Malta as it once was: agricultural life writ large

Siggiewi’s now annual agricultural fare kicks off on tonight, Saturday 12 June, at dusk and runs till late morning on Sunday. It seems to get bigger (and better) each year, and far more marketing goes into the event – islanders in central Malta have no doubt caught a billboard or two roadside.

It’s a wonderful, easy-going mishmash of a livestock show, heritage event and farmers’ market – and an excuse for local folk to get some air on summer night and have somewhere to go. It’s a prelude to the villlage festa, just two weeks away. Siggiewi’s unusually large, sloping and picturesque village piazza is already decked out with festa regalia. It’s heart-warming that Malta is beginning to relish its rural past, and to see skills, crafts and genuine Maltese produce appreciated by young and old, and locals and visitors alike. There are several rural events now, including the Mgarr’s Strawberry Fair, and Dingli’s Sheep & Goat festival.

What to Expect
Based on last year’s event. you can expect some: Pageantry: we had a reenactment of the Grand Master handing over a falcon to Holy Roman Emperor Charles V as rental payment for the Maltese Islands.

Working machinery: Pride of place last year in the square was an ancient threshing machine that rattled and hummed into action, man atop loading straw, and was soon spewing out chaff all over the gathered crowd.

Artefacts of yesteryear: a small tent was set up last year housing old agricultural implements and canteen items that farmers would use in the fields to brew up coffee. In fact, you could see the brewing in action as nearby sat an old lady, in typical floral dress/apron, turning a coffee bean roaster over an open fire (see photo below). A stall next to her was serving the clove-flavoured coffee for free to an appreciative, and curious crowd.

Livestock: Falabella ponies, donkeys, prize sheep and goat breeds, some with their young, and a lama in pens which enthrall the kids. Sunday morning early is the ‘blessing’ of the animals and Sunday too saw some heavy horses on display.

Local Produce: both evening and morning saw stallholders selling some genuine local produce, including thyme honey, certified organic olive oil (impressively with an EU accreditation on it) and lots of peaches and tomatoes, which grow well in the Siggiewi area.

Roasting coffee beans, Maltese style

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And no one was holding the ladder!

I was in the garden around 6pm today, and I swung round startled. I heard voices so close I thought someone was behind me. The yells came from above though. It then dawned on me that it’s a month to my village’s annual Festa, and the yells were from the parish volunteers putting up the decorations. Not just any old decorations, but the grand illuminations and regalia that adorn the church – from atop the pinnacles of the belfries and dome to its interior which is bedecked with deep, bulls-blood red drapery.

Don't say I left the bulbs down below?

No one has yet in my living memory fallen off. It’s bound to happen. Just like each year the preparation of festa fireworks claims lives in Malta. Health & Safety law enforcement? EU laws? These don’t even come into play when festa preparations are under way. No one cares. Until their son falls to his death one day.

Tomorrow, I’ll get the zoom working better and snap them on the top of the dome. Even more unbelievable a sight.

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The chair for hair. Who's next for the chop?

Life happens at the hairdresser’s and barber’s shop. Or, more specifically, at a Maltese village unisex salon. ‘Unisex’ still exists here.

In town salons, you can easily waste two or three hours having a cut and colour and be buried in silence in the latest copy of Vogue. But at a village salon in Malta, you are in and out, all done, in a blink of an eye. It’s cheap, cheerful and quick, and, at least in my case, the outcome is just as passable as if I’d spent four times the amount of time and money in town.

Given the swift turnaround of clientele – who spend an average of five minutes per cut in my local salon – it is surprising how much chit-chat, gossiping and news relating gets done. Those half way through colours or perms vacate the chair to sit on the side. They happily chip in to the conversation between hairdresser and the new client who’s taken the hot seat. The hairdresser’s door is ajar, so passing friends pop their heads in and add to the chit-chat while perhaps making a booking for later in the week. Appropriately, a hairdresser in Sliema was called Village Gossip. The name is still there on the wall, although the spot has been a cafe, on and off, for ages.

