Sicily & France Travel: cultures of clean

Over the week since we've arrived here in St. Bertrand de Comminges I have been considering the cultural differences between this part of the world and the parts of Sicily we've seen. Perhaps because of the distressing level of filth in our house here, I've thought a lot about what is clean and what is dirty. One of my favourite books about the phenomena is Purity and Danger by Mary Douglas. Look it up if you are interested in thinking hard about why something is dirty to you and not to your husband (for example).

Anyway, the reason I mention this is because here in the Pyrenees we have found that public spaces are very clean compared to Sicily. People care about their lovely villages, streets are swept, squares are kept clean, plants are planted and watered and people come out and enjoy them. There's even a special receptacle  for dog poo by the garbage shed- not often used, but still. There is a garbage shed! Bags of garbage aren't left to be torn open by feral cats and dogs as in Sicily. Private spaces I cannot comment on here in the French Pyrenees, because we haven't really seen any. We've seen people's back gardens and their front stoop, with the occasional glimpse of their TV in the front room, but that's not really enough to say whether their private spaces are cleaned to the same obsessive level as in Sicily. We hope not to measure their attitudes to cleanliness by the home we've rented.

By contrast, even a Sicilian's country home is stripped down to the walls and cleaned, or even re-plastered regularly. The surrounds of most Sicilian homes are tile or stone pavers, which also get the cleaning treatment at least weekly, if not daily. I've observed to Christopher that the 'low maintenance' yards of Sicily are actually maintained by women who sweep, scrub, bleach and maintain them. Men maintain the gardens, women the homes - a very distinct gendered division of labour.

Which leads me to comment on what is a private space and what is a public space. Sicilians are very certain about what is their private space - they fence, gate and defend it (with attack dogs if considered necessary). Anything 'outside the walls' is public to Sicilians, beaches, forests, town square and so no one cleans it, it is someone else's problem. In fact, Sicilians seem to move 'dirt' from their private space into the public space and then just leave it there.

Today our 'femme de menage' finally arrived, after a week of seeking her out. Zor lives across the square from us and we are very happy to have her here. There were many exclamations of 'oh la la'!