By Dorothea Shefer-Vanson
DOMEYROT, France — Having managed to overcome all the technical, medical, and bureaucratic obstacles in the way of anyone wanting to travel abroad from Israel, we finally managed to make our way onto the plane taking us to France. For the last few years we have got into the habit of spending a month or two in the depths of rural France, staying at a spacious house set in a quiet village. Apart from the chimes of the nearby church, there is nothing to disturb the bucolic peace of the area.
Until this year, that is. This year the regional authority has decided it is time to install fiber-optic cables and a new electricity grid underground. And that means digging up roads throughout the village, making huge holes and trenches to accommodate the updated system. Each such hole or trench is neatly surrounded by barriers to make sure that no one falls into them.
One day in the distant future (perhaps even by this time next year), the job will be done and all will be serene once more. This year, however, all is anything but serene. Huge machines, reminiscent of space-age contraptions, some yellow, others red or blue, are parked all over the place, blocking access roads or even cutting them off completely. Huge piles of gravel and sand have appeared at strategic points (fortunately for us not too near our abode), and strapping men in orange overalls and hard hats emerge from around corners as well as lanes and side roads.
But all is not lost. The house is well-insulated, with double-glazed windows, so very little noise penetrates the cosy interior. The workmen seem to take a long lunch break, as is the custom in France, and although they start work on the dot of eight in the morning, by 4 o’clock in the afternoon there isn’t an orange-clad being to be seen, and the monstrous machines are parked as neatly as possible at the sides of the roads and squares. That gives us another four hours or more of peace and quiet to enjoy the little table and chairs we have set up outside, and where we can sit and have coffee and cake, and chat to anyone passing by.
That is the nature of French village life. Anyone you happen to pass, whether you’re out for a stroll or sitting having coffee outside, must be greeted and saluted for a little chat (preferably in whatever French we can muster). Also, when the occasional vendor of groceries, baguettes (vive la baguette!) or meat comes by with his or her van, then toots their horn to signal their arrival, anyone within earshot gathers at the aperture and buys what they can find or even what they might need. That, too, is an opportunity for a little light conversation. For some people, particularly the elderly and less mobile villagers, this is the only chance they have to socialize.
It has taken us a few days to get used to our new-old surroundings. Unaccustomed to things not being in certain places (“a place for everything, and everything in its place”), we find ourselves constantly looking for our phones, keys, pens, etc. In one instance a hearing aid that had been lost somewhere in town was miraculously found when we retraced our steps to one of the shops that we had frequented several hours earlier.
People on the whole are nice, kind, good-natured, and patient. Everyone is masked almost everywhere, both inside and outside. An alco-gel dispenser is waiting to be used at every point and entrance. Social distance is observed almost everywhere (even in the checkout line in the supermarket). No one seems to be in a hurry, but that is the nature of life in this part of France.
The harrowing Thursday afternoon drive south from the Paris CDG Airport, together with the hordes of Parisiens who were on the road at the same time, is already a distant memory. Thankfully we reached our destination with no harm done, though badly in need of a good meal and a good night’s rest. Praise be, there’s no shortage of either of the latter where we are now.
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Dorothea Shefer-Vanson is an author and freelance writer residing in the Jerusalem suburb of Mevasseret Zion, Israel. She may be contacted via dorothea.shefer@sdjewishworld.com