Lean on me -- another cold evening at the Baobab refugee center

Hello. Wilson.
Rome was chilly last night. It only snows lightly here in the winter, but it still gets cold, and several UW students returned to the Baobab refugee center to cook dinner for the 66 residents who remain there following the police raids last week.

Before I go any farther, I should say that there's a lot to see here, so feel free to jump over the text and photos and go straight to the video at the end of this dispatch. It's short and a little choppy, but I think you'll like it. It's a message that may resonate with the members of Team Wilson -- you readers and donors. 

Having said that, here's the latest:

The day began with me and Ann Anagnost dragging our roller airline carry-on luggage to the Mercato di Campagna Amica to purchase provisions for the minestrone soup which would be part of the meal. This is kind of a miracle market. It opened a few years ago in an old Jewish fish market, and has contributed to a renaissance for local farmers.

A thriving straight-from-the-farm market in Rome.

Romans are beginning to flock there for straight-from-the-farm produce, meats, wines, olive oil and other locally-produced products. This has not only kept some farmers in business --it also has spawned a renewed interest in young people about becoming farmers.

For myself, it was a chance to push my way through the throng to purchase two-year-old pecorino cheese for 22 euros per kilo, about $10 a pound, which is competitive with six-month old Spanish Manchego at Costco. And I bought it from the producer--who cut up the wheel and shrink-wrapped the pieces. There was also fresh bottled olive oil, shown in the photo below with the cheese. This is nothing you keep around the house, and you don't cook with it. You drizzle it on your salad and see what olive oil tastes like when it's fresh.

Two-year aged pecorino cheese shrink-wrapped for travel and fresh olive oil samplers.

The reason this sampling olive oil is green is because it is very young. It does not sit in a warehouse. It comes straight from the farm.

This farmer is cutting meat from the hogs he personally raised. He knows what they ate, how they lived, and how they were butchered.

Those Pink Lady apples may have been created by an Australian, but they were grown in Italy, by the man leaning on the counter, who wears sterile gloves to hand them to the customers, who cannot handle the fruit themselves.

 That afternoon, I packed 10 One World Futbols into an REI duffel bag and the group of us headed toward the bus. We knew something was up, because a helicopter was hovering overhead. Vice President Biden had already left town, so it wasn't until the next day that we learned that a man had evaded security and scaled the Coliseum to protest the banning of the actors dressed as Praetorian guards who stood with tourists for photographs. These new security measures were throwing working men such as himself out of work, he shouted, as emergency crews stood below with a inflatable cushion in case he jumped.

Tightened security was having impacts on refugees as well, and on us. When we arrived at Baobab, a number of young men were kicking soccer balls around, including a few balls we had left behind on a couple previous visits. They were very good, and I shot a video of their antics. But we decided not to publish the video, because Ann raised the question of safety for refugees. With facial recognition software and sophisticated search engines, were these people safe even at the refugee center?

You can't just simply ask the refugees if it's OK with them. Last night we learned that North Africans who had time to flee last week's police raids stayed at the center because they felt there was no danger to them. We learned that nothing had been heard since of the two dozen who were carted away; the fear is that they were returned to their home countries--the very place they were fleeing.

With that in mind, in the photo below, I blacked out the face of one man who was engaged with another in bouncing a  ball back and forth from their foreheads with impressive control. Then I flattened the image so that it blacked out layer couldn't be removed through some digital wizardry. And then, for good measure, I converted it to a black and white image. This may be the new reality for people who believe they have sanctuary--and for those who wish to help them.

Refugees demonstrate their soccer proficiency by volleying back and forth with head shots.

Baobab practices its own security. Refugees are escorted into the clothing pantry to make sure it stays organized, and the balls got deposited in a separate room, where they can be doled out as needed So far, 22 balls have reached Baobab and one was left with the Joel Nafuma Refugee Center to prime the pump for future distribution. Gradually I'm learning about other possible outlets.

Bored as refugees, but safe, several One World Futbols sit around, awaiting their destination, in a storage room at Baobab.

 In Baobab's kitchen, the UW students prepared dinner. The menu included a minestrone soup and a pasta dish with tuna. The ingredients were carefully selected to meet the dietary needs of Muslims, something we hadn't been fully cognizant of the first time we cooked for them -- this is a learning process for everyone.

When your pasta with a tuna puttanesca sauce fills a pot this big, it takes two hands for Courtney to stir it.

Now, normally you think of a kitchen as a place where there's a lot of heat, right? Not this place. Check out the photo below. People are wearing coats. The kitchen was not as cold as the alley, but it was chilly, even with the boiling kettles of soup.

Baobab's kitchen was chilly, and the help wore wraps to stay warm.

