Arrivederci BKLYN

2016-03-30T22:38:00.000+05:00

Players gonna play

So I have like three ulcers, but the meeting with the lawyer from Caritas went very well. I take back EVERYTHING. Or at least PRACTICALLY everything. It was another sleepless night for me. Then this morning I am pretty sure that I woke up and also scared everyone in the group into being on time. I was sure they would be half an hour late, but they were adorably on time and sleepy looking. It was the lawyer who was late. We thought she wasn't going to show up because the head of Caritas and I realized at the same poignant moment that she had never confirmed. We had confirmed to each other, but not with her. Anyway, me and the group were pretty happy about the situation because we could get credit for coming without getting yelled at or having any legal retribution of any kind. Then ten minutes later, in she walked with her associate.

I quickly took the wheel. Before the meeting, I prepared the group that Tina was going to have suddenly forgotten how to speak any language but Nigerian and when she remembered Italian and English, I kicked her every so gently under the table. I decided the best road to go was to say that I had been very angry at Tina for not wanting to stay in the shelter and the lawyer laughed and said in English that they had seen the dark side of me. Then I said that I had to talk myself into understanding that she probably had valid reasons for her trust issues and that the rest of the group was still hoping that the lawyer was not mad at them and would continue to help them. She just laughed it off and said that it was her Calabrian temper and that we shouldn't worry about it. I wanted to say that I had not slept in about six days because of her little sfogo of letting off steam. But I then realized that I loved her. Then the head of Caritas went way out there on a limb for us and explained that they were really not baby stealers and that even if you had doubts about social services it was not cost effective to have to care for these babies if it were not really necessary due to situations of abuse or neglect. I love her, too.

The lawyer went around the table and helped every single person and Even called the staff of the camp in Calabria where Emmanuel is holed up and made an official gesture to become his lawyer and try to save him from being deported. She got Jennifer her permesso, and, if that was not enough, after the meeting she called around to the police stations to verify the dates that the permessi or stay permits would be ready for Cool, Job, and Jennifer to pick up. We all left feeling sleepy and elated. If you any of you have children, since my fertile days are almost offically over, please name them Manuela after this lawyer. They will cause you problems, but it will be worth it.

2016-03-27T23:14:00.000+05:00

Happy Pasqua Nigeria

Well, our new friends invited us to their church - so we went. Today was a big bonding day for me and Tina. We understand all of each other's words now and we sound like each other. So much so that when I spoke to Emmanuel today from the camp in Calabria, he understood me, too. Camot!

Here goes my Nigerian dance tutorial.

F made two trips in the car. First he took the men over and I waited on Tina and she waited on the line in her house for the bathroom and one hour later, we were all ready! As Tina moisturized and primped, I watched a famous Nigerian pastor from youtube on her big screen and learned all of the five dance moves that I needed for the day.

Everytime some walks upstairs, it seems their foot will appear through the ceiling, and that blue lightbulb shudders like an aftershock.

This little boy was a great dancer and he wore a thick gold chain around his little neck.

I know how Tom Cruise felt when Katie wore heels.

The Happy Couples

The man in the plaid suit is helping Tina with housing so I am thankful for him.

Baptism birthday party, Let's just celebrate everything!

There was a lot of cuteness present in church today.

It was the primary colors box of crayolas up in here.

I will have memories about today and I will think I dreamed them up. I have seen it all. I saw a wedding celebration. I saw a baptism. I was part of a dance line. We gave the offering envelope the first of the five times we were called on to donate during the service. We saw twerking and testifying. We listened to people talking in tongues and prophecizing. We saw a pastor prostrate himself on the altar. People wore full on glitter and lace, camoflage and sports coats, flowered dresses and corsets, head wraps, and pointy white loafer shoes, high heeled sneakers and everything inbetween. We saw a birthday party and were offered malt drink and sandwiches in tinfoil. We sang praises and we heard bible verses read in a harmonized echo from individuals who could read from their bibles in the pews. Some people ignored us, some people stared at us, some wanted to know who we were, and some did not want to know. That's pretty much how we roll.

We are exhausted.

2016-03-27T01:58:00.000+05:00

Jennifer and Cool First comes love, then comes . . . marriage!

We had time to sort through some clothes from Maria Paola at Brooks Running company for the moms and babies because, as Tina informed us, we had used white people time. I thought about explaining that I am just anal because I am a daughter of a therapist who used to treat patients on the hour in my childhood home, but I refrained.

Alas, it turned out that the Italian guy who was officiating the wedding was also punctual, so we ended up only catching the very end of the ceremony. It was like the scene in a rom-com movie where somebody like Drew Barymore or Sascha Baron Cohen stampedes into a wedding scene. At least 90 percent of the people there thought we were lost or were rushing in to object to the holy union.

Tina didn't come over to the ceremony in the car with us because she had to wait her turn to use her house bathroom and they ran out of water. When she showed up, I hardly recognized her. She looked like she belonged in Beyoncè's Formation video. The three of us actually have a stomach virus. So in my defense, I woke up not like this, but like, well, that. T and I had no idea what to wear, but the general vibe turned out to be that we looked like the behind the scenes crew for a nineties music video that we weren't quite cool enough to be on camera for.

We brought the wedding couple some baby clothings, some women's dresses, an envelope of cash, and a bag full of yams, which if the internet has not mislead us, a traditional wedding gift. We checked out that last fact with Job in the car on the way to the ceremony. When he finally understood what we were saying he started laughing and was like yeah, that's traditional alright, did you also bring a goat?

I got so much side eye at the party that I could pretty much get a sponsorship deal from Visine. T asked me if we were ever going to have the kind of life where the people in the room with us have the same set of life experiences. Then we laughed and looked at each other like Nope. We cracked up a few times when we realized that not only was she the only one in her class at a Nigerian wedding this weekend or ever. A bunch of her classmates were dying eggs and polishing their hardly used church shoes, while we were the odd duck wedding crashers pissing off various parents at a house party by unequally distributing the balloon decorations amongst the child guests, thus setting off a series of tussles and crying jags.

I was happy to see that Jennifer liked the bouquet we picked out.

We loved it when some female guests basically moved me over so she could get some snaps. Everyone kept saying, let me get a snap. This was the best snap!

Hanging out in front of the Comune of Montecatini.

Jennifer and Tina are true beauties.

On the left is Osas and then comes Job with his collar all turned up and the shades staying on.

Paul and Stanley

K, Tina, T

Lining up at the window for plates of food.

2016-03-24T01:42:00.000+05:00

What? No? NOooooo!

I got mad at adorable, pregnant Tina. She went behind my back to the police station to get her stay permit by means of a hospitality letter written by some friends who said she could crash with them for a short time. I had spent countless hours getting her a lawyer through the catholic charity, who, in turn, had worked tirelessly to find her a clean place to live and take care of her documents for her. I felt embarrassed and did not know how I would go back to the director of the charity and the lawyer to tell them that she was rejecting their help. I had noted that both the women of the group were a bit hostile and distant at the meeting. I, for my part, had been so exultant at having finally found Italians who wanted to acknowledge the existence of the Nigerians with stay permits but without any help to exist such as health cards, job training or placement, or even money to buy food or pay rent. The only attention this group gets is from police who give them tickets or threaten to arrest them or send them back to their country for begging on the streets.

In my unfilteredness, I told everyone in the group that things like not telling me who are related to each other by blood --like the brothers which different versions of the same last name, Emmanuel and Job-- and who is going to the police station to file documents that go against the documents that I am getting filed on their behalf is counterproductive and also a little infuriating. I told them that I spend half my days making phone calls for them and that I can't do my job if they are not honest with me. They told me they wanted to come together and meet with me in person. I took everyone out for coffee. Tina would not even look at me. I just waited her out. I told her that I did not understand why she was this upset about the catholic charity's rule that she sleep without her fiancee at the shelter for women temporarily. It is not nice at all to stay separated at night, but since she lives in a slum and her partner has to return to Nigeria for a month without her to take care of his sick father, wouldn't it be nice to stay somewhere clean where people could help her and she would not have to be on her feet all day begging for rent money? That is when she told me what she was scared about.

Some people from her church, including her pastor, told her that if she gets care from the catholic charity that charity will have proof that she is impoverished, does not have a home, and that her partner does not have a job which could be grounds for social services to take away her baby from her and possibly put it up for adoption. I was so ashamed that my face got hot and I cried. I had no idea. I promised I would not pressure them to take any help they did not want or run any risks they didn't want to and I listened to her plan. It was a crazy plan, but it could work. She has friends who could give her the letter she needs to get the permesso renewed on her own and then her pastor will help her pay half her security deposit if she finds a cheap house and I can get Job, the baby's father, a job. And that is a big ask.

I had several heart attacks and lost a full night's sleep before calling back the catholic charity who still don't know that she has decided not to take them up on their offer. I think the director and the lawyer are really good people who want the best for my group, but I don't know how social services enters into these situations or how they make their money so I am not in a position to guarantee anything. The director told me she would have a Nigerian woman call Tina to talk to her about how it is to stay with them. She did -- and the kicker is that the Nigerian woman told Tina not to accept the help if she had any other choice.

