The card playing men of Catania

Everywhere you go in Catania there are groups of retired men playing cards. In every park, in every quiet square you’ll find a rickety table and some old plastic chairs waiting for them.  They come here every day at the same time and stay for hours, chatting in the shade of the big olive trees.  It’s something I love about the Mediterranean culture so I couldn’t resist interrupting one of their games for a quick chat.  

There are groups like this in most cities in the world – they are the people who meet to play chess in the thermal baths in Budapest, the women who spend their evenings playing Bingo in the local barrios of Alicante, the old men playing mahjong in the parks in China.  But here in Catania this daily ritual means a bit more – you see it’s the only place some of the group get to really speak their local dialect.  The difference between a dialect and a language, and the stigma still attached to the former isn’t an argument I will get into here, but it’s fair to say that what I found these guys speaking isn’t the ‘proper’ Italian that their grandchildren or even children learned at school and speak at home.  Nor is it the one they hear in the supermarket, on the TV, or from the visiting tourists.  Some are widowed or have family that moved away for work, so they are running out of people who they feel comfortable speaking their dialect with.  But here, every day at 10am, under the shade of the big tree they chat and debate anything and everything in a voice, an identity they are most comfortable and relaxed in.  

The strong sense of community in general is something I’ve always admired about other cultures and one of the reasons (apart from the better weather) that I just don’t see myself growing old in the UK. Here in Italy though it’s especially prevalent among men – something I think we struggle with in the English speaking world.  We’re getting better but it’s taken a lot of effort from specilised initiatives or charities who’ve set up men’s groups. Here they seem to have found it in a much more organic way that is just part of their everyday life.  Something for us to learn from!