Huge bubbling kettles of minestrone soup, gastronomically correct for any Muslims at the center, simmer.

There's more to Baobab than the kitchen -- a lot more. The place is somewhat cavernous. With my GoPro running, I took a walk and this is some of what I saw:

...some sort of entertainment center, which is dark most of the time. There a stage there and some sort of sound system.

Turn a couple corners and you find a long hallway that reveals the large size of the center.

Shorter side hallways lead to bedrooms.

Bedrooms are austere, and cold. But they offer shelter.

 While the food was being cooked, cars were driving up to Baobab's door, and people were coming in with clothing to donate. The voluntary nature of this center made it difficult to figure out who to direct these folks to, until the appearance of a diminutive sprite from New York City, who was flattered when, observing her energy level, I said she reminded me of Puck, a figure in Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream. It was a wonderful relief to meet Nujrit Yael,   who is multilingual, has lived in Italy several years, and knew her way around Baobab. Nurit kept appearing, disappearing and then reappearing right when it was handy. That's her in the photo below, with glasses, in front of  Meraf and Michelle, two of the UW students.

Nurit Yael, a New York native who has lived in Italy for several years, was a big help last night for her multi-lingual abilities and her knowledge of Baobab procedures. It's my hope that she will become another link for setting up distribution points in Rome that get One World Futbols to refugees.

Time to serve the food up. Many of the refugees ate at the tables on the left, below:

By the time the refugees were fed, we were dragging tail, and except for a few scraps we hadn't had dinner, so we headed back to our apartments. Afterward I slipped out for my Gelato fix, and who should greet me but an old friend, lounging like a lady of the night on the folding door of a shop closed for the night. The Italians obviously understand  how to cater to American appetites:

Love,
Robert

And now for a little entertainment:

Turn up the sound! I told you to expect a video. While the students cooked dinner for the refugees someone played a familiar tune with her iPhone. You're welcome to click on the photo below and sing along.

Caesar's cathouse, and other roadside attractions

Dear Wilson,
Stuck up there on top of Mount Adams, you get almost get a view of all creation, but there are some parts of the world you can't see from there, such as Rome. In all our travels together, we never got to Rome, so I thought I would send some grab shots I've taken which you and the readers might enjoy seeing.

Some of the following photos speak for themselves, but most will be explained via captions. They start with photos I shot Nov.16, the day after I arrived, up to Thanksgiving. By the way, I'm writing this while drinking a fine white wine that I can't explain because the label is in Italian, while eating a bread with pistachios baked by a University of Washington student and chasing some Thanksgiving leftovers with home-made pistachio ice cream with a chocolate icing, also made by UW students. Now this is the way to see Rome!

The 'hood.' The University of Washington Rome Center's entrance is on the right, close to those plants. Nothing ostentatious about the setting. It's ordinary. This is how much of the city looks.

BIDEN WAS HERE: Incredible as it seems, the Vice President apparently walked through this square, the Campo de' Fiori, in a whirlwind visit to Rome on Thanksgiving, enroute to Croatia. This story is someplace between Rumor and Fact. I'm leaning toward fact. This is less than 200 feet from the front door of the UW Rome Center.

Slurp! This is a drinking fountain in the market. To make it work, you plug the drain with a finger and water squirts out that tiny hole you see halfway up the neck. These things are all over Rome. The story is that a politician got voted out of office for trying to put a price on water. All stories are true, right?

The Palatine Hill -- this is the 'hood' of the Caesars. This was shot from a government facility which hosted the annual "McGovern Lecture," on world food issues, named for the U.S. Senator (and Presidential candidate) who founded the World Food Program, which distributes food in times of crisis.

Castel Sant' Angelo at night.

Rome's blue November sky frames a dome seen from a window at the UW Rome Center.

Ruins of Ostia

Ostia was a port that fed Rome's revenous appetite for imports. Over time it was abandoned, and the Tiber eventually covered it with silt. It is now a marvelous park that shows how the city was organized; the park includes a necropolis.

On the outskirts of Ostia, I plugged the tip of the fountain so that water squirted up into my mouth -- and into my beret, onto my glasses and all over my face.

A wall and bench in the necropolis. The stones in the wall are similar to cobblestones in Rome's streets.

The way this is organized suggests a family grouping in the necropolis.

Note the structure of the arches. Were they filled in afterwards to keep the arch stones from slipping out of place?

The ruins suggest that parts of Ostia were very densely developed.

A room with a view--if you can find it. We stumbled across this scene of Amore and Psiche quite by accident while making our way around walls and down corridors. Try as these two might to be discrete, this was a case of kiss and tell. They kissed; and now we've told.

Is this our fate, too? --To be gradually devoured by snails no larger than the nail of your pinkie finger, just as these two molusks are licking down an ancient column in Ostia?