I was supposed to do telephone lessons today but I had to field about two dozen incoming calls from the group and the charity. Some of the calls came in while I was out at the mercatino buying Jennifer her wedding bouquet. The lawyer has helped a lot. Paul got his permesso renewed today and they even got a permesso for Jennifer who is getting married on Saturday and whose baby is due in just one month. They also got Job his permesso which will allow him to fly home to see his father. I had promised Emmanuel that I would try to get the lawyer to help him to and I don't know if she will still want to help if the pregnant ladies decide to reject their offer of shelter. . . It will be an interesting test of their commitment, I suppose.

I do wonder how they thought Tina would have gotten her permesso renewed if I had not paid for it and for her passport renewal which cost 65 euros. She had two euros and fifty cents as all of her earthly riches at the time the bills came due. Also how would she have known that the police station might not be a good place to be on Good Friday and to get her health appointment before her health card expired? I shudder to think about it.

I hijacked F's phone and called his contact who publishes an elegant food magazine to beg her to find dishwashing jobs for the men. She promised me she would come to my house on Easter Monday and so F has to bake the colomba to end all colombas and I have to convince her to get this going so that the babies don't risk being taken away from their mothers. Speaking of mothers, the people in my group call me mother even though I would have had to have been 16 years old when I birthed them. I am like the menopausal Angelina Jolie of the Nigerian community. About eleven people ask T how her day was when she is on her way home from school now. They are all Nigerian. She has no idea who they are.

Brooks gave me shoes that fit over my swollen toes and I got memory foam orthotics so I should cut a stunning figure at Jennifer Lawrence's wedding on Saturday. God help us all.

2016-03-20T00:10:00.000+05:00

Fits and Starts
This week was a crazy week for me and for the group of six.

The magnificent lawyer for Caritas named Manuela got Job's permesso to be expedited and he got his fingerprints taken so he can pick the documents up in time to go back to Nigeria to visit his sick father.

Job's brother Emmanuel found out that his appeal to have the right to stay in Italy was denied. I had a really awkward conversation with some man named Bevilaccqua at his camp in Calabria who seemed too laissez faire about the whole thing in a way that scares me. I tried to impress on him that Emmanuel is not alone and that he has people who care for him and that want him to stay in Italy and one of them is a lawyer. I hope that we can transfer his case to Manuela who is a real miracle maker.

Speaking of which, Manuela and the head of Caritas Pescia are also working so hard to get Tina into the new residence where she will also have a stay permit and a means of getting medical treatment for her pregnancy.

I tried to get a read on Jennifer because it would be a shame if she did not take advantage of the help Caritas is trying to give her, but she really just wanted to talk about her wedding next week. I asked if she had everything she needed for the big day and she told me that she wanted fake flowers. Then I got an urgent call from her which made me worry about the baby, but it turned out that she had just changed her color scheme and now wants white and purple flowers instead of white and red ones. She's not named Jennifer Lawrence for nothing.

Happy Customers!

T and I had fun giving away the sneakers that Brooks Running company donated. In addition to our usual guys we also met Jude who is another Nigerian who has some friends in the group and is in the exact same situation and a young guy named Khalid who is from Sierra Leone. It seems like my reporter friend Nadia now wants to do a story on the group which would be a great way to thank Caritas and shed light on the issues.

Goofy grin alert mid-frame (can you spot me?)

The other night we took Patrizia to the fashion show event at Dinelli & Rossi, my favorite furniture store in Lucca. Half of the fancy gym was there, including the DJ and the drummer. I was awkwardly situated at the exit point of the runway so I felt I had to clap and smile goofily at each model as she passed by. This one old creeper that I recognized from Ego kept stepping into the runway to take photos of the models. I shudder to think of what he will do with them.

T has been working so very hard in school; and, even though the testing and grading methods seem profoundly unjust to me, she has been an incredible trooper about it all.

2016-03-13T16:59:00.000+05:00

Blech!

Who would make this commercial? Who would star in this commercial? Who the cavolo would want to buy yogurt after watching this commercial? The message: Men are stronzi. I can't. The joke is on them because women buy the yogurt for their families in Italy and only the super masochistic would be convinced by that kind of advertising. The father's gaping at the gams of the dead icon in front of the children is particularly gross.

Good news: We think Caritas has found housing for the two pregnant women of the group of Nigerians we are trying to help, Tina and Jennifer. They will have rules to follow and they will be separated from their partners for a bit, but it is a huge step up. Fingers crossed!

2016-03-09T23:21:00.000+05:00

More drama than Un Posto Al Sole

Paul, Tina, Job, Me, Cool, Jennifer L

Today we had the meeting with Caritas and their lawyer to try to straighten out the myriad of legal difficulties facing the Group of Five plus One-- the Nigerians we are trying to help. F had done a test run to find the location of the main church in Montecatini, but we still arrived 15 minutes later than I would have liked -- or as I like to call it -- SHT (Standard Husband Time). To be fair if I had married an Italian, I would have had a worse acronym and I would have arrived even later.

All of the group members made it to the meeting, except for Emmanuel who is still holed up at the camp in Calabria. We conferenced in the one person we found that could talk about his legal situation in Italian. As we sorted out everybody's documents, the issues seemed to multiply. The Caritas lawyer was finally able to Scooby Doo the situation and track down the name of Emmanuel's original lawyer so that we can be informed of whether he will be able to stay in Italy or not when that individual arrives with the decision on his appeal this weekend.

Tina, who is now almost five months pregnant, got turned away from free health care because she could not prove her residency. She was asked to pay 400 euros. She can't renew her permesso which is about to expire because she can't get a letter of hospitality. I can't even host her because I am in Lucca instead of in Montecatini. After a quick review of our rental contract, the unoffcial legal strategy, as I understand it, is for her to arrangiarsi da sola or take care of it the way Nigerians whose housing has not been provided for them are forced to do. Basically all of us in Italy understand that she is going to pay out a 200 euro bribe to get a fake hospitality letter from a Nigerian who is in possession of residency and a job perimt and who may or may not just take off with the money. However, this is the only option that Nigerian immigrants who do not receive welfare have left.

Cool and Job have both lost their high level stay permits from their own open pockets and only Cool has managed to get his reissued. Job runs around from police station to police station being told that he is in the wrong place. He would like a letter to encourage the good folks at the police station to find his kit and reissue his documents. He kept nudging me the whole meeting and shoving his useless plane tickets to Nigeria under my fingers. His mother is dying and he wants to go back to say goodbye. Well, she may not be dying, but she is very sick. Well, it is not his mother; it is his father. . This is how the meeting went. It reminded me of sitting at Community Access on the lower east side of Manhattan with old Mr. McCallum, who was a blind, veteran, amputee, while he watched Days of Our Lives and roaches literally rained down on our heads from his ceiling. Good times. Anyway I kept hissing at Job to please not make me have to tell the lawyer about his unused plane tickets. He could not take the plane because he lost his documents. I understand that it is sad, but he has a pregnant wife with no home and expired documents and no health care and I was trying not to make the lawyer's head explode as she realized that Jennifer whose last name is Lawrence has no permesso and is going to give birth in less than a month and a half.

The situation became so absurd between all of the fake hospitality letters, false addresses, desperate circumstances, and illegalities that I had to make an admission to the Caritas representatives. I told them that when I decided to help six Nigerians who were buried in Italian bureaucracy and trapped in an unjust living situation, I had no idea that they would have more drama that Un Post al Sole, the famous Italian soap opera. Imagine my surprise, when the head lawyer broke into a huge smile and said that the unused ticket was just the excuse she needed to put pressure on the police to release the reissue of his stay permit. Ms. Lawrence and Tina both implored me to let them choose their own housing and get the catholic charity to pay for it, but I had to tell them AGAIN that that possibility was not even on the table, as it does not exist in Italy. Jennifer asked me to leave the meeting so she coud ask if she would still have to beg for money after they gave her a place to live. I explained to both women AGAIN that we were doing all this because if they are in the care of a charitable association they will not have to beg anymore.

Paul on his part always looks sad and helpless at these meetings and I always pass him off as the young one who is completely alone. He is only 27, but he is hardly a child. However when Maria Cristina came out with a donation of fried plantains from Africa in plastic snack packs which she distributed to the whole gang, he ripped into them like Cookie Monster from Sesame Street on a bender and chewed them up smiling from ear to ear and spraying plantain crumbs every which way. It is hard not to love Paul.

The last surprise of the day was that Cool and Jennifer Lawrence are getting married the day before Easter and we are invited, even though I have no shoes. That should be blog-worthy. There's a movie that is very popular in Lucca right now called Perfetti Sconosciuti where a bunch of old friends have a dinner party and agree to leave their cellphones on the table in open view. Most of the couples' relationships unravel in the span of one evening and you realize that people's lives are more complicated than you think. Well, that whole film looks Disney in comparison to the drama we watched unfold today at Caritas.

2016-03-05T17:55:00.000+05:00

Limping along

Last Saturday we had a truly lovely time with some new friends who happen to be from Boston, but who live in Lucca. The super brave Annmarie had her son here which means her she has balls that would take up at least three seats on a NY subway. Her husband Antonio is a retired State Trooper and her son Antonio is an adorable two year old with almost professional pasta fork twirling skills. We loved how he walked around with full diplomatic immunity, trailing after T like a baby duckling, and translating all the while for those of us who are Italian language challenged. You go, Italian nursery schools!

