Diversity of the italian landscape

Trip Start Sep 01, 2006

Trip End Ongoing

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Flag of Italy Carbonia, Italy
Friday, August 10, 2007

I went to Sardegna for 10 days in August to 'help' with an ADRA community program in Carbonia which was a fairly low SES town. We slept on mattresses in the local football stadium rooms. A fairly dry and nearly ghost like town near I think some coal mines. I felt a bit useless not being able to communicate that well in Italian, but we visited and helped out patients in the local hospital. There didn't seem to be such a thing as PCA's or orderlies in the hospital and many family members help clean/wash the patients and bring food in. I was a bit shocked at the food/drinks available for those who had swallowing difficulties or gastric surgery...not quite the same dietetic intervention like back home and people would probably get sued for having water bottles near stroke victims and giving them water without thickener...while they aspirate! Most evenings we set up health stands in each village until nearly 2am, and people went from each station until the end, Raniero, one of the doctors I became friends with, then gave them advice or assessed their health

spaaaaccceee!!!

. It was good to listen to him giving medical advice in italian to try and learn the vocabulary and in the meantime I tried to give some dietetic advice too. Other groups, did activities with the local children or helped clean/tidy up the town.

Went to a few nice beaches around Carbonia...the water was sooo clear! Very very crowded beaches though as August is the month where every italian city is deserted except for the beaches!

Rani drove me up to the NE of Sardegna around the Maddalena archipaelego to Palau. Very dry island and reminded me alot of Rottnest back in Perth...with limestone like cliffs/beaches and clear clear water. Spring, from pictures that I saw, would be the most ideal time to go I think. Like Australia in summer...it can look very brown. I bought a tent and slept on a very thin piece of foam with no sleeping bag...but it was lovely to be tenting right on the beach/water and go to sleep with the smell of the seabreeze....

Rani and I visited the rich and famous area of Porto Cervo...even saw Naomi Campbell walking about in her bikini's and see through dress! :D So many millions of dollars of boats lined along the port with the marque tent along the port for the prima donna's to 'exercise' outside their boat door....off course while talking on their mobiles and not raising a sweat on their manicured face! :)

While I was in Sardegna I got a fairly stressful sms/email about how my 'permesso di sogiorno' was missing documents that I knew I couldn't obtain...so it was a bit of a stressful time not knowing if I had to fly back to oz before I was to start working in Roma within 2 weeks! After travelling to Roma and walking up to the secured building that was dealing with my application and demanding to see someone...I travelled back to Merano to find out that it had been a computer generated mistake and that my application was still in process! huge stress!

San Giovanni Suergiu hotels Slideshow

More Pictures

beach near Carbonia	part of the ADRA gang	health expo	health expo
making kids games	chaos	sunflower?	rich and famous
big russian party that night-disco ball&all!	porto cervo	prince rani!	view from my tent
maddalena	rottnest like?	HE got in the way of my pic ;)	achipaelego1
achipaelego2	achipaelego3	achipaelego3