Talking about who is who

For three days I have been home again. Home in my tiny village in northern Italy. It's an average village, with few schools, few churches, and few bars. It hasn't changed much over the last 26 years, except that some of the old houses have been removed, and some new houses have joined in, and some few acres with apple trees and vineyards have been sacrificed for even more houses. Yet, every time I come home from Africa and nowadays Asia I feel a bit more like a stranger to this place.

Though the place still looks the same (with the minor changes mentioned above), and though I can still walk with my eyes closed through the forests around my village, something has changed. It's these totally irrelevant encounters like the one today in the bus that make me realize that though I simply love the abundant beauty of the place where I grew up, I am not connecting to it anymore the way I probably did years ago when I was still permament resident here.

Today I was sitting in the bus, and few rows in front of me were few elderly women. Immediately after arranging themselves on the not very cosy seats of the bus, they started the "who-is-who" chat. For one hour they continued exchanging news about who has married whom, who has died, who has gotten a baby, who is ill, who is happy in life, who has a new pet, who is in love with whom, who is related to whom, which female-who is not very happy with her youngster-who, and which female-who is very blessed with her youngster-who, and so on. Since the variety of surnames is not very big, the same names kept on popping up: Trettl, Meraner, Wohlgemut and few others. They sounded familiar to me, but despite all these names and seemingly important news being mentioned just few seats in front of me, I wasn't able to match faces to any of the names. Slowly I started wondering if that means that I am not any longer socially "fit" enough to survive in the village I grew up in? I also wondered if my name pops up, too, in the neverending who-is-who chats? After all, there are not many whos in my region who live in Afghanistan and previosly in Somaliland ;)

Anyhow, the who-is-who is after all not very important. Just wanted to share few lines on it, since thoughts about the conversation by these ladies in front of me in the bus kept on coming back while I was walking through the forest once again with my dog this afternoon. Last but not least, I have to say, that even though I don't know many who's in my place any more, I met enough precious people around the globe, who, even though I might not know what they are doing nowadays, if they are married or not, if they have kids, if they are healthy or not, still live on in my memories :)