LIFE ON RENAISSANCE BOULEVARD

Originally published April 23, 2009

The rocking horse is familiar – it’s identical to the one my 3 year old daughter loves playing on. She’s safe at home, but this rocking horse is outside a rain-swept tent in the Piazza d’Armi tent city in L’Aquila. Something about it makes me pause, think, chokes me up. It all feels too close to home.

Yet, whereas walking around the city centre of L’Aquila left me with a foreboding sense of death, loss and despair, the ‘tentopoli’, tent cities which have mushroomed all over the earthquake-affected region, served as a welcome reminder that life goes on, that the human spirit is indomitable and cannot be crushed. People’s initial feelings of hopelessness has changed to a growing sense of community and solidarity – strangers have become friends, neighbours who’d studiously avoided each other for years have now become best buddies. The inhabitants have slowly begun to resign themselves to their fate and realise they will not return to their homes for the foreseeable future.

Some 7000 tents have been mounted throughout the area, the vast majority by the Rapid Response Aid Centres and Logistics Directorate of the Home Office Public Rescue. Working out of the enormous logistics base purposely set up in Avezzano, a town some 50 kilometres away from L’Aquila, the directorate has shipped supplies to places much further afield than initially expected.

I joined one unit of the Home Office Rapid Response Aid Centres and Logistics Directorate on a long trip to the remote mountain village of Collepietro, a drive of some 80 kilometres. The picturesque village appeared quiet, all doors were closed, the few shops shuttered. The whole population had moved to the rapidly set-up tent complex on the far edge of the village. The residents are afraid to return to their homes, even though damage in the village was negligible. So they’re all housed in tents, and now they were getting a large tent that can be used for social gatherings, town meetings, as a dining hall, school, church and so on. It’s a scenario repeated throughout the Abruzzo region. People are nervous and scared, and in places such as Collepietro, they’ll stay under canvas until mobile homes are brought in by autumn, or till they tire of living in tents and decide to return to their houses as long as the buildings are safe.

Closer to the epicentre, things are different. Even once they tire of living under canvas, thousands have no home to return to. Buildings which remained standing after the earthquake are unstable – an as-yet unknown but large quantity of them will have to be demolished.

The ‘tentopoli’ have taken on an air of permanency. Well-equipped field kitchens provide a steady stream of hot meals, gravel paths with rubber matting have been laid down in order for it not to get muddy. Tents are numbered, it’s only a matter of time before street names start appearing. One man has hung a sign outside his tent reading “Boulevard de la renaissance o deju recominciu” which roughly translates as “Renaissance Boulevard… Or we have to start again”

A remarkable infrastructure is falling into place – apart from the tents which house six people in each, one finds veterinary services, mobile post offices, information centres, internet service, dental clinics, medical centres providing psychological support, refuse collection, and even a tent where one can get a massage. Doctors dressed as clowns roam the camps, providing essential psychological support and cheer to children and adults alike. The large social tents, which serve as dining halls, are packed for daily mass. People who in some cases hadn’t stepped into a church for years are now flooding back.

People queue in an orderly fashion for anything from clothes to soap and toothpaste, relying on a remarkable influx of charity.

There’s a growing sense of resurrection. In Onna, the small hamlet where not a single building remained standing and 40 of its 300 inhabitants were killed, the church of stones has fallen, but the church of people remains alive, albeit wounded. The church bells were retrieved by fire-fighters, and a hastily improvised new belfry, built with steel poles and wood, with those same bells, now dominates the camp outside the hamlet. Last Sunday, the church bells of Onna rang out once again.

Outside nearby Paganica, children released balloons with messages, their thoughts and feelings written on them. They watched them catch the airflows and climb higher and higher towards the towering mountains that surround the region.

Some 35,000 people are living in the tent cities – that number is set to grow, as around 20,000 people who were evacuated to hotels along the Adriatic coast will now have to make way for the thousands of tourists who will soon flood into the holiday resorts there.

It’s probably just the thing to put you off camping holidays for life.

This trip was made possible through the initiative of Koperattiva Kulturali Universitarja (KKU) and will be followed by a photographic exhibition which will take place during Evenings on Campus 2009.

Life on Renaissance Boulevard - Images by Darrin Zammit Lupi