What I find endearing about this cameo of village life is that it brings the generations together. Cool, just-post pubescent youths were guffawing along with cackling old women, sharing some story or other about local life. The entire salon of young and old was in gales of laughter once. Everyone has a verdict to pass on the last hairdo or cut out of the chair – making comforting noises to reassure the customer that the new look suits them. It’s not a place to be timid and it’s too small a space not to be noticed.

Villagers like multi-tasking, both hairdresser and clientele. You often see women with perm rollers in and plastic cap on their head walking home to put lunch in and then coming back to have their hairdo finished at the salon later. Hairdressers in villages may have a booking system but rarely is anyone turned away if they call in on the off chance. Somehow they’ll fit you in when you want.

A few years ago, a friend who was coming home at 5am from a night club said she saw women in her village streaming out of the church from the crack-of-dawn mass and going straight across the road to the hairdresser. The salon owner had spotted a great opportunity to catch trade.

The lesson to draw from this account is to try your village hairdresser or barber first. Save on parking, time, money and vanity. It will always grow out if it goes awry. But for Euro 5 and five minutes a cut, I think my local ‘Hair to Go’ is the bee’s knees!

Photo: Courtesy of Gege Gatt

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Weird cherub waiving from gilded horse-drawn hearse. The best send off a man can have.

15.15, April 19th, Siggiewi piazza, Malta, and the bells are tolling. Another day, another dime for me and another death being celebrated 100 metres away from my computer screen. Most days see me wake to bells for a funeral squeezed between the frequent morning masses. I return most afternoons to find no parking as mourners have filched the spaces. Death is so much part of our lives we scarcely notice the hearses decked in white carnations sidled up by the church .

We did yesterday though. I could hardly believe what I saw. Two pairs of fine black horses, plumed and polished; one pair pulling the ‘hearse’; the other a carriage that was shaped like those you find Cinderella in on her way to the ball – a kind of Rococco, gilded affair. The funeral directors stood around as they always do, hands in pockets, waiting for the off. My son expected them to be in coiffed wigs, with doublet and hose instead of regular suits.

We wrote about Malta’s love of celebrating death a few months back. A comment came in saying an enterprising funeral director was branching out into Sicilian-style horse-drawn hearses, but we’d never come across one until yesterday. It really was an amazing sight, rare still, but one I think might start catching on. The cabby told us the guy who died ‘loved horses’. A shame then he didn’t get to see it all!

Eerily beautiful in stark silhouette

Photos: Alex Grech

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Five men make light work of a heavy statue or three. Say cheese.

There are 359 churches over 316 sq km in Malta.  That’s 1.14 churches per sq km. I believe that puts Malta slap behind the Vatican in terms of church coverage .  Now consider that we have 1,309 inhabitants per sq km, that 98% of Maltese are baptised Roman Catholic and every village has some band club of sorts and the theocracy maths starts getting complicated.

I live in Siggiewi, right behind the lovely baroque dome of St Nicholas parish church. You cannot get more village hard core than this. If I crane my neck, from my wi-fi station in the garden, the dome soars above the TV aerials and the water tanks and the pigeon coops.

Maundy Thursday is migraine day.   During the day, the bell ringing in incessant, perhaps to encourage visits to the  Last Supper pageant.  In the evening, at exactly 20.23 hrs the bell-ringing is replaced by a loud, relentless rattle.  It’s difficult to describe, except that it’s a horrible, slow, throaty, tuneless sound that could be a large, megaphoned cheese-grater or some special effect from a Hammer Horror film.  It scares the living daylight out of anyone aged 7 or under and means I will not sleep well right up to Easter Sunday, when the bell-ringing will be even more energetic, and hopefully more tuneful.

