entity was created, and centuries before people even started to think "ok guys, you know what? Maybe we should put this stuff together and make just one big state". I mean, not even close.
Each one of those things was created by artists who were proud to belong to their little yet beautiful state, may it be the Republic of Venice, the Church State, the Duchy of Firenze, of Milano or whatever. And this is, in my opinion, the reason why you can go to wherever place in Italy, and still manage to find something beautiful to see, this is the key of what made Italy so culturally rich: the presence of many little states, where each one was caring about building nice palaces and monuments in it.

If it was united much before, there would be interesting things just around the capital and maybe one or two other cities, pretty much as every other state in Europe.

And do you want to know a ridiculous fact? In school we are taught: "during Middle Ages and Modern Era Italy never managed to set herself as a major power in Europe because unfortunately it was divided in many little states too busy fighting one each other". 

-Matteo

Kisastudio pystyssä Kaakkurin lasten- ja nuortentalolla. Suomi- Ruotsi peliä saapuivat katsomaan myös nuoret. Tunnelma hyvä vaikka pelin lopputulos ei ollutkaan se paras.

Vielä pari viikkoa meijen pitää selvitä ilman käsipuolta, osimoilleen näin, kun olympialaiset loppuu tulee Janikin toivottavasti töihin :)

Heidi

Moi kaikki!

      Olemme 8. luokan TET- harjoittelijoita kaakkurin koulusta. Halusimme nuokkarille koska tykkäämme pelata ja leikkiä lasten kanssa. Ensimmäinen päivä sujui mukavasti. Pelasimme sählyä ja lautapelejä. Järjestimme myös ohjelmaa iltapäiväkerholaisille. Pelasimme heidän kanssa polttopalloa ja leikimme X-hippaa ja se oli mukavaa. Päivään mahtui myös pieniä töitä, kuten välinevaraston siivous ja kaappien järjestelyä. Meillä on vielä kaksi päivää edessä, joita odotamme innolla.   T: Visa ja Aksu

      

At the beginning of the month a friend of mine has been visiting me. He is not that kind of friend which you hang out in the weekend or that you see every day, but that one you know since you were 3 years old, who you grew up together, and even if nowadays you have really nothing in common you will still be friends until the day of the unluckier one's funeral. You know, that kind of friend.

Well, of course I have been very happy to see him and it has been so beautyful, after four months, to be able to tell a joke instantly without stopping to think "how can I say that word?" or "ok, is this going to work if I translate it?" and loosing that precious, ephemeral moment in which the joke can be told. I know it sounds stupid but it is something you cannot really understand otherwise you have lived by your own for a while in a foreign country.

Then I held in three different places a presentation of my homecountry (well, actually it was 90% focused on my hometown). The audiences and the places were chronologically: the kids at Kaakkuri's IP, the workers in Byström and the collegues at the monthly team-meeting.
I talked, they listened and only the kids dared to ask some things. I just hope I wasn't boring for the adults.

I have also spent a day in Työ Elämään dressed as a waiter, waiting (that's what I call irony) for youngsters interested about the EVS. Unfortunately the really interested ones were very few, and I had the feeling that all the others (who were still few people) were just waiting for the free coffee they would have earned at the end of the explanation. But I distributed as many flyers as possible and maybe one day in the future they'll find a old crumpled piece of paper in the bottom of a drawer and think: "Well, why not join this wonderful European program and go abroad for a while?". Who knows.

Last but not least, just few days ago I found in Citymarket something I would have never ever expected to find here in Finland: Polenta. Polenta is something really traditional of Northern Italy, especially of Veneto, my homeregion. Here you can read that "The most common dish [in Veneto] is polenta".

I mean...It is so traditional I bet noone of you knew it existed before. Even if it is being sold right here, right now. I guess it's like for you going abroad, let's say in Greece, and find salmiakki being sold at the grocery store: completely unexpected.

- Matteo

A lot of time has passed since the last time I wrote here (my bad, actually) and quite many things happened meanwhile.
I feel I am becoming more self confident at the workplace, the kids are becoming less shy and more outgoing and, last but not least, I am starting "to chew" a bit of finnish language. Just a bit, but it's always better than nothing I guess.

And then there has been christmas time. Which has been a very particular christmas time: I have been, with some other EVS people, in a camping site called Piispala, at about 100km from Jyväskylä. And I have to say it, it has been really weird (in a good way of course) to spend the chrismas eve and christmas day playing bowling, swimming, doing archery and things like that. Usually it is just eating, talking and visiting relatives you never see during all of the year.
Something different  every once in a while is the perfect thing to both enjoy the new and unusual things and the old, familiar ones.

-Matteo

Viikko Kaakkurin lasten- ja nuorten talolla kahden tettiläisen näkökulmasta

Moikka!
Me olemme kaksi kaakkurin koulun 9-luokkaa käyvää koululaista. Tet-jakso kestää yhdeksännellä luokalla 5 päivää. Me halusimme juuri tänne, koska olemme molemmat kiinnostuneet lasten ja nuorten kanssa toimimisesta. Ensimmäinen päivä kului aikalailla siihen, että tutustuimme talon ympäristöön ja toimintaan. Toisena päivänä tutustuttiin paremmin lapsiin ja alettiin leikkimään ja pelailemaan heidän kanssa. Esimerkiksi pelattiin salissa polttopalloa, sählyä ja jalkapalloa ja leikittiin myös hiiren häntää. Muina päivinä on ollut samankaltaista toimintaa. Lapset lähtevät ennen viittä, jolloin meidän työpäivä loppuu. Viiden jälkeen nuokkari aukeaa 12-17 vuotialle. Olemme jäänneet tänne vapaaehtoisesti katselemaan minkälaista täällä on kun nuokkari on auki nuorille.
Ohjaajat ovat olleet mukavia ja lepposia. Viikko täällä on siis ollut aivan mahtava meille molemmille!
T: Ipek ja Malla