Meanwhile, back in Rome, the locals gather in a square leading to a church, bundled against the chill November day.

Just outside the church door, a toddler tries in vain to capture the attention of her older sibling.

 Inside the church, candles burn in memory of a young woman who died in Paris.

And before the French Embassy, there are many, many flowers...

...and many candles, as well.

There were opportunities for glorious vistas, like this one from the Capitoline Hill.

And there were more touching views like this one at street level, made all the more poignant by the suspicion that the dogs were docile because they had been drugged to lay still.

At the Trevi fountain, I kept a promise and toss in some coins for friends who asked. The gray smudge in front of the arrow at the top center is one of them. (I was able to capture the image by taking a screen shot from a cell phone video.)

On a major street, a florist tries a novel way to capture the eyes of customers who might purchase cyclamen, a popular flower in Rome.

We pass the Protestant cemetery, where the poet, Keats, is buried in an unmarked grave.

And we make our way to what might be called "amphora hill." Olive oil was shipped to Rome from Spain. The amphorae containing the oil were methodically broken and the pieces stacked, accumulating this enormous pile. More recently, buildings have sprung up, some attached to tunnels into the hill. These buildings are host to a thriving night life of song and dance. By comparing them to the size of the  hills behind, we can appreciate how much the Romans loved their olive oil.

Back at Campo de' Fiori, a delivery truck awaits at the green market. The austere appearance is not uncommon in Rome.

Dominating Campo de' Fiori is this imposing statue of Giordano Bruno, "an Italian Dominican friar, philosopher, mathematician, poet, and astrologer whose cosmological theories included the concept that stars were just distant suns, like our own. That didn't go down well with the inquisition, and he was burned at the stake in Campo de' Fiori. Afterwards people kind of got to liking him, so they erected this statue to him, and for the next few thousand years or so he will experience the honor of having seagulls shit on his head.

I'm under the impression that this automobile was designed specifically for individuals who cannot stomach back seat drivers.

I kind of like this as a moody photo of an alley in Rome at dusk. Note the archway in the distance, joining the two buildings. Clearly, space is at a premium in the Eternal City.

She must have a Sysyphus complex. The woman is sweeping off a bench that no-one in their right mind would sit on. Those white specs are not a fashion statement, unless you are a starling.

CAESAR'S CATHOUSE. This is believed to be the notorious site of Caesar's assassination. I call it "Caesar's Cathouse," because the Romans love cats, and this has become a cat sanctuary. Although they don't show in this photo (the residents declined to sign waivers) they are all over the spot. Readers may recall that Wilson, I and several of his relatives scheduled the Madison Street Marathon earlier this year for the Ides of March in honor of Caeser. if the great man had used an indestructible One World Futbol for his body double on that fateful day in 44 BC, no-one would have been hurt and the future of Western Civilization would have been radically different. For example, one of Shakespear's most famous speeches wouldn't have been written, and Liz Taylor would have gotten stuck playing the role of Nefertiti.

THE PROJECTS. For some reason, everyone wants to see this place. I don't know why. Bad things happened here. There were a lot of stabbings. And there were cats so big they could rip up the visitors. The reason it's called an "arena" is because that was the Latin word for sand, which was used to soak up the blood. And up in the upper levels were the people who laughed while others were being butchered. Not a nice neighborhood.

Thanksgiving

Getting overlooked by the Vice President didn't dampen the spirits of the UW anthropology students attending Ann Anagnost's class on the Culture and Politics of Food. Thanksgiving was one of the highlights of the wind-down of their class in Rome, and it was a chance to celebrate. Sorry, they were having too much fun for me to photograph all the action, but here a few shots that tell a bit of the story.

Young as it was, this student-crafted cheese had character. Put it away for a year and it will be superb. It was one of the skills the students were shown during their course.

Nicole, whose family raises grass-fed beef on a farm in the Skagit valley, brought bread to the feast, including one loaf full of tasty pistachios.

In the right corner of this decorative setting is a reminder to students of the instruction they received from Dafne, who invited them to her Italian kitchen to learn the art of creating pasta, cheese and soap.

And this is Dafne, bestowing on Professor Ann Anagnost a marble necklace as a reminder of a memorable quarter for students who had gained an understanding of the politics of food -- what goes into it (or shouldn't), the implications of producing it locally or internationally, and how food is used in power politics. Part of the experience included cooking for refugees who were fleeing war and famine. Most of the students were in their 20s and some had never traveled before. For them, Rome will be an unforgettable milestone.

Well, I trust that these are enough photos to digest in one sitting. Hope you have enjoyed it. I have just one more to add to close this dispatch. It's from the theater in the heart of Ostia. Break a leg!

Love,
Robert