We had a little Top Chef meltdown that involved putting together an appetizer in 4.2 minutes (feta cheese with olive oil, lemon, peperoncino, shredded arugala, surrounded by the sad looking shredded jalapeno poppers we were going to serve and fried artichokes). Unfortunately, ahimè this got served with saltines. Nothing is sadder than an Italian saltine because those little flat squares don't even have salt on them. Sorry, folks. The rest of the dinner turned out well.

Group of 5 news:

Paul: I forged him a letter saying that the head of the charity demanded that the folks at the police station renew his permesso without postponing another three or four times. And that bad boy worked so I don't care, sue me.

Emmanuel: He called me from Calabria because he was excited that the jacket and toys we sent to his 4-year-old son Precious in Nigeria fit. That sweetie happens to be a perfect size 4 years. The courier service cost us 50 euros, but I say it was well spent. Unfortunately, his lawyer has yet to show up. He wants me to call Precious so I am working up the courage to do that phone call.

Tina: Her stay permit expires this month and I told her to wait for the meeting with lawyer on Wednesday before she gets pressured into being blackmailed again in the hopes that 200 euros would buy her a letter of hospitality. The catch 22 that not being allowed to get welfare and housing means that even though she was given a permesso for humanitarian reasons, she can't legally renew it. Welcome to Italy. Her partner Job has a sick mother in Nigeria and a plane ticket he has postponed several times because he managed to lose his stay permit when he did not close his pocket while bicycling around. We needed that new development more or less like a hole in the head.

Cool: I got up early to bring Cool's brother to Guamo to get his codice fiscale which he needs to get a job in Italy so that he can pay taxes. He did not return my calls all day. I reached him at night and he said that his brother had told him I canceled which is the opposite of what I said. I told him I would see him in the morning. In the morning I found a different Nigerian guy in front of my house who turned out to be another brother of Cool and who told me that the one who had an appointment with me had fled to Germany the night before. This brother tried to convince me that he understood enough Italian for me to get him a security job, and urged me to give him a pretend job interview to prove the point. When I asked him what job experience he had, he answered yes. So I convinced him that he should take some free Italian lessons with me or at the high school. Then he started saying a bunch of stuff about his begging being a sin. A word which I find to be a real energy suck and which for me has no place in any discussion that does not involve dessert.

Jennifer: I am glad she has so many medical appointments because it means she is getting care throughout her pregnancy, but her schedule has made it a challenge to make the meeting with the lawyer which for now is set for Wednesday. I hope it happens because I had to reschedule 7 phone lessons and write 6 emails and make 37 phone calls to set that up.

The above gorgeous person used her trigger finger on the overwhemed Harvard enrollment site to get her top two course choices for the summer, housing, and financial aid. Watch out world, this girl is taking public speaking with a much loved professor and great political speeches with a professor who was popular back when F was in school and who is badass. The sunset is not bad either.

In limping news, I may have just nerve damage in my feet and not a broken toe. I made this discovery when all of my other toes started hurting and not just the one I assumed was fractured from the pain level, although I didn't do anything to it. Look up menopause and nerve pain if you don't believe me. I went to every shoe store in Lucca outlet week and I discovered that the salespeople could give those who turned up their noses at Julia Roberts when she was still hooking in Pretty Woman a run for their money in an overall snotty attitude competition. This is another joyful symptom of low estrogen during menopause. The internet also let me know that it could take months to recover from the German Barbie dermatologist's acid peel. I know this will come as a shock, but so far, perimenopause sucks.

2016-02-27T03:28:00.000+05:00

Xenophobia, punto and BASTA!

This week was a roller coaster of dramatic love and hatred towards foreigners of all kinds.

On a positive note, the people who work at Caritas Pescia could not have been any kinder. It was raining so I took Paul and Cool's brother Ehis out for coffee while we waited for F to pick us up in the car.

Paul is teaching me pidgin English which is great and helps me to communicate better with the whole group except it is like a disintegrating agent that destroys my Italian with a single syllable. I am a pretty good mimic, but I have to stay in one lane. Unfortunately even two episodes of Amici could not protect me from the delicious words like wahala and vex me and so my Italian was not that impressive at the meeting. Nevertheless, Antonino and Maria Cristina seemed to understand me and to be very compassionate towards the group at the meeting. Antonino promised he would do all he could to help, but he thought that would look like moving the pregnant ladies into a group home initially and separating them from their husbands to be.

Jennifer surprised me by proposing a house that she had already located but that costs 400 euros a month which is too extravagant for Caritas to spring for. It was a tense moment because while I wanted her to have her dream, I think it would be best for her and her baby to become officially under the Italian protection system given that her permesso expired a long time ago. Nevertheless, I told her after the meeting that my job was just to offer her options and that it was her decision whether to accept the help the can give or not. She told me that Caritas had a reputation for having a lot of rules and she was worried about not being able to have the visitors or the hours or freedom she wants.

The two comedy relief moments that lightened up the day were when Tina's belly got the best of her and she could not stop staring at the bag of biscotti behind the meeting table. Everyone started laughing and then the director of the Caritas Pescia gave Tina the whole bag and she proceeded to eat eleven cookies one after the other. We just laughed off the pregnancy munchies, but, of course, it was also horribly sad that she was that hungry. Everyone in my group left the meeting with bags of pantry groceries which was a very happy way for everyone to go home. As Antonino pointed out, if Caritas Lucca is a ferrarri and Caritas Pescia is only a Panda, at least they are a Turbo Panda!

The next day I got a call from Emmanuel, saying that he would be happy for me to call his son and he gave me the address to send him some of the donated toys and a smart little suit jacket, sized for a four year old. He said that the camp had called him back to Calabria because his original lawyer for the permesso would be returning the following week to help a group of the refugees with legal issues. He chucked over my greetings in pidgin English and over Tina's cookie incident.

Our electricity went out the next day, and, as usual, this meant our hot water heater got angry at us. It usually gives an error message and then needs to have a red button pushed to restart it. But on this fine day it flashed between two number readings and would not restart. T taught me what to say to enel the electric company, but just then the lights came back on so that all that was left was to call the heater repair guys. The number was on the machine. The receptionist told me that I was in luck because a technician could come right over and that is where my luck ran out.

A young guy and a middle aged man came huffing up the stairs. The kid immediately told me that the hot water heater had just restarted itself. I told them it was a matter of seconds ago that it wasn't workin and that the electricity going out always caused us problems. The older guy stared me in the eyes and said emphatically, "That is not so." Then both of them told me that there was no problem with the caldaia. The younger one lingered at the machine and seemed to notice something was amiss. They had a discussion that involved inappropriate curse words. The older one took out some pliers and made a ton of noise hitting a pipe. He made an impertinent remark about my having followed my husband's job to Italy. I pointed out that we had not stolen Italian jobs and that we were teaching English which helps Italians get better jobs. He snorted. They charged me twenty euros for two minutes work and I didn't like the way the young one marched around my living room uninvited and how I caught him staring at my wallet. I did not want to have regrets so instead of feeling victimized, I jokingly kidded the older one about how he had called me a liar and that he had better hope we didn't have to see each other again the next day. He replied that it would be better for me if we did, implying that it would make me less of a liar.

The next day as F and I were leaving the house, he noticed that the heater was leaking. I called to have them come back. I then called the recepionist back to say that I hadn't appreciated the technicians' attitude or insinuations and that they better come correct. The same guys came back and did the exact same routine in front of F. F remained very tall at them, but said no actual sounds that could be understood sa words. I got so angry that my Italian went to Brazil. I ended up having to talk through my tears while they told me in the same breath both that I did not have to call a plumber and that I did. They were outraged that I thought they might have caused the damage (on purpose or by accident) when they hammered away on the pipes. They refused to leave when I told them to get out and they said it would be worse when I needed them back. I left the room and googled the Italian crap out of the situation until I found another company who services our brand of water heater. It turned out that they needlessly turned off our hot water. We had to wait to get until the next day to get our trusty plumber to come fix the blocked pipe which had surely been like that during their last check and could have led to an explosion and damage to our floor and our neighbors' who make the good pizza's ceiling. And that would have been TRAGIC.

Almost as tragic as the fact that I cried a second time in recounting this story to my English class that evening. And a close second, to when I accidentally called the boss of the job I am ending this week instead of my landlord's wife whose name also starts with the letter M. You can't make this wahala up.

2016-02-22T03:18:00.000+05:00

Group of Five, except now there are eight

This really nice lady from South Africa collected all these darling baby clothes for Jennifer and Tina so we called Cool and Job and made an appointment to meet at their place in Montecatini. I cannot emphasize how beautiful and new the baby clothes are. We were able to give each woman a giant bag of baby clothes of all different sizes for boys and girls. They served us the most delicious rice, I've ever eaten. At first I was worried about eating up their dinner, but they worked hard to make us something special and they wanted us to have it, so I went for it.

Unfortunately, their residence is filled with dangerous wires, leaky pipes, mouldy surfaces, holes, and everything I would not want for them. Just total squallor. It was heartbreaking. We also gave them our neighbors' dresser that they were throwing away. In addition to the two couples, we found a perfect jacket for Paul. And while Emmanuel is back at his camp in Calabria we are going to try to send his four-year-old son Precious a letter from him and a toy to let him know that he is thinking about him in Nigeria.

