NewDayNews Recovery Forum

Sicily (more stuff)

Posted By: Jane <Send E-Mail>
Date: Saturday, 14 January 2006, at 1:28 p.m.

(It's raining here today and so a good day for writing.)

We were cramped at that campground and in our little trailer, even with the Landrover home-made camper. The single boys set up some puptents to sleep in and the rest of us just threw down our sleeping bags on whatever area was available. You would think that being in such tight quarters might have made us more discreet about sex, but alas, not so. It was much nicer being with a single guy in his little tent than in the trailer.

The summer was so awfully hot. Unbearably so. Even the flies thought so and they crowded into the trailer also to get away from the sun. We would have swatting times when we would just go crazy trying to kill the flies. The ceiling was literally covered with those black flies. We couldn't keep the door of the trailer closed because of the heat, and so the flies would flock in.

We washed all of our clothes by hand in a bucket outside the shower room. Scrub, scrub, scrub and then we would hang the wet clothes on the chain link fence to dry. In about 10 minutes the clothes would be as dry as a bone. I kid you not.

The Italian woman and her child were sent away first. I don't even remember them leaving just one day they weren't there anymore. Elkanah was thinning the ranks.

The next to go was Bithia. She was really pissed off because she was pregnant with Elkanahs child. He didn't care and was adamant that she needed to leave. I didn't know where she went. I didn't see her again until close to 17 or 18 years later when we were both out of the cult. She told me that she had stayed in contact with Elkanah through out her pregnancy and when she called him to tell him that the baby was born, he told her "That's your problem. Not mine." When the baby was 2 weeks old he caught whooping cough and was very ill. Bithia took him to a doctor and the doctor just bluntly told her that it was going to die and to go home. Well the baby didn't die but it truly was a miracle. Bithia tried to get Elkanah interested in his enfant son but he would have none of it.

Bithia had been very helpful to me and gave me lots of advice about having my baby. She told me about the breathing techniques and other stuff. We sat on a train together going somewhere and she taught me what to do. We practised the breathing, puff breaths, cleansing breaths and so on. I really was sorry to see her go. But did any of us stand up to Elkanah and say anything? No.

I remember the people coming back from litnessing in the mornings bringing some provisioned food with them. A whole lot of fresh sardines and fresh peas. We would sit around shelling the peas and eating them raw. They were so good and sweet. Then Rainbow the Indian guy would make curries at night out of the peas and sardines, and he would make hand made flat bread called chapatis.

Then Zohar showed up with his older daughter Bethie. She was only around 4 years old. I wondered what had happened to Zohars wife Naomi and his younger daughter Claire. Apparently she was now paired up with that strange skinny cartoonist guy and she was pregnant again. I think it was Zohars baby. I was happy to see Zohar but he acted like I was dirt. Talk about confused. I think now in retrospect he was probably grieving his wife. But I was hurt that he didn't want to be with me at all, especially after how close we had been up in France.

Then within a few days the information about Moses David being sick caught up to us. Elkanah told us about the world wide fast that was being held. It was a three day complete fast, with only water or juices to be drank. The exemptions were the children and the pregnant or nursing mothers. So for three days most of our camp just layed around in a stupor mourning their loss of food. I made an effort to not eat in front of them and didn't eat anything that needed to be cooked for those three days. Tamar was also very careful about not making a big deal out of the food when she made meals for herself and the children.
I know that we were supposed to be praying for Moses David to pull through but I don't remember very much of that. Maybe there was. I don't know.

After that was over and life had gone back to normal, I was walking around the enormous area of the camp ground. There weren't many trees or bushes, it was quite spartan, except for an outcropping of huge boulders off in one front corner. As I was walking on the path close by the snack area the owners german shepherd dog bounding out at me barking and growling. I have been around dogs all my life and know how to behave around them, but this dog just came straight up to me and bite my leg in several places. He then went back to his lair. I went crying to Meshach. He helped clean off my punctured and bleeding leg and then we went to tell the owner that his dog had bit me. The guy was a jerk. He denied that his dog would bite anyone and claimed that his dog was simply a puppy that wanted to play. We could see that there was no sympathy from him and just gave up. He never did keep the dog chained up or anything. We just learned to steer clear of whereever it might be.

On some of the local litnessing trips we would take the bus from the center of Palermo to one of the neighborhoods on the outskirts. Then we would go door to door. I was amazed at how many buildings were half built and then just deserted. Apparently an earthquake that had happened many years before had shut down the building project and it had never started up again. At the houses and apartment buildings that people lived in we did pretty good litnessing. Not necessarily financially but people would usually give something, like a bucket of olives that they had on the porch curing. We didn't starve in Sicily but we certainly didn't have much money either.

