Everything you thought you knew

If you think you know everything, chances are you’re only at the doorstep to what you need to learn.

I spent two weeks in Italy, visiting Rome and some villages in Tuscany. What I learned is just how much we think we know, and how little we actually know.

Before I left South Africa, two friends who had also recently visited Italy told me that the food was disappointing, so I was expecting exactly that. The world has stolen Italy’s thunder. In just about every city in the world, there are Italian restaurants and pizzerias. There are entire pasta aisles in supermarkets. Jamie Oliver has entire shows and books dedicated to Italian cooking, and he’s even opened chains of Jamie’s Italian restaurants. How much more can there be about Italian food that we don’t already know, right?

Wrong.

Italian food was fantastic! I was overwhelmed and amazed by textures and flavours I’d never experienced before and wanted to bottle and take home. Everything about the place was amazing, from the people to the food to the language, the passion for life, the shops, the streets, the buildings. There was so much more that I experienced by being there that I wouldn’t have known had I relied on what I thought I knew. 

I also learned that a lot of people in Rome have broken arms, and I have no idea why. I’ve never seen so many people with their forearms in bandages or casts. Maybe it’s from driving Vespa’s. Or talking with their hands while driving like lunatics while another lunatic on a Vespa passes by unexpectedly.

Italians have a passion for life that I haven’t experienced until now, and I wish the world would adopt its energy.

They love their food so much that every country in the world has tried to copy it, but the world is missing one secret ingredient. You can’t transpose a culture. You can’t bottle Italy. Pasta doesn’t taste the same when you try to make it in your own kitchen in another country because you’re missing the one secret ingredient that makes it all so amazing – Italy. We have a restaurant chain in South Africa called Primi Piati. Even that exudes the ignorance with which we try to copy cultures. Italian food consists of Antipasta, Primi Piati, Secondi Piati, Pizza, Mains and Dolce. Primi Piati is only one element of a whole we can never replicate.

Italians are naturally beautiful. I’ve never seen so many beautiful people. They dress beautifully. The men are striking and the women are gorgeous. Even in the tiniest town, in the sweltering heat of the day, men are dressed in elegant jackets, designer shirts, and of course, Italian leather shoes. Every clothing collection in every shop looks like it belongs on the catwalk in Milan. There’s no Fong-Kong, no knock offs – they understand genuine, and they love to dress up. After siesta time, people step outside for their promenade, or Gelati before dinner, dressed like they’re at an Oscar Gala dinner.

Italians close for the afternoon. Lots of European countries have Siesta time, so this isn’t unique, but it gives them the evening to live it up. Rome has hundreds upon hundreds of restaurants, trattoria’s, pizzerias, gelaterias, coffee shops and bars – so many that you wonder how they survive. Until you see Rome in the evening. Everyone goes out, and every eating place is busy. Walk down any side street, and every tiny restaurant that is barely wide enough to string two tables next to each other is bursting at the seams. If we did this in South Africa, we’d create a sub-economy that would drop our unemployment by half. 

When Italians communicate, they do it with feeling. Their language sounds like a song. It’s loud, melodic, and beautiful to listen to, even if you can only understand “Alora”, and “Prego”. There’s no such thing as a quiet conversation. When they’re together, they talk to the people in the room. No cell phones at the table. Not a single one. I walked past dozens of restaurants before I realized what was different. People sitting at tables were talking to each other, and there wasn’t a single person sitting in front of someone while looking into their mobile phone communicating with someone who wasn’t even in the room. Life is about communication, community, family and respect for one another. Meals are a time to connect, not a time to disengage. They share time together and their entire lifestyle is designed around celebrating life. How much more rude to another person can you be than to sit in front of them and focus your attention on your mobile phone looking for something more entertaining or more important than the person you’re with? 

Tuscany consists of dozens and dozens of wine farms, olive farms, and tiny towns. Towns can be anything from half a dozen old houses with their front doorsteps literally right on the narrow winding roads that barely have room for two Fiat 500’s to pass one another, to Medieval walled cities with towers and Piazzas. Some have colourful histories, like Siena, where the whole year of the entire town seems to revolve around the annual Palio, a horse race in the square that lasts all of a minute and a half and has its residents more tightly wound up than England fans at the FIFA world cup.  

Every trip away from my home country is an opportunity to learn. To experience new cultures. And to lament the depreciation of the Rand against the First World currencies. When I was ten years old, the Rand was two to the Dollar. Now it’s worth less than ten US cents. How could it turn so sour in such a short time? South Africa could never be Europe, not in my lifetime, nor that of my grand children. I bought groceries at a CoOp store in Figline val d’Arno and checked myself out. I scanned my own groceries, paid without supervision or spot checking, and left the store with two bags of groceries without interacting with a store representative. In SA that could never happen. Honesty is a form of self-respect, and in SA, we have little of either. In Italy, people dine out, they walk in the streets at night. In SA, we drive. Nobody walks in the street if they can afford a car. We live in big houses, making the distances between communal centers greater – too great to walk. We can’t wander into a restaurant down a side street. We like our big cars. In Rome, a good car is one that fits into a parking space the size of a 21-year-old’s mini skirt. In SA, a good car for a housewife is a Jaguar 4x4 because it looks more expensive than the one your friend is driving. We can’t afford good clothes because of the duties our government has levied on imports to protect a fat, lazy, inefficient and entitled local industry that doesn’t come anywhere close to satisfying local needs because the workers are more interested in striking for higher wages rather than sustainability. 

SA is so far from being a first world country because of its deep rooted corruption that scars its face like a 6-inch malignant melanoma on its forehead, its unjustified sense of entitlement that robs the people of their future, its chronic myopia that limits its ability to see the future it promises to it’s blind followers, its lack of self worth that causes the lame to kick the mouths of the mute and gouge out the eyes of the blind. Can this country ever claw its way out of the pit its leaders have crafted for its people? 

Maybe if we learned from cultures like the passionate, loud, crazy Italians, we might. If we learned to live instead of hide. If we learned to communicate instead of lie. If we accepted our reality rather than desperately cling to a lie that denies the past for which no single individual is directly responsible, but rather is the result of. If we learned to participate, rather than expect. If we worked on the thing we gave out instead of focusing on the handout we hope to receive with idle hands. If we developed a sense of mutual respect and a sense of self worth. But these things have to be a common goal for everyone. If just one person cheats at the checkout, free loads and rides the coat tails of others, blames a new generation for their predecessors, or opts out rather than in, the entire fragile float fails. 

Pizza, anyone?