The second phenomenon is that from Maundy Thursday all the way to the evening of Good Friday, people go on a carcade of seven churches.  If you’re a kid, it’s an interesting ritual if you’re not prone to car-sickness, as you get to visit churches off the beaten track and compare tapestries, statues and overall opulence of the parish your parents happen to hit on.  And if you crash a village at the right time, you can also join the traditional, occasionally gruesome Good Friday procession and meet a Roman centurion or your own personal Jesus.

Add to this fasting, special confectioneries and theories about the weather and you have a uniquely Maltese cocktail of folklore, religion and superstition rolled into one.

I wonder how many people on Good Friday are barricaded like me, in a village core besieged by the madding crowds clocking up the church count, to the backdrop of a grating rattle.  And to think that in just over a fortnight, the Pope visits Malta and Siggiewi becomes a pit stop in the whirlwind tour.

Photo: Andrew Galea Debono

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Everybody's watching someone at the masked Nadur carnival

Around 10 years ago, the Nadur carnival was a well-kept secret. A little gem of a carnival, its charm stemmed from the silence of masked crowds in the streets of the village. The game was about disguise: grotesque masks or badly-daubed make-up, wigs, costumes from sheets or sack cloth, makeshift, disorganised parades often accompanied by farm-stock and carts. In the general attempt to avoid being recognised, the carnival often became associated with the absurd and often the bizarre: cryptic placards, coded messages to friends and foes. A silent carnival, a veritable masked street ball.

Things change. As the event’s reputation grew online and by word of mouth, it became the carnival to go to for a new generation of Maltese, possibly bored with the traditional fare served in Valletta and attracted to the edginess of the Nadur festival. The new influx of visitors was also a shot in the arm for anyone in the Gozo tourism and hospitality sector in the winter shoulder months. From a purely ‘Nadur’ affair, the carnival has become a very Maltese occasion. This weekend, boatloads of young Maltese will cross for the annual pilgrimage of masked fun, or a vulgar, alcohol-fuelled rave party, depending on which side of the debate you happen to be.

And as for debates about the carnival, they have raged and ebbed over the past twelve months. Although the carnival has a history of revellers dressing up as priests or nuns, last year Malta’s Archbishop Paul Cremona and Gozo’s Bishop Marco Grech issued a statement about the need to ‘recognise and respect religious and civil rights’. As things stand, the law does not allow people to wear ‘any ecclesiastical habits or vestments’ without permission as this constitutes ‘offending public order’. Malta’s laws also prohibit the use of words or gestures that vilify the Roman Catholic Church.

Soon after last year’s carnival, a 26-year-old was given a one month jail term suspended for 18 months after he pleaded guilty to dressing up as Jesus Christ during the carnival celebrations. Six people who dressed as nuns were acquitted after the court found the simple fact of dressing up as a nun, even if at carnival time, did not, on its own, amount to vilification.

The public backlash was not long in coming. A Facebook group was set up to encourage people to dress up as Jesus at this year’s Nadur carnival – it currently has more than 600 members. Last week, the Sunday Times confirmed that the Nadur local council and police were requesting to vet the lyrics of rock bands playing at the carnival ‘to eliminate offensive or vulgar language’. The furious online backlash from bloggers and pundits forced the police to swiftly issue a statement retracting their request.

Comedy or tragedy? Malta’s own version of growing up pains, of old power systems slowly coming to terms with the sign of the times? You only have to scan the content of this site about the carnival to get a sense that change is irreversable, and not necessarily for the better.

Whichever way you look at it, the Nadur carnival hovers somewhere between the past and the future.

More on the carnival on the Nadur Council site, on Facebook and on Flickr.

Photo: Courtesy of OBS1

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Despite the ravages of time and war, Bir Miftuh is immaculately preserved today

Din l-Art Helwa is an NGO founded in 1965 to safeguard the historic, artistic and natural heritage of Malta. Here, Victor Rizzo, the treasurer of the organisation, kicks off a series about the key cultural heritage properties managed by the organisation in Malta, Gozo and Comino which are open to the public. This piece is about the ancient chapel of Bir Miftuh, which stands opposite Malta International Airport. Glance right as you exit MIA to catch a glimpse of it.

