If you take a walk on the free and most desert beaches of Badolato, in front of the vegetable gardens around the Vodà river, you will surely find more than one pagghiaro.
A pagghiaro (dialect, literally, made by straw) is a hut made from reeds which cover a structure made by wood. Some are really an architectural beauty and has even got, apart from a roof, side walls. Some other are also equipped with a table and a few chairs.
They were used as a kind of summer house by the farmers, who nights had to water in turns their vegetable gardens or who simply had to watch that their animals like for instance pigs wouldn’t get stolen. They used to sleep there in the summer, even with their children during the summer holidays. It was a kind of second home at the beach, while their first home was up in the village of Badolato.
The pagghiari nowadays are only used to protect their owner from the sun and mostly the families who built it meet on Sunday at the pagghiaro, also with their friends, to eat all together and spend some good time. It is a kind of meeting point.
At the end of the summer the pagghiari are destroyed and burned.
Written by Sonia Simpatico - JUMP Team
Source and pictures:
Rosa Carnuccio
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