Tina + 1, Job, Cool, & Jennifer + 1

Job, Cool, T & F

dangerous wires

more wires sticking out everywhere

the kind of filth that you can't clean

really terrible mould everywhere - a health hazard

This is where the water pump lives to get water into the leaky pipes.

leaky pipes

This is obviously not the best environment for anyone, let alone new babies. Really, really Caritas, I hope you do the right thing. And to the slum lord who takes money for this accomodation, I hope you get what's coming to you. That's it. Arrivederci, Brooklyn.

2016-02-21T03:21:00.000+05:00

oh bimba

I acted like a bit of a bimba (little girl/not bimbo, Brooklyn people, that's something else) today, but I think I sucked in the temper tantrum and only a little excess hormonal stress seeped out in the rage filled silences. I'll explain, if you'd like.

I have gone ahead with the fixed and obsessive belief for the last eight weeks or so that one day when the new couches came, all would be right with the world. Out with the dark and lumpy and in with the light and floaty. That's my motto. So when I got up after my third night of insomnia and had to pull myself together to get the couch delivery on the one morning that I might have theoretically been able to sleep late, it was with great mental fortitude that I had to accept that 9 am in Italy is 9:50 am New York time. And that was only when I got the phone call that one of the pieces was missing, or lost, or had gone for an early ferragosto to get a jump on the traffic. I met this news with a great big brooding silence in which I tried to pick my words carefully. Our friend at the furniture store finally asked, cheerfully, if I was sad. Yes, yes, I am sad, I said. And I followed that up with the usual of course it's not your fault and capita which is Italian for sh%t happens.

I had such an existential crisis about the couches that I actually could not bring myself out of my bedroom to greet the delivery men right away. But I did get out to them eventually. And shortly thereafter, the missing piece was found in the box. I both knew in my new Italian sensibility that something would go wrong and that something would get fixed this morning, but being right is not as fun as it used to be when I was less, shall we say, experienced. I made up for it by telling the moving guys a long story about my grandfather after which they had to accept some coffee and a tip alla americana. I then had them move the couch a millimeter to the left and the younger one pointed out that I was very precisa - which is Italian for a total mess with hair on top.

a fuzzy rug makes all the difference in the morning

F's office looks better with the new rug and old bookcase.

We found a place for the coats and stuff in the entranceway. Good idea, neighbors! Why didn't we think of that?

Newborns sleep better through the night than this bimba.

T's guest bed even looks more inviting.

This week was also super stressful because the German Barbie dermatologist burned a hole in my right cheek with acid. I mean I paid her to do it, but, as usual, she didn't prepare me for the disgusting healing process. I had to do this whole week speaking in front of huge groups of people with my hair hanging down over half of my face -- so that made the video lessons extra particolare. What I have learned from teaching at Brooks shoes is that they really drink the Koolaid. They love running and they love Brooks. Really. A lot. My baby toe still is fractured, too. And, although, I can shove it in normal shoes now, it still looks like an eggplant emoji --no offence to dick pics everywhere.

I had a big fit about not getting any contacts for the Caritas in Pescia where I want to bring all of my Nigerian group to try to get them better housing and welfare services, but then my reporter friend pointed out that I had missed an email from the director of the Lucca branch of that Catholic charity doing just that. I managed to score us an appointment for Tuesday. It will be a miracle if we all get there in time and get seen, let alone manage to convince anyone to help us out. F will have to drive me and Paul first and then go and pick up the pregnant ladies and their beaus from the train station in Montecatini. I am really nervous about this and sometimes when I wake up in the night, I can't get back to sleep from worrying about it. I promised myself if I got back into social work I would maintain an emotional distance, but I don't think that really happened. That's right, my professional demeanor has done a full Kanye with a double axel. For one thing, I feel like I keep getting their hopes up, even though I haven't gotten them anything concrete other than some spending money. I also broke my rule about not giving them my own money. Emmanuel got called back to Calabria to his old camp. I gave him money for the train ticket because I didn't want him to get any more fines or legal problems, begging for that money. He doesn't know why he was called back in the first place. I am worried that from there they will try to fly him back to Nigeria from the camp. Some people from the group laughed when I said that which made me even more nervous because they don't know how serious this is. When I called the lawyer, who didn't even know she was his lawyer, she told me that apart from the tickets that he got begging she can't help him. She told me to track down his stay permit lawyer. Emmanuel can't remember that guy's name because it has been so long since he had any news of his court case to appeal the decision not to let him stay in Italy. One positive thing is that somebody named Geraldine Hoare read something I wrote on a facebook group and collected a ton of baby clothes to give them. We are going to try to bring that to their current residences tomorrow.

2016-02-12T22:19:00.000+05:00

INFLAMED

Last Friday I got a message after 10:00 pm from my gynecologist saying that I had to come into the office on Monday to have the results of my pap test. Last time she gave me good news in a text message so I spent the next 48 hours convinced that I had cancer. Then on Sunday I couldn't wait anymore so I texted her and just ten excruciating hours later she told me that I had a lot of inflammation and she would see me after the summer. Since I also had a completely inflamed left ear and a gigantically swollen, fractured, baby toe on my right foot, I figured a little more inflammation wouldn't kill me. I texted her back that I was literally too inflamed to actually make it to her office. Meanwhile I called Patrizia about eleven times to vent to her about how sane American gynecologists are in comparison and how there are some universal rules that should always be enforced.

Universal law #1: if you go through the trauma of moving, you get two weeks of bliss once the boxes are unpacked.

Universal law #2: If a child does something wrong, they have until the count of three to adjust their behavior. You never lose your sh$t on two. That is just wrong. This law is tied to the other law of three which is that you get three cookies. Not one, not six. This applies to Oreos, Chips A'Hoy, and all other cookies that you may find the world over.

Universal law #3: I don't care how long a work day you've had, if you're a doctor you should never, but never, text someone after 10pm on a Friday night to talk about their test results. Period. Or lack thereof. (MEnopause humor, it is sporadic).

You are not going to believe the insanity happening in my work to help the Nigerian immigrants. In the group of five it turns out we are at least seven people. I feel we should count Tina's baby, Jennifer, who is Cool's wife to be and their baby who is due in just over two months, and also Job (whose name I thought was Joseph) who is the agressive chap that I talked badly to Tina about and who turns out to be a lovely man and . . . also Tina's boyfriend and the father of her baby. So Job is in the group. We had a big laugh over the terrible first impression he made on me. It's all good.

The lady from the Catholic charity wrote a long report on the immigration history of each of the members of my group which explained that it is basically completely legal to pay people up to 500 euros to leave their camps and that they are then considered to have left the Italian protection net and are on their own. She suggested then that they get official housing and try to get social services in Montecatini to help them. From this I deduced that she would be of no help and understood nothing, but then I came to understand that she was just giving me the politic answer and not suggesting that I give up on them. I wrote her back to thank her and to ask for her contacts in Montecatini.

In the meanwhile, Emmanuel got himself in trouble with the police. He is banned from Lucca. Another African guy caused a disturbance of the peace and resisted arrest. Emmanuel was in the wrong place at the wrong time and did not understand the police request for his documents. They wrote down that he refused to show his papers and that he refused a lawyer. The Catholic charity lady sent me a newspaper article saying that he had a previous offense on his record and would be labeled pregiudicato and possibly held for one to six months. I called the contact I had from the Kennedy Justice and Human Rights organization in Florence who knows his public defender to try to get him help.

Today I finally met the guy from Odissea the work training program for immigrants. His name is Daniele. Unfortunately he had to meet me when I was very frustrated about the lack of good results I am getting and he reiterated that my group, language problems not withstanding, under Italian law are no longer considered in the net of Italian protection. He suggested that they learn Italian in their spare time when they are not desperately begging for money to stay in their squallid, overcrowded, unofficial apartments. Then he asked me if I would teach an English course for his staff. I agreed because I still need job contacts for my group and my mamma didn't raise no fool. I spoke crappy Italian to him because I had just taught six half hour lessons on skype, facetime, and whatsapp to Brooks shoes employees. It was very much like phone sex in that there was a lot of wild gesticulating and I got paid for it. I don't know that it is the kind of exchange that would ever have as a result better grammar. But that remains to be heard. I do know a fricking ton about footbeds now. It almost makes me miss the guys who made the maxi pads.

After the meeting with Daniele, I stalk walked him back to his car about seven hundred kilometers from my house with my broken foot in the rain in the vain hope that he would say something useful and that he would offer some kind of concrete assistance to my group members who were strategically waiting for him outside my house. Tina had to wait around and she was mad about it so she gave me a hard time, but if I were pregnant, tired, and had to pee, I would have done the same.

Speaking of making bad impressions:

1. I didn't want to make a bad impression at the Brooks running shoes company, but the only shoes my broken toe fits into are T's bright orange Nikes so I made F write Brooks on two pieces of masking tape to cover the logo on the shoes. By the end of the first class I had already scored a pair of free sneakers, but I went around town scandalizing the Lucchese with my mismatched foot apparel for four days since my broken toe didn't care to cooperate. A boy who seemed to be about ten years old asked his mother if I was crazy. It took all of my restraint not to explain that while I was crazy, there was a fairly solid reason for me to wear different kinds of shoes on each foot. I wonder what they would have thought if they knew that I was also going commando. I mean, good deductions, bad reasoning. C+

2. We met our neigbors who share our strange private entrance way. We all live on the top floor and the ten months a year that they are not here we spend blissfully not caring about door slamming, shouting, or safety locks. Our Italian downstairs neighboors had us over for the most delicious pizza I have ever eaten. I am actually mad at how good it was because all other pizza will no longer withstand the comparison. They figured they would invite this other couple since they had suffered some logistical issues like a broken oven and an unforeseen illness last time that had ruined their night. He is German and does not speak Italian and she is Irish and understands a lot more than she can say. It was an exhausting night of translating and trying to please everyone which ended in our host Luca entertaining us on his guitar. Luca also felt the strain of having to perform for a virtual UN of foreigners and proceeded to forget all the words to four different of his favorite songs.

