OH. MY GOD CAN WE PUHHHHLEEEEEZE PLAY MAFIA?!

(note: everyone should go check out my sister alena's blog [siseville.blogspot.com] because even though she often falsely claims that i am the true writer of the family she has consistantly proved herself wrong as you can see in her hilarious and actually super witty writing. here's your plug landers, love you!)

so, okay. i would like you for a moment to imagine a chorus of 27 middle-school girls, whining in a way only middle-school girls can, the title of this blog. because that is what my summer job consists of. mafia, if you aren't in the know camp counselor-style, is a game involving, yes, "killing" your cabinmates but also involving very little spoken word, making it the game of choice for timestretched, exhausted fivestar counselors such as myself. mafia was actually banned from camp for a while because of the fact that it doesnt teach the kids anything except how to hate on other kids, but because i am counselor of the year i often ignore this rule. and i also get a break. as miley would say, it is truly the best of both worlds.

but here i am talking about camp while i am gallavanting around a mediterreanean island. the point of this post is this: next summer (and, let's be real, probably the summer after that) when i hear those famous whines, i will always immediatly think of the door on my street that is riddled with bulletholes.

dun dun dunnnnn.

no, i'm kidding. i mean, there IS a door riddled with bulletholes, but i'm not that dramatic. the point is as follows: besides gaining from this experience a better sense of self, you know, a better sense of my life decisions, appreciation of this (actually crazy) culture, all the things you intrinsically get from throwing yourself abroad, etc., something i will definately take from this place is the intense, incredibly interesting fiasco that is the mafia.

lots of people, myself included, are under the impression that the mafia is an old-fashioned, antiquated fact of a bygone era. lots of people, myself included, are under the impression that the mafia is a ramshackle gang of rather disorganized young men (okay, you may think this is stupid, but i've never seen the godfather nor any other hollywood glamificatin of mafia, so this was my thinking).

the truth is, i am completely misguided. i know this sounds like a research paper, but this is just so goddamn interesting: the mafia is still a force to this day, and the reason it keeps existing is because it is so. fucking. organized. these people are geniuses. for example:

in palermo, on the northwest coast of Sicily (and where, i might add, we're fieldtrippin to in a few weeks), EIGHTY PERCENT of business still pay taxes to the mafia. EIGHTY PERCENT. that's crazy! in fact, these businesses do not simply pay under the table. each month they actually write it into their budgets. paying the mafia tax means protection against random car torching, house robbing, relative killing, etc. IN TWO THOUSAND TEN. i just can't get over that.

when i walk along the water i always cringe when i see a particular wall. three years ago this wall didn't exist, and there was straight access to the beautiful harbor. you could stand on the street and see out onto the water where all the yachts were anchored. there's a huge picture of this view in one of the theatres here, and it's gorgeous.

BUT now there is this huge, ugly, gargantuan wall covered in graffiti and topped with barbed wire. i hesitate to call it that because everything here is so fucking beautiful, but this is...not. the wall is the result of a political scandal involving the mafia, in which the city was essentially forced to erect the wall as a "yacht lot." that was three years ago. to this day the wall remains in its earliest building stages and, most importantly, yachtless.

sometimes the mafia is seemingly out in the open, like for 90 minutes every tuesday and thursday when we discuss it in class.

but other times it's so hush-hush; i feel like i can never mention it outside of school, and everytime i see those bullet holes i walk a little faster.