Final Reflection: Siamo Uno "We are One"
In mankind’s experience, there are many times where things are categorized into different groups. You have your formal wear, your casual clothes, gym clothes, and pajamas. There’s Romanesque architecture, Gothic style, and Baroque style. People are doctors, teachers, engineers, accountants, and more. Often times categorizing people in this way forces us as humans to try and determine into which category we fall. It seems like a trivial high school cafeteria setting. Am I a brain? An athlete? A basket case? A princess? A criminal? (Breakfast Club reference, in case you didn’t get it). Often times, people become traumatized trying to determine where they belong or if they can be accepted by those around them. Yet, unlike dirty laundry which I learned the hard way, mankind can’t be separated into these categories. But, unfortunately people place others into groups all the time! And it can lead to some serious issues. At the end of the day, humans can separate from the other animals in countless ways, but if we can’t learn to treat our fellow humans in a humane way, then we are just like all of the other animals on Planet Earth. I have experienced both sides of the spectrum on this trip. I intend to show the moments in which I have witnessed inhumanity, the glory of our species, and how categorizing others into tiny groups detracts from the one group to which we all belong: humanity.
The first experience that I had in the inhumane treatment of other people was actually a collection of various experiences that angered, frustrated, annoyed, and worried me. It is something that I had never in my life experienced, but what I was always told to keep an eye out for on this trip: pickpockets. It is something I wasn’t able to comprehend. I always thought that if my wallet were in my pocket, I would be able to feel somebody trying to take it out of my pocket. The only people who get pick pocketed are just careless or leave their bags out in the open. The first exposure where we encountered this kind of situation was on the subway in Rome. During their “rush hour” in the late afternoon and early evening, the subway is bursting with people. Attempting to get on and off is an absolute nightmare during this time. You are pushed up against the people next to you and you bump into them over and over. You have a hard time noticing your surroundings and that is when the pickpockets make their move. Our professor had his wallet taken from him without his knowledge until he saw it on the ground with all of the cash missing from it. Luckily, he still had his credit cards, passport, ID’s, etc. Something similar happened in the Eiffel Tour in Paris. We were in a gift shop near the top of the Eiffel tower, and slowly but surely it became loaded with people in order to get from one shelf to the next I had to push through at least three other people. All of a sudden we heard a women crying hysterically as she began to shout in English, “OH MY GOD! My wallet is gone. Somebody stole my wallet! It was right here in my purse and now I can’t find it.” Minutes later we heard a recorded message over the loudspeakers stating “Pickpockets are active in the tower. Please watch your belongings.” Somebody took a twelve dollar ride to the top of the Eiffel Tower just to steal another person’s belongings. It was sickening to me. I never understood what could possess a person to do something like that. Why don’t they go out and find their own job, earn money like the rest of us, and not ruin somebody else’s day, week, trip, etc. But when it happened to young students on this trip it made me fear what people are capable of.
There were two instances of which I am aware where a student had belongings taken from her purse as she was holding it on her person. The first instance I was right next to person it happened to. After having returned from Naples, ironically the worst city in Italy for pickpockets and crime, we boarded the bus that would take us from the train station to San Marco square where we would then board a bus to return to the villa where we were staying. This bus quickly became crowded with people to the point where I couldn’t move whatsoever on the bus. To top it all off, we had returned from a week-long spring break trip, so we had much more luggage on our person than usual. So we needed to keep an eye on our backpacks, pockets, purses, and suitcases. Kaitlin, my girlfriend, took caution in boarding this crowded bus. She gripped her purse against her body so that nobody could reach into it. Unfortunately, this effort was not enough. In the process at getting off our second stop so we could board our final bus to get home she realized her purse was zipped open and her wallet was missing from it. She was absolutely devastated, and rightly so. Her credit cards, cash, and passport were taken from literally right under her nose. She took the necessary precautions to make sure her stuff wasn’t taken, but it only took a few seconds of a cramped train for the pickpocket to take her wallet from her bag. Luckily, she was able to get a hold of her bank so that her credit cards could be cancelled, and she was able to get a new passport to be able to get back to the United States. But this infuriated me. How could any person be so selfish that he would steal 70 dollars, credit cards, and a passport from such a sweet innocent girl? Does he have no heart? Does he know how mean that is or how badly he made Kaitlin feel as a result? Apparently that money was the only thing that mattered to him. And other one of our friends, Kathleen, had her purse stolen from her as she was walking along the streets of Florence when a man came by and cut the strings of her purse with a knife, caught the bag, and ran off into the night. It frightens me to think what mankind is proficient at doing. What if he would have used that knife to take Kathleen and her friend Rachel and not just her purse? Kathleen’s belongings are replaceable, but she isn’t. How can mankind be so horrible? I’ll answer these questions later.