Subsequently the Irish lady told me to move the costly antique bench we had put in the shared antechamber because she had an agreement with our landlords not to put furniture there. I thought she meant just while she had her couch delivered, but no. I thought she meant, at least, just while they are here for the month, but no. So rude, right? But then the German man said that we could donate the dresser they have in the hallway to the Africans and put our bench just outside. Today I introduced them to the people I wanted to give the bench to and she told her husband that she agreed to give it to someone else. This is what you call getting off on the wrong foot and I suspect it is just the beginning.

2016-02-06T16:07:00.000+05:00

Anne Lamott, honey

Well, Anne Lammott said that you shouldn't be afraid to write about people because they should just claim their actions. Rarely have I been reticent to do that here, if you haven't noticed. But this week I'm gulping first.

Also we all know that one day I will be sued for slander or copyright infringement, but until that fine day check out this image:

Um, does anyone not see the red flag if your groom chooses this wedding cake?

This week I woke up on Sunday with a fractured pinky toe. I could only wear T's neon orange sneakers with no soles in them for four days. On Monday I had an ear ache. Over the week it turned into yet another stomach virus. My ovary still hurts. So I may not be someone you want to mess with.

The Red Cross lady reached out to me. I hadn't gotten back to her because Tina was suffering from migraines, two people had colds, and one had a high fever. Nobody has health cards so I had to recommend the emergency room. She told me about some of the good work she is doing. She told me that Africans should not have the flu shot because they are not used to those virus strains. From my subsequent research, it seems that WHO would disagree with her. She used the terms African time and African truth to refer to her sense that the immigrants in Italy do not have a sense of urgency when it comes to keeping appointments and that they often provide different birthdates on different documents. I think people in desperate circumstances sometimes resort to crafty measures. We have. Read this blog, if you don't believe me. But, again, I didn't get the feeling that we have the same perspective on global issues even if we may share some of the same objectives. And, as it turns out, the same Italian Betty White gynecologist. Anyway, she mentioned that her Nigerian translator was this guy Christian. My reporter contact Nadia also mentioned him. I had a flash and remembered that I had not accepted the friendship of a Nigerian guy named Christian on facebook sometime back. Of course, it turned out to be him.

T sent me this as a joke.

Following Nadia's instructions, I reached out to him to tell him about my group and that he might be called on to translate. Then I panicked and thought that maybe the Red Cross lady would be upset about it so I told him that he need not mention it. Then I realized it was hardly a federal crime to introduce myself. But he wrote back that he was horn. I had a terrible feeling that he had friended me because he was feeling horn-y. But then he wanted to be hornets. This is understandable because written English is not easy even for me. About three minutes later I realized that he wanted to have honesty because the Red Cross lady had changed his life for the better and I super respected that and felt like an idiot so I said I would just talk to her. I messaged her and she never got back to me. So, know this, Red Cross lady. I shoot from the hip. I am an open book. I am trying to do a good thing. I want to work with you. And the only people who I know to read this blog are my mother and a few Ukranian guys looking for porn. Plus I have never used your name.

Next, I limped over to meet with the head of the Catholic charity Caritas because I figured that if Tina wants to keep her baby we need to get Catholic on the situation. And fast. My personal beliefs allow for me to honor any religion that has holidays involving the ceremonial eating of chocolate so I feel like I am pretty coherent in this. God and I are on pretty good terms. The lady is named Donatella. I love her. I was oddly enchanted that she was wearing braces. She asked me to write down all the facts about my guys. I told her I would also like to work with the Red Cross lady and she said the more people who help the merrier. I spent the week not having any real problems with African time and getting copies of all of their documents. I pledged the sum of my every waking non English teaching hours to dedicate to any translating or other task she wanted from me if she would only help my group. She wrote back at two thirty in the morning and that made me feel like I got a good one.

Nadia was late, Italian on time, to the meeting so I went in without her. I felt terrible about that because then she called me - she had my number but she hadn't given me hers - to say she had been outside the office for fifteen minutes. When she got inside she was tremendously supportive. Unfortunately, this almost meant catching me when I fainted due to low blood pressure and she brought me sugar water.

F had a wonderful idea. We want to get our foodie power Italian contacts to work with Caritas to open a Pan African restaurant in Florence that would serve as job training and placement for immigrants. We will have a dinner about that in March.

Here is my class *They're supposed to be speaking English:

I cheated on my hairdresser. The indignities of my being 46 involve covering my white hair on the regular. Every two years I overdo it and my hair turns from chocolate to charcoal. Over the years I have spent a fortune discovering the antidote. I know what it is but the miracle was finding a place where people would really follow my instructions to the letter if I did my part in learning the necessary vocabulary in Italian. Little did I know that my hairdresser would be in my neighbor's choral group and that her boss would good naturedly tease me incessantly. I was also not prepared to wear an Ethel Merman silicone hat and have tweezers pull the strands through before bleaching the color out of them. I am thrilled with the results although I feel guilty for betraying my wonderful friends at the other hair salon. This place costs a lot less, though.

Bernie Sanders came to talk to me in a barbershop. Just kidding.

When I got home seven people wearing ambulance worker jumpsuits came to take away the old couches. When they pulled up the pillows they found not just holes and ink stains, but a three course meal of crumbs left by former tenants that F sheepishly vacuumed up. I hope we don't need an ambulance anytime soon.

2016-01-30T15:33:00.000+05:00

Smays like potty

This is what I'm dealing with here.

I managed to offend two dear friends who wanted to get together with us on a Saturday night. The first friend had written me several times to try to get us to decide on a film for our film night. Finally we chose something everyone was happy with and it was all set. Then friend number two called who has been trying to have us over for almost three months, but her husband kept getting sick. When they stopped by to see the house the other weekend I had to throw them out because my student came early and I may have gotten the time wrong. It was awful. I proposed everyone just come to our house to have a movie party as to be as all inclusive as possible. T has a physics test to study for and she wanted to see the film, but without getting home too late. Perfetto.

But I underestimated how much friend number two wanted to host us. Then friend number one's husband got a fever, and I mentioned it to friend number two who said under no circumstances could her husband be around someone who had a fever. Friend number one wrote to say that her husband was feeling better and could come over. Friend number two also invited a friend we have in common who is taking me for my check up at the gynecologist, the Italian Betty White, before the dinner. And, yes, the idea of this also makes me lose my appetite. Especially for pizza, for some reason. Let's not overthink that. Anyway, I had to tell friend number one that we had to reschedule and tell friend number two that we could go back to the original plan and eat at hers. Then I got a whatsapp message from friend number three where she said: I hope you don't have plans because I am bringing a bunch of friends over to your house tonight for dinner.

Even in English, I am pretty sure I don't have the social finesse necessary to cope with Saturday night in Lucca.

Our neighbors tell us to prepare ourselves because the bar across the courtyard is going to start getting wild pretty soon as the weather improves and that we are going to have to start dealing with noise issues again. I am going to be miserable. I feel stupid. But hell no, we can't possibly move again. Ironically the noise issue I have now is from them because their television keeps sending a ghostly echo through the wall behind my bed. I asked Stefania, the Martha Stewart of Italy, if she could send her husband Luca up to investigate and it turned out that they have an open fireplace that ends up in the hollow area of our bedroom wall. Then he countered by telling us that he hears every step we take and there is nothing anyone can do about it. He followed this admission with an ominous dinner invitation that we had to accept for next Saturday night even though that is when we should host friend number one.

In group of five news, I got Tina the free prenatal care information she wanted and I gave Paul 100 euros that Catherine had donated for them. There was no way to put it off. He is absolutely terrorized at the amount of debt he has amassed since the money he has collected begging is not covering his rent and utility bills.

Like I can't.

I told my class that the American equivalent of cioè or c'è (which is teenager speak used by everyone) is like and then I couldn't stop saying like. And one student suggested I start saying you know just to shake things up.

2016-01-29T01:13:00.004+05:00

Hot Water, sharp wings, and drama

And, no, that is not the latest offering from America's troubled fast food chain Chipotle.

This week so far I have gone to Caritas, the Catholic charity, office to leave a letter again for the director with my resume. She will meet with me in person next week, thank heavens. I called Arci which has a project that takes immigrants who are processed in Rome and sets them up with a work collective. I wanted to report that so many Nigerian are saying that they were paid to leave camp Emmaus and find housing and work on their own. I also spoke with a local office of the comune/local government and found out that there are processing centers for new immigrants that I didn't know about in Capannori which is the next town over. Lastly, I spoke with a friend who has a friend at the Kennedy Center for Human Rights in Florence who ended up being friends with the same person who I could have called from the beginning who works with the Red Cross.