The Chapel of Santa Maria ta’ Bir Miftuh is an outstanding example of medieval architecture. Built almost 600 years ago, it saw the arrival of the Knights, was desecrated by the Turks during the Great Siege of 1565 and suffered bomb damage in the Second World War. Located in Gudja, it is one of the best preserved examples of a parish church of the 15th century. It was declared a parish in 1436 by Bishop Senatore de Mello and served as such until 1676 when the Parish Church of Gudja was built. It was never in the centre of a village but was had parish church status and served several villages.

The chapel is free standing and shows a growing confidence in the handling of stone structures. It is simple and austere in design, with fine pointed stone arches on which rest the long stone roof slabs. It has a plain rectangular plan and measures about 11 by 14 metres.

The chapel was originally larger and built in the shape of a cross. In the 16th century the rear end of the chapel was demolished and the stones were used in the construction of the present parish church of Gudja. An imposing belfry, a 16th century addition, perches proudly over the main doorway. No bells are in place. Legend has it that these bells were hastily buried in the soil during the Great Siege of 1565. They are still waiting to be discovered.

The altar was brought from another chapel and dates from the 16th century. The altar painting is on wood and probably belongs to the second half of the same century and depicts the figure of God holding a Crucifix surrounded by angels at the top of the panel. The lower part shows a hilly landscape with the Virgin and Child on clouds flanked by St Peter and St Paul.

Over the centuries the chapel suffered from neglect and lack of use. It was close to total collapse until the Ecclesiastical Authorities gave the chapel to Din l-Art Helwa in Trust in 1970. Restoration started in 1973 and was generously sponsored by Malta International Airport, which continues to support it to this day.

During restoration, the remains of a fresco covering the wall facing the altar were discovered under thick layers of lime. The fresco depicts the Last Judgment and is divided into three tiers of figures. The upper tier shows the Apostles and Mary with the figure of Christ in the centre. The figures below this tier represent Mary, a hand holding a sword representing St Paul, St James and St Andrew, St Lawrence, St Benedict holding a church model, Peter the Martyr, and possibly St Catherine holding the palm of martyrdom. The figures above this tier show a kneeling saint representing St John the Baptist, four unknown female saints, St Ursula holding a pike-staff and St Barbara holding a model of a round tower.

The second tier shows the damned being led away to the fiery pits of hell by demons with horns, tails and webbed feet. On the left side one can make out the wing of an angel and the back of one of the faithful being drawn towards God and the Virgin Mary.

The lower tier probably depicts the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. On the north wall, in the first bay, there is a picture of a woman, in a costume fashionable in the 16th century, holding a lily in one hand and pointing to the main altar painting with the other.

The frescoes were expertly restored and regular inspections are carried out. Further restoration involved the repair of all walls and a leaking roof. The floor laid in 1942 was replaced with globigerina limestone flagstones, and the exterior areas adjacent to the walls were paved. In 2004, restoration of the churchyard at the back of the chapel was completed.

The Chapel is an ideal setting for the Bir Miftuh International Music Festival held regularly in the Summer by Din l-Art Helwa since 1997. It is open for visitors the first Sunday of the month from 9.30 till noon.

For more details on Din l-Art Helwa, see the website or e-mail info@dinlarthelwa.org

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The Bazaar: always with a finger on the pulse of what sells!

With the countdown in days – or rather hours – to Christmas Day, our thoughts turn to shopping. But not the glitzy, swish designer and brand name shops that now dominate Valletta and Sliema’s main streets. We’re pausing in the Christmas rush to take a look at the far more mundane, work-a-day shops that cater to our local needs 364 days a year – the village bazaars.

