Dependapotamus--part 1

Everyone claims to have met one. Everyone says they know about someone who has never left the base, or never gone anywhere their whole tour here. We all talk about that pitied and piteous creature who cannot acknowledge that they live in Europe, and cares nothing for the lifetime and more of joy and wonder at their fingertips. A mythical beast stalks the faketown of Gricignano, and its name is dependapotamus.

I first heard the term probably on my first night here. It’s cropped up here and there ever since, and every time it makes me smile and cringe together. Dependapotamus. Oh, it’s hilarious. The image of a military spouse, swollen to hippo proportions, waddling about a house she’s terrified to leave, makes me laugh every time. But that poor girl, that poor husband.

I’ll carry the stereotype further, and get almost inexcusably, irrevocably mean, but [spoiler alert] all shall be redeemed. The term bears lingering over, like refried beans or sausages. Disgusting as you see it constructed, but quite palatable afterward. She doesn’t have to be fat (yes, it’s always a she. The male equivalent is usually a servicemember himself and we just ridicule him to his face). She doesn’t have to be mean, or overbearing, or lazy, or any of the above, but the term in the Naples context (that is, talking about Naples-area military spouses) always implies a terror of leaving the house. That terror keeps her from leaving the base, and it clouds and colors her impressions of Italy unfairly. She hates Italians because they’re unhelpful at the Commissary on base. She hates Italians because they’re loud in the pool on base. She hates Italian drivers, and is terrified to drive off base. How could anyone like it here, she asks. Italy is home to 70% of the world’s art, but for vacations, she wants to go to America (that is, “‘merica”). Or just stay at home.

Dependapotamus describes someone who didn’t want to come here, and doesn’t want to try to like it here, is too afraid to take a chance and explore, and therefore hates it here.

Now, clearly there is no one who ever fits this description completely, or at least not for a very long period of time. If someone spent their whole three years here like that, that is a person above all to be pitied. Because no human being is static, and no one’s attitude toward one of the great destination countries on earth can remain 100% negative forever.

In reality, among real people, I wonder if the term simply describes someone in the throes of culture shock. I know these people who are terrified to drive in town. I know these homesick full-time moms who were wrenched from a comfortable life and support network and thrown into one of the hardest overseas assignments in the U.S. military (don’t ask me, ask the guy who’s lived overseas with the military 27 of the last 35 years, in all of the locations available. He’s the one who said if you can live in Naples, you can live anywhere). If you’re grieving for the life you had, and you encounter minor hardship after minor hardship, and your patience wanes and wanes until it snaps completely, you will begin to behave like a dependapotamus.

But how precedented is the feeling of distaste for a foreign land, especially from the spouse of the principle traveler? Abigail Adams, that paragon of servant wives, the one any military wife during times of long absence aspires to emulate, writes the following of Paris (Paris!), to which her husband had dragged her for his diplomatic service: “You inquire of me how I like Paris. Why, they tell me I am no judge, for that [living outside the city] I have not seen it yet. One thing, I know, and that is I have smelt it… It is one the very dirtiest place I ever saw. There are some buildings and some squares, which are tolerable; but in general the streets are narrow, the shops, the houses, inelegant and dirty.” She goes on to talk about how hard it is to meet, let alone converse, with French women, and then when you do meet them (in this instance one of Ben Franklin’s “most intimate friends”): “I own I was highly disgusted, and never wish for an acquaintance with any ladies of this cast.”

The wife of a senior diplomat said these things. The wife of a future president, who raised children, one of whom became another president, without much help from dad, gushed about the DISpleasure of living abroad in a palace outside one of the greatest cities in the world (though, to be fair, in this historical context, “the worst of times,” maybe Paris then had more austere and hostile qualities than we modern travelers see).

This too shall pass, as they say. Abigail did eventually look back at her time in Paris with fondness. But the shock in the moment is undeniable.

“To have had Paris tolerable to me,” said Abigail Adams, “I should not have gone to London.” Now there’s a sentiment I can commiserate with.