Iceland review - 2006, Page 54

52 ICELAND REVIEW
the canyon where the dam is being built. As he drove me through the
high desert plateau road leading to camp, Porta talked to me about
the city he helped create out of nothing in 2003. It sits in the shadow
of Vatnajökull, Europe’s biggest glacier. “Except for countries in civil
war, this project is the most difficult of all the ones I’ve been working
on in 25 years because it’s a real challenge against nature,” Porta told
me. “A challenge that we are still not sure we can win.”
The Impregilo settlement is an artificial melting pot of workers of 45
nationalities, including a few Italians and Icelanders in leading roles,
all living in about a hundred prefabricated cubic cabins spread among
a main camp and additional smaller camps near the tunneling.
“We’ve even managed to put together 80 Pakistanis and 10 Indians,”
Porta said. And, more satirically, “Here they can finally play cricket
together.”
Porta pointed out that Impregilo has provided cable TV from all
around the world, and that Chinese, Indian, Turkish and Italian
cooks ensure diversity of foods at the tables. “We are all expatriates
here in the camp, and there is no discrimination,” he continued. “We
all eat at the same cafeteria and work in the same conditions.”
After an hour of driving on the slippery zigzag road, the landscape out
the window and my conversation with Porta took on an epic quality.
“The last inhabitant of the highlands, the only human being who
used to live here before our arrival in Kárahnjúkar, died in 1906,”
said Porta. “He lived as a hermit in a sheep shelter. The legend says he
committed suicide during a sudden snowstorm in the spring. Now,
warm waters come out from where he died.”
We were trying to follow the icy road where the path was hardly
distinguishable from the surrounding white lunar desert of snow.
Pointing his finger toward the fog, he tried to show me the camp’s
neighbors. “If we are lucky we might see some reindeer over there,”
he said. “But the poor reindeer. What did they do to deserve being
deported from Norway to this?”
ARRIVAL
The camp was waiting for our arrival in the dark. The roadways
snaking through the dormitories were quiet, silenced by the snow
that covered paths, roofs and doorsteps. The only traces of human life
were coming through the tiny, warm yellow lights in the windows
that were not covered in snow or curtains. I was impressed that there
were no cars in this phantom city, and I later learned that only a
few managers have the right to have their own vehicles. Workers
get around by shuttle buses that take them back and forth from their
home barracks to the work sites at every shift.
The first night of my guided tour, I managed to see the gym (about ten
cardio machines, weights and exercise bicycles in a room) and three
families who had clearly given their consent to be interviewed.
Gianni Porta introduced me to two Chinese and two Italian families
waiting for me with snacks and big smiles in their small but cozy
and warm homes. They were both long-time employees of Impregilo
who had the privilege of living in a family house separate from the
workers’ dormitory rooms. Like Dante’s guide in The Divine Comedy,
Porta – my Virgil – never left my side.
When he moved to Iceland, Massimo Franceschi, an athletic man
of 33, with black hair, said he had a hard time deciding whether
his 32-year-old wife Carmen Ardizzone and his two young children
should join him at the camp. “At first, we didn’t even know if it was
possible to live in Kárahnjúkar. Literally, we didn’t know if there
were conditions for human life,” Franceschi said, sitting on his blue
sofa with his two boys on his lap.
Franceschi, who is the head of the technical office KAR14, later told
me that Porta worked hard at the beginning to make it possible for
some families to join the camp and to make things more comfortable.
Today, in addition to its gym and multicultural cafeteria, Kárahnjúkar
has a small Italian private school, a bar that becomes a disco and
karaoke on Saturday nights, an emergency room, a grocery store with
the most popular Italian pasta and products and a laundromat. It’s a
spartan, self-sufficient zone that could pack up and disappear without
a trace tomorrow except for one – or rather ten – living legacies.
“So far ten children have been born at the camp,” Porta told me
with pride. Built in 2003, the camp already has second-generation
inhabitants.
This generation’s numbers would be stronger, but only the managers
have the right to bring their families. As Franceschi put it, “If all
1,200 workers were allowed to bring their relatives, Kárahnjúkar
would become a city bigger than Reykjavík.”
In the second house I visited, Liu Hongliang, 32, with his wife Zhang
Jian and his year-old son John Liu, looked like a happy family portrait.
Hongliang is one of the few managers of a Chinese community of 450
workers. “At least, here the baby grows up with his father,” his wife
said with a shy but firm smile. The average monthly salary in China is
between USD 300 and 700. Here, Hongliang makes much more, and
housing and food are provided by the company. “The problem here is
the weather, and that we don’t have any after-work life,” he said.
“And that must be why we produce so many children,” concluded
Porta in a joke, softening the critique with his usual witty humor.
During the night, I was hosted in a simple but comfortable one-bed
room with a closet, a little desk, a refrigerator and private bathroom.
The few others I visited were the same, but Porta said the majority
of the workers sleep in dormitories with single rooms and shared
bathrooms. I didn’t see the dormitories in the main camp because,
Porta said, the workers were either out at work, resting or wouldn’t
have liked my unexpected visit.
BREAKFAST FOR SOME, DINNER FOR OTHERS
I met the non-pre-approved workers in the early morning at the
cafeteria, when the sun was still waiting to rise. The cafeteria was a
mix of breakfast and dinner odors and foods. The night-shift workers
were having their meal before going to bed, and the day-shift workers
were having breakfast before going to work. Sleepy faces were sitting
at the white tables next to faces worn by work, cold or heat.