The village bazaar is an Aladdin’s cave, not for all that glitters, though it’s bound to have all the Christmas paraphernalia in stock right now. The bazaar will stock just about any useful little thing a home and family could want – from everyday items like light bulbs, food containers, preserving jars, dustbins and plastic buckets, to seasonal goods like cheap plastic Xmas trees, fans (summer) and gas heaters (winter). It’s always the first to signal seasons changing. It may also offer dry cleaner services and do a good trade in bed mattresses, conveniently taking away your old one for free! It has shower curtains, cheap towels, buttons and cotton. Need a belt, shoe lace or hair grips? The Bazaar is the place.

The bazaar is often named after its owner; my first rented place in Malta when I moved here was (conveniently) next door to ‘Silvia Bazaar’ in the lower reaches of Zabbar. I didn’t mind her wares spreading across my frontage – I was a regular and she had everything I needed. My local one now is a corner shop that doubles up as the place for catching up on gossip about who’s died and what ailments people have. As the word ‘bazaar’ suggests, these shops are merely stone and mortar versions of a market place and certainly have a busy market feel to them. And as with most local shops, if you’re a regular, you can put things on the ‘tab’ or if you’re out of change, just pay a day or so later.

If you do live near a bazaar, try it first if you’re seeking something for the house. I almost drove to a large kitchen store the other day, but thought I’d just see if the bazaar had what I needed. And lo and behold it did! You might not be getting those special presents for nearest and dearest from the bazaar this week, but I am sure if you find your roasting tin for the turkey too small, you’ll be hot footing it to the bazaar round the corner. As always, it will be open mercifully late on Christmas eve!

Photo: Gethin Thomas

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We are a multi-tasking nation

There are cultures that are finely-tuned with all things spiritual; others that relish the protestant work ethic and treat death as a mild inconvenience. And then there are the Maltese. We love everything about death. Here are five reasons for my assertion:

1. Our churches come into their own during funerals. Statistically, Malta is close behind the Vatican in terms of number of churches per square km. If you live in the shadow of one, like I do in Siggiewi, you soon learn to live with the mournful toll of the 8am or 3pm funeral bell. Funerals are part and parcel of village life. Here, funeral corteges have taken to parking next to the statue of St Nicholas in the middle of the square, so that the pall-bearers can carry the flower-covered coffin up the square and up the stairs of the church. It’s like a Fellini movie every day, to the backdrop of the lady selling fish in the morning and the OAPs outside the band club in the afternoon. Without the regular conveyor belt of mourners and dead people, my village would lose much of its ‘village life’ and pjazza conversation pieces. And the church would lose a tad of its sense of importance, even to those who do not regularly show up for the Sunday service.

2. We love marble plaques.The quality of Maltese driving is such that Maltese roads regularly take their toll. Although the traffic fatality rate per head of population is still in line with other countries, you simply cannot ignore the ubiquitous marble plaques, photographs and candles on the road side. In my childhood, there was a black spot on the Burmarrad road that literally seemed to have run out of wall space for the plaques. I remember closing my eyes and shivering every time my father drove past it. We take a morbid delight in remembering our loved ones where they came to a sudden end. In technicolour shots and weatherproof marble. Unbelievably, we even emigrate with the concept of the plaque. There’s one at a major road intersection on the outskirts of Portsmouth, UK, and the name on it is Maltese.

3. We love obituaries.Yes, every nation has its columns in its national rag. But we also have the morning Radio Malta solemn announcements of the newly-departed, replete with the same screeching violins that used to scare the living daylights out of me as a kid. The only thing that has changed is that the guy who used to read the obits has himself passed away and been replaced by more dulcit female tones. Definitely one to be avoided.

4. We have the Adolorata Cemetery. We choose to locate our national cemetery in Marsa, right in the middle of the most urban part of Malta, home to the giant roundabout and its intersections. A place replete with huge conifers straight out of The Omen, a city of red candles by night and busy trade in flower merchandise by day. The last prayers are said to a dull hum of diesel engines and screeching brakes. I always thought that everybody’s hotel needed to be relocated somewhere more serene and green. Sadly, it’s too late for all of that.