I had the Tuesday meeting at the coffee shop with my group of five. A new guy wanted to add himself to my group of five Nigerians, but a promise is a promise so I will help him in a different way just because he is number six. He kind of hunted me down and barrelled into our meeting at the coffee shop. He lost his documents and doesn't know what to do about it. Then the guy whose wife is pregnant reported that his wallet had been stolen so I gave them both the name I discovered of the police inspector in Montecatini who works with immigrants just to give them a little credibility. Hopefully, I won't get in trouble for that.

Speaking of lost wallets, someone in the group of five found a wallet on the train. In addition to a stack of identity and credit cards, it also contained 70 euros. He called me and told me that, as badly as he needed the cash, he wanted to return it and thought I would know what to do. I knew exactly what to do. I totally hyperventilated. And then we made a plan by which he would duck into my lobby and hand me the wallet and I would return it to the train station police. I almost peed myself five times on the way over to the Italian police. I had to say that I found it in the garbage outside the station because they required that I give over all my documents and my phone number along with the wallet. Thank goodness the real hero of the situation didn't do this himself. It turned out that the wallet belonged to the head of the train and she called to thank me and wanted to give me a reward, which I, of course, refused. But I did tell the person who found it that there would be a reward and then I had to practically beg him to take 20 euros from me because I felt it was what ideally should have happened if the world were a better place.

The woman in the group asked to meet with me privately. She just figured out that she is pregnant and the emergency room doctor told her that if she has an abortion she will never be able to have children again because of a uterine problem she has. She says her housing situation is filthy and disgusting and she asked me to call a lead on a different apartment. I called, but the Italian speaking landlord, understandably, won't accept her without proof of a regular paying job. I suspect that the doctor was lying to her to avoid having to give her an abortion so I wrote to a Canadian ob-gyn that my friend from Boston uses, but she wrote back that she is anti-abortion and wouldn't help with any of that. She did provide all the information for how she can get free health care and about adoption that anyone could ask for. It turns out that you can get an abortion legally in Italy for 90 days but only with a health card (which this woman can't get without a legitmate address) and in a public hospital with a signed consent form. She would like to have the baby but she doesn't want to bring it into these desperate circumstances, so when I go to the Catholic charity I will try to advocate for her to get better situated.

My reporter contact said she knows what argument to use to get my five people health cards from the hospital in Lucca so now I only need her to go with me to the early open office hours. She also knows the director of Caritas in Lucca.

Meanwhile, an English speaking representative of the Red Cross agreed to meet with one member of the group of five by conference call with a Nigerian translator, but she also told me that they were from the richest area in Nigeria and that their story about being forced from the camps doesn't add up. She believes they are lying to me. The members of the group stand by their story and want the chance to tell it to her. I would hate for any of my actions to cause anyone to live in a worse situation so the whole thing scares me. Considering the many years that F and I spent working with homeless people in New York City, I think it is fair to say that we are far from naive. Meanwhile more and more Nigerian people in town who don't know one another keep recounting the same exact thing. In fact, the woman from the Red Cross was right that they could be getting food and like two euros a day, but the Africans won't eat this food. At least a dozen people have told me they hate it. I don't know if it is hospital food and not what your nonna makes you or if it is just a big shock for them. Ambrose told me proudly that after a year of training his stomach, he can now get it down with no problems.

Today F asked me what I wanted for Valetine's day and I answered -- not to kill him and to be able to pee without burning. He replied something like, "Aiming high, I see." Ironically, today I taught for three and a half hours at a company that makes non-woven material for hygiene pads. I playfully yelled at one of the groups because the wings are so sharp on Italian feminine pads that I have five cuts. I didn't tell them that second part, but ouch. I know all you NY babes may be walking around in two feet of slush, but count your blessings. Even my mild mannered gyn says that the Italian wings are "micidiali." One of the men turned purple and I knew right then he was picturing the whole situation, but the filter between my brain and mouth broke in 1998 and I never have actually gotten around to getting it fixed.

2016-01-23T13:28:00.000+05:00

Non ti abbattere

Things that happened this week in Italy that you have to experience to believe:

I had to go to a gyn as an emergency patient. The receptionist told me the first free appointment was in about a week, but as I was in appendicitis level pain and there was bleeding involved, I went to no fail strategy A1 which is chi si conosce - it's all about who you know, baby. I called my friend whose daughter is a nurse and she got me the private cell number of the doctor who was home with a bad shoulder and who promised me she would see me as soon as she returned to the office. It turned out that I had an ovarian cyst, but instead of going to the free hospital laboratory I paid to go to a private lab where I waited for less than two minutes and where the nurse found a vein on the first try. These are secrets you can only learn in year five of immigrant life. I had a small cry with my pharmacist who assured me that I was not going to have cancer and she gave me medicine for free because she likes me. She recommended I go to the family doctor who works with the pharmacy who is a lovely man who worries about me. I avoid him like the plague because I always come home from his waiting room with something worse than I started out with. Anyway, don't worry about me because I am in menopause with hot flashes and mood swings, but this blogger is going to live.

I tried to email the doctor to find out if I had to take the progesterone (which was not a gel, but a pill, blah blah blah vagina vagina vagina) and she would not respond. My gyn is actually a dead ringer for Betty White and she maintained, in all her pink lipsticked glory, that the matter was too delicata to not be discussed in person. She was offended by my bluntness, people. I'm not even kidding. So Patrizia, who referred me to her in the first place, had to take me there between lessons so that the doctor could give me anti hemorraging medicine and sweetly kick me out of her office with just a slap on the wrist. Apparently, we do not talk about blood unless you add a lot of cute little Italian Disney terminology to soften and pinken the imagery. Davvero?

One small problemino is I have an endless period so that I have to worry not to sit on nice furniture or wear light colors, but that didn't stop me from calling an emergency meeting of the group of five (my Nigerian friends) to strategize how to deal with their many horrible life issues. I want to call them clients, and not friends, not because that will stop me from loving them and being overly attached in an unprofessional way, but because their job is not to help me and because occasionally it helps me separate so that I can sleep at night. In any event, I gathered everyone except Ambrose who comes to Lucca from Prato only on Thursdays and who just adores F. He adores F so much that when I am alone I sometimes can't recognize him without the ear to ear smile he reserves for the tall man. So I took everybody to the cafè that Tina says is the friendliest to Africans and surprised everyone by having them gather around for a talk. Apparently, they thought the big event was just going to be breakfast. I explained to them that my goal was to help them to get information that might lead them to integrate better in Lucca since now they do not have legitimate health cards, apartments, or jobs. I prefaced it by saying that I am probably the worst person to help since Italian bureaucracy confuses me and I don't always speak well, but that I make up for that by being outrageous and persistent.

Then we went around the circle and I got to hear some really sad, sad stories. In addition to Paul who I already told you about, there is Tina who is all alone here. She lives with a man and a woman who she met here, but who are from her same city. As I write this, she is alone at home sick and without a health card, too afraid to go to the emergency room with her migraine headache. Paul managed to get himself blackmailed. He paid a Nigerian for a letter from a lanlord to say he was living in an apartment and then the guy took off with the money. I asked why he didn't take the letter before handing over the cash and he and Emmanuel just smiled knowingly at each other and then Emmanuel told me that is the fastest way for a Nigerian to get killed. There is also Cool whose wife Jennifer is about to give birth. Their Nigerian marriage doesn't count and they want an Italian marriage license. He doesn't have a health card. I met his brother by chance this week and when I asked if they were really brothers he said to me with a grin, "Same mother and same father for me and Cool!" So that's that then. Emmanuel told me that he got a call while he was in Lucca that his wife was dead. His four year old son Precious is with his parents for now. He said the wrong thing and does not have a stay permit. He has a court case and a decision that has been delayed three times. Shit.

I made F make cheese bread for my carb enthusiast contact at the health office. She had stopped answering my emails out of frustration. The smell of the bread got her to spend thirty minutes trying to find a colleague for me to speak with at the Montecatini branch where the group of 5 live. Let me add that we are a group of five because I decided to limit mysef to the five because that way each of them can have an emergency fund of 100 euro that Catherine donated. I explained that part and they did not jump on the money, but rather are trusting me to hold it for them until they need it. The Montecatini colleague told us rules are different there than in Lucca and the group members can't have a health card without an official paper from the police station saying where they live. They should have gotten it when they arrived, but since they don't speak Italian, except for Tina, they didn't know to get that just like they didn't know that they would have been better off being followed by the Red Cross or Caritas of Lucca whereby they could have become more official.

Before risking taking them to the police, I took them to my lawyer at the Patronato INAC who told me their cases were too complicated and that he could not help and that he thought I should probably give up, too. He said the police station was the best next step.

Then I naughtily used my English lesson with the local government official for immigration to try to get her advice. She slipped me the name of the right police inspector, but she started breathing heavily in the manner of someone who has just realized that their English teacher is a mental case.

I had to give her an extra free fifteen minutes and invent a computer filing system with English phraseology for her work computer to convince her to come back which will mean hours of extra work this weekend. She warned me that if I do get the paper from the police in Montecatini the group of 5 will be forever prohibited from getting help from the charitable organizations in Lucca because . . Italy. They love zoning rules here. Stay tuned for the part where I bribe a police officer with gluten free birthday cake.

