The six-hour flight from
JFK airport to my layover in Germany was not nearly as bad as I remembered. It
had been almost 10 years since I was stationed in Germany with the US Army, and
now I was heading back. However, this time my stay in Europe is for much
different reasons. After a short layover in Germany, I headed straight to the
Naples airport in Italy for my volunteer work with the refugee crisis. I was
told via email that a man named Ivan would be waiting for me at the airport;
there was no man named Ivan at the airport!
It took some time, but
another volunteer I was traveling with and I found a different man holding a
sign with our names. We felt comfortable enough that this was the right guy and
trusted him with our luggage, despite rumors about the dangers for tourists
visiting Naples. Our driver let us out on a busy cobble stone intersection,
where we met up with the man named Ivan. Ivan spoke enough English for us to
understand, which was a lot more than the driver. After some quick
introductions, we followed Ivan up a cobble stone street, pulling our rolling
suitcases behind us and pouring sweat from the humidity and heat. The people
around stared at us funny. It was obvious we were Americans in what I would
later find out is the worst area of Naples Italy.
After we were settled in
our living quarters, I decided to head out with another volunteer for some authentic
Italian food. The city of Naples has one of the densest urban populations in
Europe, and the city is known for being ill-ventilated and very chaotic. This was
certainly true of the traffic in Naples, since it is impossible for cops to
enforce any kind of order. Pedestrians are encouraged to ignore traffic signs (everyone
else does) and to just walk out into a busy street with many cars and motor
bikes speeding by in an aggressive manner. The drivers are used to avoiding
pedestrians, so there usually are no problems in doing this. It may just take
Americans a little time to get used to it. The worst thing for a pedestrian to
do, however, is to run, since this disrupts the driver’s ability to anticipate
the pedestrian’s likely movement on the road.
After some delicious
Italian pasta, I headed back to my living quarters ready to get out of the
extremely humid Mediterranean heat. I immediately learned that the place seven
other volunteers and I are staying for the next month did not have air
conditioning or even fans. It was so hot and humid, for the first two nights I had
to sleep outside on the roof of the building, where it was much cooler at night.
That first night as I laid on my little mattress, which I had taken off my bunk,
looking up at the night sky, I speculated about the next month I would have
here, working with refugees in Naples, and how long I could handle this heat.
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(Left)View our rooftop in Naples Italy,
overlooking Mt. Vesuvius
(Right) my bed the first couple nights in Naples .
We have since been furnished with fans
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