Because you have no clue what I am doing here, I'm gonna catch you up to speed.
Prepare yourselves.
Living on a small island has sucked all of the Adventure Allyn self out of me, or so it seems.
My time is divided among reading on the porch, walking the Sanap Cliffs, cliff diving, going out to dinner and drinking wine of the Barroof until 2 in the morning. There is none of the Run Around Getting Everything in Sight Done Must Experience Everything Possible.
This isn't India. As an anthropologist, I wish I weren't so blunt about how everything is Not India.
But I can't help it.
India is my soft spot, and I want everything to be as amazing as India.
Alas, it is not.
There is no constant on the move, always traveling, always seeing, but more, always conversing. I am talking anthropology with everyone, at all times, and being surrounded by like minded nincompoops is entertaining. This is by far the nerdiest thing I might have ever done in my life, but I knew that before I got here, and I appreciate it for what it has presented itself to be.
I'm just glad I like having deep conversations. Not to say they don't get old, or that we don't have lots of fun. But if you want to sit around on a roof and drink bongo bongos and dance to music and take artsy fartsy photos and sit around and talk techniques and talk methodologies, tradition and modernization, and globalization, and a few things about our individual projects and even grad school - well, this is the place to do it.
The only thing about all of this is that it is so incredibly hands off. Sometimes the lack of instruction, structure, class, understanding of the need to get academic credits - it gets frustrating. I'm just glad that since I was thrown into ethnographic research with no instruction, insight, helping hand - I'm doing it here, on an island surrounded by cliffs and clear water and English speaking folks with festive evening celebrations. I certainly would not be happy if I had signed up for field school in Brazil just to be left in the middle of a jungle to do research.
Nope, I've got a single room, a kitchen and porch, a 3 minute walk to the water/restaurants/shops/friends. It's pretty cushy, and I appreciate the comforts, even though I am a bit disappointed in the structure of the program and the location.
Seriously, there is very little here that I am finding I want to research. 2 weeks later and there is nothing that surprises me, except the stunning scenery. This is island life with a decidedly tourist outlook.
But, I have found something, and I have found friends with similar interests and it is nice to work among those with similar interests.
So, those interests are diverse, and this being an incredibly Catholic island - diversity is not the norm.
Contemporary art is practically non-existence, there is no good dance happening, and the bit of traditional dance is super tourist oriented. And, they refuse to respond to my emails and phone calls.
Guess who isn't gonna get my business?
What I have decided on, and thankfully, have had a lot of luck with, would be the symbols and art behind a giant Maltese celebration, known as Festa.
Do you want to know what it is? Sure you do!
Festa is the annual celebration of each village and their patron saint, where, during the week of their saint, everyone goes nuts and does performances and makes crazy shirts and puts up decorations and eats lots of food and drinks in the streets and has parades and kinda makes it a competition between other churches in the area. Take for instand, Victoria, the capital of Gozo. I am concentrating on the Feast of St. George, who, according to Catholic religion (and is depicted as such) was a soldier in the Roman Army and fought, good vs. evil. In summary, Good = the catholic church, Evil = not the Catholic church. In pictures, a 21 yr. old solider slicing the head off of a dragon.
Which makes me depressed about my own life - I'm 21 and have yet to even find a dragon.
The week before the Sunday of St. whoever is a week full of festivities, ending in a giant street feast and the carrying of a solid wood statue of (in this case) St. George down all of the tiny winding European streets, the path marked by lights and people and confetti and decorated banners.
I like Festa because I like celebrations. I like Festa because I like religion. I like Festa because I like bands and balloons and fireworks and choirs and lights and decorations and symbols and myths and pastizzis and people.
I like people.
And I've met a lot of people, some of it through pure luck.
I've met Silvan, who traded me a Festa shirt for an egg who introduced me to George Cini who arranges all the activities of the St. George parish's Festa celebration who introduced me to Joseph, the man who puts up all of the banners and decorations who introduced me to band members/players James and Clint who gave me a tour of the island and the church and told me everything they could think about when it came to my research (everyone wants to be a part of it, thankfully) and they introduced me to Anthony, James and one other that I can't remember the name of that are in the internationally acclaimed choir at St. George's who introduced me to their choir director who took me to his home to meet the former Father of the church who is also the head of the Anthropology department at the University of Malta where he teaches classes on Anthropology and religion who shared his wealth of information on symbols/symbolism and folklore and history of Malta and the move from paganism to Catholicism and wants to introduce me to the US Ambassador to Malta tonight, during the feast.
So that is where I will be tonight. Sitting next to the ex-Father of the St. George's Parish and the US Ambassador at the annual feast of St. George in Victoria on the island of Gozo in the middle of the Mediterranean.
How ridiculous is that?!
Starting next week I am meeting with the man who creates all of the statues that grace the streets of the towns that host festas and his apprentice who does all of the painting of the statues and also the great religious scenes on all of the banners.
His name is Manuel and his is 21 and he gets commissions from all over the world for his original and detailed religious scenes.
I'm impressed.
So that is where my research stands. Somewhere between knowing lots of the hot shots on the island and about Festa and art and the meaning behind the celebrations and knowing nothing about how to write down my research, record and process what I have learned and where to take it from here.
Talking with my peers, they seem to be on the same page. It feels a bit... fruitless.
My biggest issues are
1.) I am too journalistic. This prompts people to merely answer questions instead of be my friend that happens to like sharing information with me. This is a problem. Even though I have made a couple of friends here and that makes me happy.
2.) Everyone here takes everything at face value. There has been no deep searching, looking, understanding - my questions come up empty sometimes because everyone on the island just takes their way of life, celebrations, beliefs because they have been given to them. The Maltese are very proud of their heritage - they are Maltese and nothing else (even though Malta has been overtaken multiple times by just every human group on the planet over the last 7000 years and the Maltese and very little of their own culture but a just a big conglomeration of everyone elses' traditions in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East.)
Getting information out of people that just accept and don't question anything themselves is a bit frustrating.
Dead End is my constant companion on Gozo.
So is bleach blond arm hair and a simply gorgeous golden brown tan with salt water tossed hair and an obscene intake of Gozo cheese (the only good food on the island).
Needless to say, I'm not lonely. Just bored and a little frustrated at the slowness of the project and daily life in general.
One event I did appreciate, although others did not (out of 25 people, 9 of us survived) was the 25 mile all day long hike we took. Which was beautiful and entertaining, but it was hard. Nobody warned us that we would need tennis shoes and the terrain here is rocky and dead. And the weather is around 95 everyday. We got lost, we didn't get lunch, we saw some beautiful sights, we sent people home on buses, we climbed cliffs, i watched as every European in the group would climb a hill and light a cigarette and was amazed at the sheer strength of their poor lungs, we danced and sang and some people cried and our feet bled and then we all jumped in the water.
And that was that. It was invigorating, trying, frustrating and I'm glad I made it to the end.
I'm a very capable person and I am proud of that.
And so, next time I will put pictures up:
horse races, Azure window, what is probably the best beer in the world, Festa, sculpters, religious nightlights, friends, Magnums (not what you think), surroundings and more information about Festa and daily activities. Sorry it took me so long to do this. But now it is pretty much, generally, caught up.
Pictures just take so long to put up - it's really ridiculous.