On a lighter note our favorite teen genius, who is going to study at Harvard this summer, showed us her report card and I fell off my chair laughing. See, if you can tell why:

2016-01-17T02:36:00.000+05:00

Elfing it up

Remember when I made a faux pas at the high school open house when T was still in middle school and we had to tour the schools so she could decide on a path for her higher education? Well, when it came time for us to look at the school with the most tremendous reputation for its high difficulty level, strict teaching methods, severe grading system, and rigorous enforcement of Latin and Greek studies -- I was sure T would never choose such a grueling path. Middle school was no picnic, and she had the option to go to the linguistics school where she could concentrate on studying English and basically make a holiday of it. I had to admit that the Harry Potteresque setting of the Liceo Classico was extremely cool as was the natural history museum with its real mummy and taxidermy displays; but it was cold as a witch's tit (and drafty!) and neither F nor I could understand what the professors were saying. All we knew for sure was that some of the parents, who were also alumni, had never let up on their exemplary skills in the art of ostentatious culo/tushy kissing. Even total outsiders like us could understand what their game plan was.

yes, that is a three-legged cock.

Well, my favorite part of the story is when, during the museum tour, I became so overcome by a fit of giggles at the earnest attempts of the dutiful students to give us a historical background of the artifacts and just the extreme likeness to Hogwarts that I went all in and started yelling "Free the Elves!" at the top of my voice and running around checking to see if the students were real or if they had wind up devices emerging from their spines.

It is with great pride that last night, we had a full circle moment, and T became one of those dutiful elves and shared a ton of historical information about the museum with other unsuspecting parents. Live and learn, right?

#elfonashelf

A further victory was won when we got some of the packages and mail we were waiting for since Thanksgiving and Christmas time, including Paul's health card! I actually was moved to tears today when a friend of ours, who we were very sad to learn is leaving Lucca, left a generous donation for my Nigerian clients that might very well prevent them from becoming homeless this year.

2016-01-13T16:42:00.000+05:00

Blacking out, not in a fun way

This is starting off to be such a weird new year. I probably should have a policy that if students cancel with less than a day's notice they have to pay for the lesson because I just sit around like a jilted prom date for half my life waiting for people and checking my phone. On the other hand, I don't really have the palle to enforce the policy and demand the double pay when everyone here is hard up for cash. And, honestly, who are we kidding, many times teacher needs an extra hour to chillax (look it up) anyway. Nevertheless, my earning power is a bit pathetic in 2016.

The new school we started teaching for is also a bummer. Their communication skills are poor. Irony! And when we don't go to lessons that have been canceled without our knowing it, we are getting condescending lectures about bureaucratic mistakes about paperwork taht we are allegedly mishandling based on regulations that were never really explained to us in the first place. I'm letting F handle that mess because my burning bridges ability is legendary. Ask any gym in Lucca and let the torrents of gossip wash over you!

None of my socialwork "clients" returned my calls either. They both didn't have phone credit and have fevers. One lady told me she had been in the hospital with malaria, but I can't figure out if that is true or if it is her way of saying she has the flu. In any case, that newsflash caused F to have to bring me a paperbag to hyperventilate into. I tried to get them a fast track to health cards by means of a meeting with someone at the ASL health office of Lucca who said she would let me email their documents directly to her so that they didn't have to wait on line for hours.

Unfortunately, most of them have to pay for fake addresses that are farther away and, therefore, my contact will not be of as much help. It is all frustrating. I had hoped to get them health cards before they all got the flu, which I was afraid would happen if they didn't avail themselves of the vaccine. Just because every Italian we know doesn't believe in vaccines, including my contact at the ASL who has three kids, doesn't mean it isn't free and their right to have it. The one guy who I finally did track down who desperately wanted a health card turned out to have one but to not know what it was because he can't read Italian. Then my meeting with the job training agency was canceled and I had already promised to bring everybody information this week.

The other night we had a blackout in Lucca. I assume that the strong winds knocked over a tree into a powerline, but I can't be certain. After half an hour of annoying the crap out of T with Little House and the Prarie and The Waltons humor, I called my friend Patrizia. She told me what the procedure should be including finding a power switch called a salvavita that we have never even heard of and don't know where to locate.

Then she lauged her ass off when I asked her if she could turn on the news and tell me what was happening. I should mention that she lives outside the city walls and her lights were on so she had no idea about the blackout. She responded that I wasn't in Kansas anymore, Dorothy, and that the only news was that from the last 24 hour news cycle. I guess NYOne does not have a Lucca equivalent afterall? While we were on the phone and she was rapid firing off what I needed to do, including calling the electric company because she believes that you can't expect the rest of the city to call for you, the lights came on. Menomale. Otherwise, F was going to have to talk me out of mooning our neighbors and their giant flashlight faces in the window across the way.

Also the Campomaggi bag that I bought T bled all over all of her shirts and jackets. This was sad not just because we paid a lot of money for the bag before T pointed out that it was not in line with my vegetarian world view, but because we just assumed for a week that she was a total slob.

The worst part is when my Italian skills let me down and I came across as a douche to the people in the leather store, although I did manage to get them to create an interim strap, give me free color fix spray, that didn't work, and to order a new strap. Those are not year one results and yet when I think of my image I prefer more Grace Kelley and less, you know, douche.

A New Year in DEED

2016-01-06T20:03:00.000+05:00

2016, weird, but true

This year has gotten off to a weird start.

It is a bit of a haze, but I believe we picked out two couches for the living room. It involved asking our landlord if we could ditch his couches and he initially said yes, but then after we purchased new couches he may have had a bit of a panic about it, in which he sent us a link to show us what good quality his couches were thirty years ago. The problem is that my back goes out every time I try to teach a lesson while siting on them for more than half an hour because the back has sunk down lower than the front of the seat. It is a dark, rather heavy color steel blue for the room, and it is really stained. We turned to our friends at Dinelli & Rossi for help and young furniture Skywalker, Jacopo, quickly understood that my need for streamlined and modern could only mean one thing: legs made out of glass panels that make the couch look like it is flying. In order to afford these beauties, I had to sacrifice on having arms. Are arms really important? Don't answer that. We aren't going to have any. Also we would have a limited choice of colors. I didn't trust myself all of the sudden and found myself begging Governor Leia, who is Jacopo's mother, to come and choose for me. She was less decisive than usual so I became more decisive and then when she left, I doubted everything all over again. Surely, it was stupid of me to bother her with such frivolous decisions when the fate of the interior design empire rests on her weary, well-coiffed head.

It is called air. It is the hoverboard of couches minus that unwanted spontaneous combustion feature.

So far nobody I have spoken to really believes that I can help immigrants find jobs in Lucca. Any conversation I start can be quickly shut down just by using the word assicurazione/insurance because it floods the conversation with more red tape than Martha Stewart's home office at Christmas. I offered to take two people to get their health cards, but they were really worried about collecting enough money to make rent at the end of the month so they asked if we could go the following month. I offered to take Paul to get his stay permit renewed, but he asked me if we could put that off until he pays off some guy to let him use his address. I asked him if he knew that the people who agree to live in the tents and be followed by the Red Cross get some kind of stipend so they don't have to beg, but he said that he has a friend who does that and he only gets 70 euros a month, about 20 euros every eight days. So ... no.

Notice the cool, furry chair F made.

T had her photo taken by a professional. The photographer is from Boston and has been living her for three years. She is doing a portrait project using a different volunteer model every week for 52 weeks. It came out stunning didn't it?

T has given me an education about other forms of social media like Instagram and Tumblr. I find it to be a world of inflated lips, over-contouring, and a lot of effort to look carefree, which are all forces from the dark side (what is it with all of these Star Wars references invading my brain? I never saw past the first two films.) anyway there are also pleasing opportunities for voyurism, creative design, and a giggle that I am going to experiment with for now. At the very least, it has upped our photography game for the blog.

p.s. Without sounding too american politicsy or bible-belt, T helped me come up with a name for my immigrant rights organization. We are temporarily going with Acta Non Verba which means deeds not words. So hashtag that you old bureaucrats!

2015-12-30T17:14:00.003+05:00

My birthday

We took T to the Uffizi and we had such a great day in Firenze.

2015-12-26T01:53:00.001+05:00

And so it twas

It was a long road . . . but in the end we got the windows done and the sweets delivered. This year we gave out sweets to Paul and some other African immigrants that we met this year. Unfortunately, I couldn't bring any of them to get their health cards before Christmas because they need to pay rent out of money that they beg off people, and the end of the month is always an anxious time for them. We will try again at the beginning of next month.

St. Stefano hard at work on the last two windows.

This is a secret location. We could tell you where it is but then . .

we'd have to make windows out of you. . .

We tried three different times to make cookie cups that were supposed to end up like this:

(yeah right, stop showing off, pinterest . . .)

The last attempt kept us up and frustrated beyond belief until two in the morning. They came out thick and heavy and cement-like:

Blech!

So we went to something we know is good:

Good ol' s'mores cupcakes!

YUM! And we gave them out at the ortofrutta, the farmacia, the erboista, and all the usual places. . .

This is Giuliano (also known as our fioraio) and his new-ish grandson.


T and il bimbo did a Tibetan peace loving salute.

When I saw the bulldog at COIN casa

even though I didn't know whether it was a store decoration

I knew T had to have it!

She wasn't expecting it but

when I saw

her reaction

I knew

I was RIGHT!

2015-12-20T15:37:00.000+05:00

La Nostra Squadra/#Squadgoals

Before the party, we played a trick on T and switched the smaller version of the tree for a bigger one. We were happy to do it as it gave us an excuse to give the other tree to Paul who was thrilled. T didn't notice for at least twelve hours which we teased her about mercilessly.

