We are so used to casually glancing at people’s lives via social media that we don’t often take the time to look anymore. We rarely track back to see what our lives were like in 2008 on Facebook, let alone consider what our families were doing nine centuries ago or what life was like for our grandparents. However this is the mission of the Catania based dynamic duo, Orietta Piazza and Loredana Grasso and they even have physical books, bound and fastened together to prove it.
Sicily Memory Roamers officially began in 2001 and from the very beginning it was a cultural association like no other, working as a tour operator and genealogy business all in one. Though they answer the same questions that have been asked for millennia, who am I and where do I come from, Orietta and Loredana do far more than just providing information, dates, names, places and statistics; they link up Americans with their long-lost Sicilian relatives and organize once in a lifetime family reunions with unique, personalised tours.
They are different from online genealogy websites because most of their work is offline. They go off the beaten track into the streets of small villages, rural towns and urban cities. Their information lies behind the doors of neighbours and relations who want to tell more, in the voices of the elderly who have stories that so many of us no longer have the patience to sit through and deep into the hearts of Sicilian communities. Each case is considered individually and it takes months to process because of the care that is put into the end results.
They do not just draw their information from the archives – but from the people. When asked where their office was based, Orianna passionately insisted that their office was not in a physical location, but rather with the people: ‘Il vero ufficio è negli archivi ma sopratutto per la strada con le persone’. She went on to say, “The most important thing, apart from the archives, is to talk to people…to go personally and directly to the small towns and speak to people.”
One of the most beautiful things that Loredana and Orietta provide is a Memory Book. Unlike the endless digital archive that is Facebook, it is “sempre personalizzato, sempre diverso.” Hand made, hand crafted and bound in leather, it contains all of the information that they have meticulously and lovingly compiled. It contains information, gleaned from the official archives, but also “la storia vera e propria” – personal anecdotes, told in Sicilian dialect and then translated about the family that has been found. It also includes a section on the name of the family and its significance, its origin and the various nicknames or ‘ngiuria the family were known to have.
The duo often find themselves carefully leafing through ancient church records, because town archives only go as far back as 1820. These are often “libroni ammuffiti, scritti in latino, scritti a mano, non in ordine alfabetico per cui bisogna andare foglio per foglio.” They are also arranged by first name rather than last name, so one must go page by page to find the name they are looking for. No mean feat when there are reams of Salvatore’s, Antonio’s and Giuseppe’s to sort through.
This is the way in which Orietta and Loredana operate – going page by page through a person’s ancestry until they find the treasure they are seeking; the furthest back they have gone is 1450. They do not give up, and look forward to the moment that makes all the work worthwhile: reuniting people. When asked what it’s like when the American and Sicilian families meet, Orietta answers: “It’s a very, very emotional moment…they become family immediately. It’s very emotional for us too. We find ourselves in that moment translating between languages and emotion. And all the while everyone is crying, everyone is looking at each other, everyone looks like each other. And they’re taking pictures. It’s beautiful. Seriously beautiful.”
Aside from the positive experience that Sicily Memory Roamers provide and the peace, reconciliation, unity and closure that their research delivers, they remind us of an important lesson. “La cosa più importante… è parlare con le persone” the importance of staying connected. We are all intrinsically wired to yearn for connectedness, hence why we are so eager to join up to social networks in the first place. However it’s the talking, the face to face, body next to body interaction that opens the gates to real truth and civilisation – this is the connection that leads us to internal resolution.
It’s only by talking to people that we can really find out who we are.
Sicily Memory Roamers official website: http://www.sicilygenealogytour.com
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