5. We love our black hearses. Until two years ago, you could be on your way to your last your journey in a 1950s number with a number plate RIP007. It took some lobbying to explain to the undertakers that mixing James Bond with eternal peace is not quite a cocktail made in heaven. In 2008, Government’s attempt to break the undertakers’ cartel was met by a nation-wide strike by buses, mini-buses and taxis on the basis that this was ‘the first step at abolishing monopoly in all sectors of public transport.’ To date, the issue remains unresolved. But the ubiquitous ‘RIP’ has now been replaced by the more discrete ‘HRS’. (For an explanation of Maltese number plates, click here).

But, for all our addoration of rituals for the departed, we, the living, can only speculate as to whether they are a grateful dead.

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Village life and prams seem to go together

We’ve lived in an old farmhouse in Siggiewi for the past 12 years. In Malta, you get people who would not contemplate the idea; and there are others who, like us, have moved to village life after years in big cities, or leafy suburbia.

There are many different views of what goes into making up Maltese village life, so this is just a snapshot from our perspective. If you’re new to Malta, our list can count as quick tips to living in a village with the minimum amount of hassle and on your own terms. If you’re an old-hand at village life, or a Malta local, then you may easily recognise some of these aspects.

1. Do say hello to the neighbours when you arrive. They will definitely know that you have taken up residence and have probably done some research into your family history, if you are Maltese. If you cannot speak Maltese, just smile. ‘Being seen to be friendly’ goes a long way.

2. Watch where people park their motors before you deposit your own prized asset in that empty place. Villagers can get territorial. Or they simply know the driving practices of others in the neigbourhood. My car lasted a full 4 weeks before someone crashed into it and drove off without ringing my bell.

3. Even if you cannot find anything you want from the village grocer, pop your head in there for the occasional carton of milk. Many of these have great, fresh stuff behind the counter, like gbejniet, bigilla and stuffed olives. You will also realise that queuing is not normally practised at the village grocer: conversely, you may sometimes be served first because of your ‘guest’ or foreign status. Go with the flow.

4. Accept the fact that every village has more than its fair share of weirdos. Ours include a priest who has persuaded the council to paint yellow lines in front of his door in our alley and erect signs advising drivers to park with their exhaust pipes facing outwards – in between bending other drivers’ mirrors and remonstrating with anyone washing a car in the vicinity of his house. Never underestimate the power of all things ecclesiastical in a village community.

5. Accept all forms of gifts and kindness. We are blessed by having people who come round with lemons, oranges and whatever is in season.

6. Ask for local help if you need some DIY done. There is always someone who knows someone. And in true word of mouth tradition, people will generally only recommend tradesmen they trust.

7. Do your research about your house locality before you move in. The haphazard layout of village core architecture means that you can easily end up living in the vicinity of neighbours you never knew you had who have pigs, goats, chickens and pigeons as pets. The building boom in this country also sadly means that ‘back-building’ in core village areas is still allowed.

8. Accept the fact that people are either incredibly kind or incredibly cruel to animals. Stray cats either get fed by batty ladies throwing fish over their roofs, or hounded by others who detest them. Another old lady across the road lived with over 100 stray dogs, till the day she fell and broke a leg and the whole village turned up to gawp at the police, fire-brigade and SPCA attempting to evacuate the place.

9. Be prepared for odd people banging on your door. For about six months, we had an old lady with a goat and shaggy dog in tow show up to sell us mainly rotten vegetables from her pram. Be polite, but firm.

10. When it’s time for the village festa, either join in the fun, buy ear-plugs or go on holiday if it’s not your cup of tea. For a solid week, for instance, our alley is transformed into an open air bingo hall, pizza parlour and venue for ‘local talent.’

11. Nothing helps as much as having a young child around to ‘get accepted.’ Our masterstroke was going down to the local council and asking for a recommendation for a child carer when our child was 1. Like many others we know, our child-carer Joyce is a substitute for the grandparents we cannot call upon to occasionally help us get a breather – and get our child to ‘integrate’ with what’s actually going on outside his door.

Photo: Walter Lo Cascio

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