A perfect fit!

I ran out to the famous monthly antiques fair to slobber over this nice man's rugs (that sounds wROng) and to purchase a bench for our ingresso/entryway. We hid some little fabric cubes underneath to store our shoes. It was great to have hooks (not shown) and a coat rack so that the whole night wasn't spent taking people's coats and returning them at the end.

This Tibetan prayer rug costs a fortune, but wow.

We were relieved that our Italian friends gobbled up the Indian style pizzas happily -- a red one with figs and peas, a yellow curry with cauliflower and potatoes, and a green one with cima di rapa and paneer.

In total, F made more than a dozen pies come out of our little Barbie oven, one after the other.

Our friend Gabriella was so sweet when she pointed out to everyone that having a view of the back of the angel of San Michele is supposed to bring people good luck in Lucca.

I managed to make a little toast to our friends (our team) in Italian. I had to do it because they deserved to know how wonderful they are. We were sorry some really important ones had the flu, but now that we have the technique down, we can have many more celebrations in 2016.

T and Giorgia

Admiring the view.

And check out this cool cake that my friend Ian in New York gave us the idea for. It had real LED lights inside to make a welcoming winter scene and the cake was from our new favorite momofuku recipe.

la torta illuminata :) arrivederci & auguri, Brooklyn!

2015-12-19T22:06:00.002+05:00

Grinchy much?
Not to be a total grinch, but now a very horrible singer is giving a mega loud, really out of tune, just awful Christmas concert outside my window. Or rather outside where my windows would be if I had windows. What I have are sheets of white plastic with holes in them, and this has been the case for about a week now.

We got one estimate of four thousand euros and one estimate of ten thousand euros to put in the much coveted double glazed windows with the air chambers in them that are absolutely the best thing to have if you live in Lucca, Italy because they keep noise out and they keep in heat or air conditioning. F went to the most respected glass makers in the region and they gave him a price of only 750 euros to put in just the glass and keep the original frames, which is what our landlord prefers anyway. F shmoozed the receptionist of the glass place who told him that their carpenter was overwhelmed with Christmas orders. She batted her eyelashes and told him that a big, strong, handsome guy like himself (should I be worried?) could prepare the windows on his own with a drill and a knife. If he managed to do this, and not need help from the carpenter -- the windows could cost half as much.

Flash forward to F promising me that he could get all six windows ready himself in one weekend. After a frightening Saturday of safety glasses and gloves that had glass all over the kitchen floor, I called in reinforcements. Then my reinforcements called in reinforcements and I ended up with a Romanian guy named Stefano who is going for sainthood right after they work out the bureaucracy involved with Mother Theresa's appointment.

The receptionist promised F that the windows would be at the vetraia on Friday night -- the night before our big Indian Pizza Christmas party. F had to take T and I to the dentist in Prato that night and that's when we got the phone call from Stefano that the windows weren't ready. I called the substitute receptionist, the one F did not bribe with fresh, homemade bread, and who is not in love with him, and I scared the crap out of her. Five minutes later my hysterical pre party mental breakdown, I got the call that the windows had just arrived. I called Stefano and he turned his truck around and went to pick them up. I think they gave him the runaround because he is Romanian, but who knows. . .

Now it is two hours before the party and F has just arrived with four of the six windows. Two of them are not missing and those are for my bedroom. Those can be done next week, two days before Christmas. Or at least that's what F's receptionist told him. . .

I don't want to hear anyone sing Christmas Carols if their name is not (my friend) Vanessa Peters.

2015-12-07T02:06:00.002+05:00

I CAN'T EVEN . . .

Italian gym class
In what can only be deemed extremely questionable judgment, timing, and taste, T's school took her to a shooting range -- Tiro a Segno Lucca -- for gym class. They really did. After a rather intense discussion, we decided, in the end, to let her go. We are for gun control and, really, the elimination of guns altogether, but we decided that since we must acknowledge their existence in the world, now more than ever, it might make sense to demystify them. That day after school her classmate's American mom emailed us to ask if we thought it was off the f*cking wall batsh*t crazy, but she put it really nicely. We assured her that it was.

photos stolen from ladeadellacaccia.it online

I hope ladeadellacaccia is not upset about my stealing the photos.

The flyer she brought home had this illustration on it:

Are guns in Italy completely different than they are in the U.S.?

In not totally unrelated news, I put the fear into the geometra, who I actually really like, from the old apartment because he was sent by the old landlord to make me sign an agreement about the energy company agreements and the deposit. I basically told him (in Italian!) that in America we would have already organized a group lawsuit against his boss for poisoning all the tenants with mould poisoning, and that if I ever hear from them again I will do the American thing and contact a lawyer and the newspapers. No more Signora Nice Guy. He agreed with me, by the way. Man, that snoopy image is disturbing, though.

2015-12-06T23:01:00.000+05:00

Living in the shadow of the tents

I discovered that I probably don't want to work for the Red Cross of Lucca. Firstly because they didn't have the good sense to call me after receiving my excellent resume, and, secondly and more importantly, because they are having all of the African immigrants that they host stay in a freezing cold tent where almost no staff people can speak English with them. Given the situation, I decided to strike out on my own. Well, not on my own. With me and all of my chi si conosce contacts that can help the people who have stay permits but no jobs, inadequate housing, little to eat, and even less hope about their futures. With this in mind, I have teamed up with my English student Nadia who is also a reporter for the newspaper Il Tirreno and I have also chatted up my student who works for the government of Lucca and is in charge of immigrant services.

My first mission was to take this very wonderful young man from Nigeria to the agenzia delle entrate to get his tax code/codice fiscale which is a fast track to getting a health services card. It was very stressful choosing the right button to get the numbered ticket and then waiting for our number to show up on the tiny computerized screen because it was someone else's future who was at stake and not ours. When our number was finally called, it was a relief to be able to speak decent enough Italian this time around to communicate effectively. Our bureaucratic worker guy was wearing fluorescent green suede shoes, flannel pajama pants, and a flashy ascot, so it was hard to be too afraid of him. I had to give our mailing address because my first client doesn't have the right to give out his address since he lives in a place designated for three people according to the blueprints we immigrants have to show and he is the fourth roommate.

My client -- for lack of a better word -- lived in Nigeria, land of his birth, and it so happened that his mother was the second wife of his father. All was fine enough until his father died and the children of his father's first wife got into a battle with him over land from the inheritance. His mother told him to flee to Libya where jobs were easy to find and where he was doing well until the war broke out. His landlord's son demanded his cell phone and when he wouldn't hand it over, he stabbed him in the rear with a knife. His landlord said he couldn't take him to the hospital and pushed him to get on a boat. He was dazed and injured and wasn't allowed to turn back. He barely survived the journey and then received medical treatment when he got to Lampedusa. From there he was transferred to Cagliari, Sardinia. Eventually, he was invited by a friend to share an apartment in Montecatini where lots of Nigerians are holed up. They take the train to Lucca during the day because the wealthy of Montecatini, apparently, are not all that generous.

When I spoke about the situation with my student who works for the local government she said that begging is illegal here and that she fears that it will only worsen the relationship between Africans and the Lucchese people. She said that people shouldn't have to beg because organizations like the Red Cross give out daily pocket money and three meals to their clients. I pointed out that no sane person would give up a warm apartment with friends for an unsafe and freezing tent in the middle of winter, but she didn't really have an answer.

I got worried when, the next day, my client didn't want to go to the school to sign up for free Italian lessons as we had planned. He accepted the offer of some coffee and food from our mutual friends who run the bakery and barely looked at me when he told me he was too tired to go anywhere with me. I have a cold and am exhausted so my feelings got hurt for a moment but then I had a storm of social work school flashbacks and I remembered about not getting too invested in terms of ego. When I went back out later in the day I told him that I would understand if maybe his roommates had warned him about trusting people like me. He looked very deeply into my eyes and told me that I was crazy because I was the first person in two years to make him feel comfortable. I told him that I knew that if the situation were reversed he would help me. It turned out that he hadn't wanted to walk to the school because his leg was hurting him. So, hopefully, in two weeks his documents will arrive in the mail and we will work on getting him medical care and into some kind of job training, if any exists.

If it turns out that I have something concrete to offer, I hope to repeat the process with dozens of others. I'll let you know.

In other news, T has two opportunities to do some traveling with her school and earn some extra curricular activity credit. If they pan out, I'll explain further. She is super excited to meet the little girl who she will be tutoring who is, most likely, also an immigrant.

F is working on getting the apartment's windows replaced. At the moment, the window company has one panel of our windows and we have a plastic curtain up where it used to be. Hopefully, they will make the model panes at a decent pace and we will have a really fantastic life up here behind the angel of San Michele.

We have also been putting the finishing design touches on the apartment as we are planning a giant Indian pizza party. First I have to survive more skin treatments that will be painful, but afford me a week of recovery time at home, hiding my hyper pigmentation from the world. If I survived the eight hour day of teaching the apprendisti, I can survive anything. I had hours of videos with English subtitles planned, but at lunchtime I had to run home to get the Italian subtitled versions because they got too frustrated. I bartered with them shamelessly and they learned the perfect tenses in exchange for episodes of How to Get Away with Murder and rounds of Cards Against Humanity.

The world is getting intense. I wish you all Happy and SAFE Holidays, wherever you are!