Elfriede Caiafa — Ethnographic Museum

Elfriede Caiafa, Guide and Curator of the Ethnographic Museum

"My name is Elfriede Caiafa, and since 2003 I have been the guide and curator of the Ethnographic Museum of Morigerati.

The museum houses a vast collection of objects from rural life, gathered over the years by two local women — they were our teachers: Miss Clorinda and Miss Modestina Florenzano; they had the idea of collecting these objects to ensure the village’s history was not lost. That led to their first exhibition in 1976.

Before 2003, I was a temporary employee (LSU) at the Cilento National Park. Together with the museum director, Dr. Luciano Blasco, we helped set up the exhibits and catalog the objects, and little by little, we became passionate about it — partly because when visitors come, I’m spontaneous and get drawn into the stories of the past, having experienced many of these objects firsthand as a child. In the beginning, when we opened, there were some elderly ladies here at the museum who kept me company and told me countless anecdotes, and thanks in part to this, I gained a deeper understanding of the history.

In the 1940s, the people of Morigerati emigrated to Brazil and Venezuela — while in the 1960s there was another wave of emigration, this time to Germany. My parents also emigrated there, and I was actually born in Germany. Then I returned here, where I spent my childhood — I was two years old when we came back to Morigerati, which is why I remember so many objects.

Many of the objects housed in the museum are connected to the Oasis, and in particular to the mill — such as the “varrile,” or the barrel that the women of Morigerati, in particular, used to fetch water from the river. Life at that time revolved around the river: water was essential to the village, because wheat and grains were ground at the mill, and flax was soaked there to prepare it for processing. Morigerati flax was in high demand in neighboring villages; in fact, the locals used it as a commodity to barter for other fabrics or foodstuffs.