Elkanah would go out cafe singing with his little son Rex. Both of them with their guitars strapped on and singing away. Rex really was phenomenal. He was only about 5 and could play his guitar. Not like today when Family people just put on a tape and the kids dance around to it. Rex really performed. Elkanah made friends with one man who was an artist. The man and his wife spoke very good english, and were well traveled around the world. This couple would come visit our little trailer and they seemed to find our little group fascinating. The man expressed some concern about the education of the children and Rex told him that he could already read. The man didn't believe that such a little child would be able to read already but Rex dug out some stories and started reading aloud to the man. One time the couple invited our whole home to their little sea side town for dinner. We went to their apartment with the balcony overlooking the ocean. The wife barbecued fresh tuna steaks on a little grill on the balcony. Afterwards we all went to the center of town for ice cream. They served the ice cream in bowls with a delicious liquor poured over it. Most fantastic ice cream I had ever eaten up until then.

One time the man visited our trailer when his wife was out of town. Tamar was not there either. Just the men, the children and myself. We sat around in the trailer talking and the discussion came around to the Family and it's policies on sex. Elkanah just layed it all out on the table for the guy and he was amazed. Then Elkanah said that we would share any of our women with anyone who needed it and offered me to the man for the night. Did he ask me first? I just sat there like a lump and agreed to go sleep with this man. It wasn't all bad. I got to take a bath for the first time in months. And he fed me really well. I was already quite big pregnant. Elkanah told me later that he would have sent Tamar but since she wasn't there...it was me.

The boys Ezra and Earnest had gone out on a roadtrip and had been arrested litnessing. They were being deported from the country and only had a few hours to come get their stuff and then to hightail it out of Italy. We barely got to say goodbye to them. And now our little group had shrunk some more.

By now I had been on roadtrips all over Sicily. Many of the small towns and most of the big towns. Some towns by the sea but also some of the towns that were in more towards the middle of the island, hill towns. Sicily was a poor part of Italy but immensely proud of it's culture. On the litnessing roadtrips I got to experience a lot of the daily life things that happen in those remote towns. If you have ever watched The Godfather and seen the parts that take place in Sicily...it's a lot like that. When someone would die the town would paste up black bordered posters on the walls with the dead persons picture on it. There was always some writing but I didn't understand very much Italian yet. Then whenever some event was taking place there would be a procession through town led by the band. Very loud. The whole town would come out for these things and would march along behind the band. Sometimes if it was a funeral there would be a horse drawn hearse following the band, then the priest and the relatives crying their eyes out. Then everybody else walking behind them. These parades weren't all for funerals. Sometimes there were weddings or celebrations for some politician. They were loud and fun to watch.

At twilight in these towns the whole town would come out for 'passegiata'. Basically it was social hour. The families would come and walk with their neighbors. The kids would run around laughing and playing. The teens would be flirting with each other and generally causing havoc. I would look out from the balcony of my pensione room and watch the passing of the towns people below. I never joined them because by the end of the day I was exhausted. My ankles and feet were swelling up like balloons. While Meshach would go find us some food, I would lay on the bed with my legs stretched up the wall. I did this every night to try to get the swelling to go down.

In all this time in Sicily we never read newspapers, watched tv, read anything other than Mo letters or Bible and never saw a movie. We were isolated from the real world and also from the other Family members. The only one who had any contact with anyone was Elkanah and he kept in contact with Mother Eve.

Then one day Elkanah came to me and told me that he had to talk to me. He told me that he was going to have to go to Tunisia to try to save his first wife and his daughter. His first wife had FFed a Tunisian guy and had been living with him there as his wife. And now she was trapped there. The Tunisian guy had told everyone that the little girl was his child, though why anyone would believe that this pale blonde blueeyed child was this dark mans, I don't know. But his whole family just bought into the whole thing and Elkanahs first wife was now being held against her will. Also she had just had this mans real child, a son. So Elkanah told me that he needed to go get his wife and the daughter. According to the law in that country the children belong to the father, so he wasn't going to be able to bring the little baby. Elkanah was going to try to convince his first wife to forsake the baby so that they would have a chance to save herself and the older child. Then Elkanah said that he was going to take his first wife back to California to her parents. So this all led up to the fact that I was going to have to go. He didn't want to be responsible for me while all this was taking place. I didn't want to leave. Where was I going to go? Why couldn't I stay with Tamar? Elkanah said that he was going to have to find someone to take care of Tamar and Rex when he was gone too. In the meantime there was no talk of Zohar or Bethie leaving. Just me. And then Elkanah said that he was sending Meshach with me. I just wasn't happy with the whole thing. I went out to that outcropping of huge boulders, climbed up on them and cried for several hours. The next day I packed my belongings and prepared to leave with Meshach.