It seemed perfect. A fifteenth century Palazzo in medieval Narni, Umbria. Rental of our appartamento around $200 a week. Overlooking a huge wooded valley. A garden. Six foot thick walls for amazing insulation. High speed internet. Cassie and i could not believe our luck. We could come and go from Australia, using Narni as our base, telecommuting my work with AlkaWay.
It was beautifully furnished with antique furniture and modern appliances, even bed linen was included, and it was a short walk to the Piazza for our morning caffe and cornetti. All we needed to buy was a washing machine. We moved in and so began our Bella Italia sojourn.
Our great joy was sitting in the garden talking to Neil on Skype, reading a book, or planning our day. It was just too ideal.
One day after we signed the lease, we opened the door to the garden. A strong plastic smell assailed our nostrils. Thinking it may be something passing in the street above, we thought little more about it until Cassie, who is chemically sensitive, began to get headaches and stinging eyes. The next day, the same. The day after, the same again. We began to worry.
Cassie looked up pollution and Narni on the net. Oh Boy! On the other side of Narni, a massive laminex factory had been polluting the air for years. There had been inquiries and yes, it emitted sulphur, ozone and poly aromatic hydrocarbons (A very nasty carcinogen) and there was a testing device that checked levels every day. There was even a website that gave recommendations on whether it was safe to leave your house. The company had insisted that filters were installed and everything was 'Bella'. So why was Cassie having headaches?
Our daytime ritual changed. We were trapped inside the six foot walls of our appartamento, venturing out only to shop for groceries. We discovered that a paint factory had burned down a year or so before, depositing dioxins across the whole valley. A farmer's 1000 sheep had been quarantined, warnings had been given not to grow or sell food or drink water.. but this is Italy, and no followup occurred.
The people who live here are (in the main) either employed by the factory that poisons them or living off what they grow. To tell them they can't eat or drink their local foods.. well, it's impossible. And although they may own their own medieval home, they have no money, so to suggest they move is also impossible, so a code of silence seems to hang over the area. No-one talks about it and they seem to actively remain out of date on what is actually going on, probably because they know in their hearts that they can do nothing about it. In the meantime cancer rates are soaring as the deadly contaminants accumulate in human and animal tissue, in the crops and it the water.
Suddenly, our Fill2Pure portable filter bottle was our best friend. We filtered the tap water, and only drank bottled San Pellegrino when we ran out of filtered water. We reluctantly purchased at the local supermercato because there were some food miles betwen where the supermarket food was sourced and Narni.
Our landlady was a Roman. She understood our dilemma and we paid her three months' rent to get out of the lease. We are lucky. We were able to move to our friend's farm in an unpolluted area nearby.
Local folk are not so lucky, and this face to face experience brought us to the understanding that a pollution problem such as this is not as easily solved as relocating. Being Australian we have no such problems, and so we are relatively unaware and ignorant of the number of problems facing Europeans, Americans and Asians that have similar no-win social consequences.
Just imagine for a moment that your backyard was laced with carcinogens, that the water from your tap carried slow death, and that the food you ate made you an unwilling victim of food chain pollution. What would you do? What could you do? You can buy a medieval house in Narni for 50,000 Euros. I just thought it was a good price. No. It's cheap because it's deadly.
My lesson? Paradise doesn't exist and trying to find it is a waste of time and dreampower. Italia has vast areas of relatively unpolluted land where one can live in good health, but a corrupt government and a profoundly powerful underworld means your 'Paradiso' could change at any time.
On a more practical level, I am so very glad we took our Fill2Pure. It occurred to me that if I hadn't known about the pollution I would have been ignorantly accumulating carcinogens while blissfully enjoying the Italian lifestyle. So as a traveller, I now know that my ignorance of local history places me at risk of sickness at any time. I have NO idea what is or is not a pollution hotspot and no travel agent is going to tell me. So being prepared is far, far more important to me after this unfortunate experience.
1 comment:
Ian, I found that interesting reading, thanks for the info. I love Italy and spent some time with a cousin there in Salerno. What a shame such a lovely place is now polluted. Hard to believe that one has to check out what factories are about when looking for a place in paradise to relax and work of course. It sounded ideal when I first started reading and wanted to visit myself, now I know to be aware of what lies behind the next mountain. Thanks for that, well there is a huge market for your Alkalisers and Fill2Pure water bottles.
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