Almost in Africa

I definitely did not come to Lampedusa to go to the beach. I planned to go so that I could finally, finally finish the photography part of my project for my Gallatin Senior’s Grant (months late, I should add). I’ve wanted to come to Lampedusa for years, probably since I first read The Leopard, before going to Sicily in 2002. But it’s not very easy to arrive. First I flew to Sicily, then to Lampedusa in a prop plane so small that we could watch our bags as they were loaded on: the luggage storage was in a compartment in front of the rows of seats. Somehow the airline still managed to lose some people’s bags. Not mine, luckily.

Lampedusa itself is a little scrubby island less than a dozen miles long. It’s part of a trio of islands called the Pelagie Islands – only two are inhabited. The third has just a lighthouse. Lampedusa is about 200 km from Sicily and 100 km from the north coast of Africa. So I was closer to Africa than Italy! (I read that technically the islands are part of the African continent because of the shallowness of the ocean between Lampedusa and Africa. But somehow Italy ended up owning them anyway.) The island itself is covered with bushes and rocks. My map describes it as “arid and wild”. It’s also a wildlife preserve protected by the Italian government. Apparently there are lots of dolphins, and sea turtles mate here.



Lampedusa’s other claim to fame is its detention center. Because of its proximity to the coast of Africa, it’s become a sort of landing pad for boats of people hoping to use it as a gateway to the rest of Europe. Unfortunately, though, a lot of those trips have ended in shipwrecks, and Lampedusa is the site of a famous detention center through which Italy tries to send refugees back to Africa (from what I’ve read, this backfires, because many of the boats that take off from Libya are not carrying Libyan citizens, but people who traveled through Libya to get a boat passage. The Libyan government, which is on bad terms with Italy anyway, isn’t interested in acting as a refuge for non-citizens). So I came to Lampedusa to take photos. Not of the detention center itself, which is a big forbidding building perched on a cliff, but the island. To get a sense of it in the photos.
I still have no idea if the photos themselves were successful. I spent some time in this weird boat cemetery-ish spot, at night, with my tripod. It was scary because I kept imagining that someone was going to pop out of one of the boats and yell at me (or haunt me). The boats were very dark inside.



Spiaggia dei Conigli!


To get a better sense of the island, I rented a bike (for which I paid 4 euros and 40 cents – it was supposed to be 5 euros, but I didn’t have the right change, so the owner let me go anyway) and rode around the whole island. I went to the most famous beach, Spiaggia dei Conigli, which closes at 8 pm so that sea turtles can climb onshore and lay their eggs. It’s a stunningly beautiful beach, and has the most amazing water I’ve ever been able to swim in. It was perfectly clear and I could see all the silver little fish darting around my feet. And I brought a pretty awesome picnic and ate melty cannoli on the beach.




This was also the first time I’ve taken real sun precaution, which sort of disturbed me and makes me think I’m inheriting some bizarre grownup characteristics. The problem is that I bought an issue of Vogue in the airport that, instead of teaching me about fashion, freaked me out about skin care. So I actually used 50 spf for the first time before going into the sun. And I bought the dorkiest hat of my life. It reminded me of Rosa, because I know she would never be seen with me if I wore it at home.



Despite the abovementioned diligent skin care, my stay on Lampedusa was not free from danger. A pack of wild dogs terrorized – and almost cleared out – the beach before disappearing up the cliff. A bee stung me on my butt (it was the bee’s fault for relaxing on my beach towel under the shade of my leg – thank God I’m not allergic). On my first night I ordered fish at a restaurant, feeling as if that was the right thing to do, being on an island. I received an entire fish on my plate. And this is not New York – no one is going to de-bone it for you. I felt like a failure, but I did manage to get the head and tail off and the spine out before I ate it. And my hotel, which was incredibly cheap because it’s off season, and very beautiful (that nighttime photo is the view from the TERRACE I had in my room), was totally empty except for me. It was like living in The Shining. I was actually given a front door key because there was no one working at reception. I came to breakfast on the first morning to find the owner on her knees on the bar, polishing liquor bottles and singing. She made me a really good coffee.



So, Lampedusa was beautiful. And it was very satisfying to travel alone. I’ve taken what feels like a million trips by myself, but this was the first time that I didn’t feel lonely and I didn’t want to leave. But now it’s back to Bologna to work until Thursday. On Friday I go back to Cambridge for a few weeks! I can’t wait! I’m downgrading: now I live with an asthmatic vomiting cat and a one-eyed vomiting cat – at home, there’s just a single one-eyed vomiting cat. Hello Dinkie!

Also, I should note that I shouldn’t have compared Andrea to a Belmont Hill boy on my last post. He read it and had a reaction that I feel sort of guilty about: he looked it up and found this. Also my fault, because I showed him the Urban Dictionary in the first place. He thinks I called him gay because he has pink on his shoes. (He’s not.)