It Takes a Village

We are back in Sicily after a wonderful winter in San Francisco. There is much work to be done before we can start sailing. It seems less dirty than usual. We are told that there was a lot of rain this winter. Perhaps that rain was enough to keep the Sirocco winds carrying red Sahara sand from staining the boat as much as usual. There is still plenty to do: raising the sail, inflating the tender, servicing the engines, and mostly scouring the boat from top to bottom. And by bottom, I mean scraping both hulls free of the season’s crop of barnacles and assorted sea life. I do a rough scraping here at the marina. It will take a couple of weeks when we are anchored out to get the keel completely clean. Among our many projects, I wanted to put a new layer of rubber on the front of the tender where it had rubbed over the years. So I get a list together of what I needed. There is a little hardware store here in Marina di Ragusa that I get these kinds of supplies. An elderly couple run the place. Neither one speaks a word of English. But there is usually a young woman who is able to figure out what I want. Well this year she was nowhere to be found. So I talk to the wife of the owner. With the help of the rest of the customers and through the talents of pantomime, they figure out that I am looking for some kind of glue. What I was looking for was contact cement. I even knew the Italian for it, contacto cemento. Yeah I am not making that up. But the elderly couple only speak Sicilian. Even Italian is not working. And I am beginning to doubt that I am even asking for the right thing in Italian. I had no idea how many kinds of glues they can have in a hardware store. They brought out maybe 15 different glues, none of which were contact cement. At that point, I pretty much gave up and continued down my shopping list. Just when I was about to pay for everything, one of the customers who had been doing most of the translation presents me with a can of contacto cemento. Yeah I had it right. I have them open up the can just to be sure. And thank everyone profusely for all of their help. Each one of the people there played a dramatic role in this endeavor. The guy that was doing most of the translating good-naturedly says I owe him 10%. Well somehow the elderly woman completely understood what he was saying. She looks at me and draws her baby finger from her eye down her cheek. You don’t have to be in Sicily too long to understand the signal. She is in good humor, giving me the sign that her customer is in the mafia. I gather all my items and pay for them. But before I can leave, the woman goes behind the counter and gives me a big bag of fresh tomatoes from her garden. You gotta love Sicily. The people here are what I love most about the island. They are always so kind, patient and willing to help. It feels like we are home again.