One of the fundamental differences, it seems to me, between Americans (or USians at least) and the rest of the world is our dependency upon the breeze.
When I first came to Europe, riding a bus in summer was a bummer we all told stories about, because the local folks would not open the windows. It might let bad spirits in, or good ones out. Or you’d catch cold. Or something—always bad.
When Elizabeth Abbot, my friend at cross-cultural moments was recently invited by a guide in Cairo to cover herself with a long (black) flowing robe and headpiece before entering a mosque, her reactions were thus:
After ten minutes of walking about, I had to get out — it was so hot in there, and oppressive. I needed to move freely and feel air on my neck and hands and walk swiftly.
When I read this I couldn’t help flashing back to some time last summer, when we visited some friends in their vacation rental. It was a hot day, and we’d been out walking for quite a while. When we came back to the closed-up house, it was pretty cool inside. But we were hot and sweaty. We told our friends to just sit and let their bodies cool off. But they couldn’t stand it, they just had to open up all the windows to catch the 100 degree breeze that was blowing on their sweaty skin and giving them the illusion of cool.
Short term gain. Long term loss, as those of us with Italian houses know.
We ended up in a house we couldn’t sleep in. The cool it had so nicely stored up for us was gone. Out the window. Poof.
My house in Italy has a big, thick wall running though the center of it, representing a huge thermal constant. If you let it do its work, you really don’t need air conditioning. You open the house in the cool of the evening, then close it up in the heat of the day. During the day the cool radiates from the huge thermal mass of the wall, then the cool gets replenished at night, when the evening air can do its thing.
Yes, after you come up the many steps to the house in the heat of a summer’s afternoon you really yearn for a breeze, any breeze. But if you rest inside the house and let your body come into balance with the motionless, cool of the air, you’ll enjoy free air conditioning all afternoon. You give up that short term gain for long term comfort.
Maybe it’s an Italian thing. But then again, long term, loose fitting black clothing is also cooler in the heat than white.
You just have to live with it a while…and have faith.