Maria Luisa, star of the of the opening of one of my stories for BNA, Dark Heart of a Beautiful City, has just written to me to say Hi. I haven't heard for ages from the patient, beautiful Sicilian girl who shared my taste in theatre and Classical music, who put up with my incomprehension at the time with Sicilians in general, especially as my Palermitan girlfriend and I were going though, as they say, a rocky time in our relationship, which would lead to its demise. ML provided a welcome and friendly arm to put my head on, a few evenings in the outstanding Vini D'Oro winebar in Palermo, and some walks down Mondello beach. She tried my non-Italian cooking, (unlike Laura, who refused to try anything like that), fielded my questions about the Mafia, and introduced me to her intellectual friends. We had some great soirees. Such kindness and her e mail has reminded me of all sorts of things I want to say about Sicily in both my novel and maybe in a travel story or two for BNA, if they continue to accept my stuff.

Friendship with locals has always been very important to me, because the most important thing about any country, in my opinion, is the people. It is quite easy in the TEFL world to make friends with locals, but it is equally easy to get sucked into a sort of TEFL bubble, where you just hang out with other (foreign) teachers all the time, get drunk with them, go to parties with them, and so on. Of course, there's room for that too, as a school needs a good staffroom atmosphere and it's very nice when all the teachers get on; but when your entire social life is centred around that, you are in danger of losing the original purpose of coming to the country in the first place.
I suppose the same thing applies to non-teaching travellers, the pack-around- the- back mentality that many interesting and forthright commentators on BNA have pointed out already. Curiously, I saw something of this when visiting Gdansk, here in Poland. I stayed in a hostel with some of my teaching friends, and though the atmosphere of camarederie that exists among fellow travellers was evident, it was also clear from the conversations we had with others that the one thing that was missing from this kaleidoscope of nationalities was an authentic Pole. Of course, it is much easier to make friends amongst fellow travellers than it is with locals in many places, you need a litle chutzpah to talk to strangers, and often gimmicks (like a backgammon board which I have not been armed with in recent excursions). Sometimes just the fact that you speak English is enough to engage strangers in a conversation, but again, that depends on where you are, and whether the strangers can speak English and want to practise it. Better to try and speak their language first.
Perhaps surprisingly for such an outwardly friendly people, among the most difficult people to get to know in that kind of situation are Sicilians. Various people on BNA have complained how difficult it is to make even a slight acquaintance with Sicilians if you can't speak at the very least Italian, let alone Sicilian dialect; but then, my advice is learn a few phrases of the lingo (Italian, that is; don't even attempt Sicilian dialect, unless they offer to teach you a few words!). You'd be amazed how many doors that can open. And in Sicily, don't mention the Mafia unless the local brings it up in conversation.
Sicily is, thankfully, not such a desperate, or smug place that people have forgotten how to be kind; but Palermo especially is a difficult place to get to know people, which is why people like ML, apart from being excellent, warm company, were such a godsend.