Mobile shops are not a thing of the past in Sicily. Local merchants ply their wares around every town; their small vans billowing over with fresh, local produce. And when I say local, I mean it: the produce was probably grown within about 3km of where it's being sold. For the vanniaturi to travel further would be counter-intuitive; why drive further, wasting petrol, when the customers in the nearest town have the same Euros in their pocket as those in a town 20km away?
The Ape (pronounced "app-peh") - a small, three-wheeled truck which is a typical sight in both town and country in Italy - seems custom-made for this purpose. Vanniaturi (pronounced van-nya-TOO-ree) affix loud-hailers to their Apes, from which they announce their stuff. In fact, vanniare means 'to shout' in Sicilian.
Readers in Liverpool will know that the vendors of the local newspaper, The Echo, each have their own, unique call; one shouts "eeeehKO-KO-KO", while another calls "E-ko....E-ko". London's Evening Standard vendors have a similar racket going on.
Similarly, Italian Vanniaturi all have their own calls, usually in dialect and very often difficult to understand. Part of the reason for the incomprehensible calls, of course, is so you have to go out and see for yourself what they're selling - and what great quality it is!
Today Ispica's vanniaturi was touting seafood (not that it was obvious at first). Sicilians often have quite soft consonants; Simona explained that "BOO-pee-BOO-pee!" was actually "Puppi" (the Sicilian for Octopus - the Italian being polpo or polipo). "alaMAAAAree-alamarETTee" was Calamari, Calamaretti (squid, small squid). And just to push home the point that he had octopus, he was also shouting "poh.LEE.poh!".
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