The other frightening thing about people is being able to understand the potential for evil that can be committed by human beings to other human beings. This life changing experience happened to me during my trip to Poland in early March. From the city center of Krakow we embarked on a one hour long bus ride to Auschwitz-Brikenau concentration camps. In school growing up, we always learned about the Holocaust in Nazi Germany during World War II. We heard about the ghettos, the people going into hiding, the violence, the barracks, the gas chambers, and the mass death that occurred. We’ve seen pictures, read stories, and some have even been lucky enough to hear the testimonials of some people who survived the Holocaust. However, I never felt the anguish of Jewish people during World War II hit as closely to home as it did when I went to the concentration camp. I saw firsthand the gas chambers, the barracks, the Nazi’s quarters, everything. It was terrifying to realize a group of human beings did that to another group of human beings while the rest of mankind stood by idly and let these events occur. This hatred that the Nazi party, and a lot of German citizens, thrust upon Jewish people at the time was awful. The Nazis separated the Jews into a separate group, but instead of labeling them “Jewish” they labeled them with terms like “parasites” “problems” or “up for extermination”. These kinds of labels caused the Holocaust, but also caused things like the genocide in Rwanda, slavery in the United States, and even bullying in schools across the country. But how can these kinds of things cease?
Well, my European experiences were in more cases pleasant than they were unpleasant. As much as I was frustrated by street vendors trying to force me to buy their products, the crazy drivers almost running us over in the streets, and pickpockets, I did find solace in the myriad of friendly Italians and Europeans we encountered along the way. My favorite example was when we were in Capri. It is one of the most beautiful places in the world. That being the case, it was a huge tourist trap. Now, having been to various European places that were quite seriously tourist traps, we had become accustomed to the selfish nature of the citizens in tourist traps. The man who helped us with the metro in Milan begged for money afterwards, the bathroom attendants demand tips, and there are people who hand out roses to girls and insist that the men pay for them. So naturally, when a man came up to us and offered to help us we were a bit skeptical. After he sensed our hesitation, he insisted and said that Capricians were nice people. We were quite lost, and he seemed nice so we let him help us. Afterwards, he did not ask for money or tell us to pay him. He led us in the correct direction for free. He genuinely wanted to help us. It was such an excellent thing to be treated as human beings, and not walking wallets. He wasn’t the only one that was helpful. Krakow, London, Sorrento, Capri, and even a few Paris people, were extraordinarily kind, helpful, and interesting. They wanted us to enjoy their beautiful cities, and were extremely kind to us even though we didn’t speak their language (well except for in England, we were pretty good at their language). A lot of the Europeans were super kind to us which really furthered our education and growth in culture as we travelled abroad.
The most obvious people who helped us and were friendly to us were the staff here at Villa Morghen, our Italian teachers, and our RD, Pietro. They were very helpful and kind to us even though our attempts at speaking their language were by and large useless until halfway through the semester (they typically just helped us when we spoke English). Their friendliness and willingness to talk to us opened my eyes to a completely new culture. Being able to hear about the lives of our teachers, Angelo and Daniel, really allowed us to see the world from a completely different point of view. Their kindness, and ultimately their friendship, really allowed us to grow as individuals. Angelo told us a lot about the differences between North Italy and South Italy and that although a lot of tradition dictates there is a feud, he doesn’t feel like there is any reason to dislike Northerners, they are just Italians, moreover, just people. And that little rant he made sort of clarified my opinions about the entirety of my experience.
The people who glared as we spoke English on the French subway, who ruin other people’s days by stealing their money, turned away when we tried to ask for help in Italian, or flipped us off in the plazas in Florence, weren’t treating us like humans. They instead had categories in the file cabinet of their minds. They placed us in either the “Stupid American” or “Unwanted Tourist” categories. However, the ones that helped us placed us in the only category that matters “Human Being”. With light of recent events occurring in North Korea with the United States, or the Nazis during the Holocaust about Jewish people, or South Italians’ opinions of the Northerners, or the bullies at St. Pius Elementary in Omaha who picked on the kid at school with an abnormally large head and a weird Polish last name, a lot of people need the global experience that just because a group of individuals has differences, they have many similarities, the most important of which being they are all human. The most important thing I learned on this trip is to remember that, and apply it in everyday life with everyday people. The awkward, shy, kid who likes to talk like Batman is just as much a part of humanity as the football player who likes rap music or the theology major who goes to church every single day, none of them are superior to the other, they are just all people. The sooner the world realizes that, the sooner most of its problems will go away.
