Koksma's Mountain Road
Louli and Waldo didn't finish cleaning out the filters until after nine. We were both exhausted and just ate some salad, watched the news and then fell into a coma-like sleep. When we woke in the morning there was a power cut and so we just caught some extra time in bed. The power cuts rarely last more than an hour; never long enough to really cause chaos and certainly not long enough to bother with refrigerators and such. It is also interesting that power cuts always occur during office hours and thus disrupt work involving computers, telephone systems with electronic links and all manner of office equipment. However, unless it is a real emergency rather than just switching off to prevent overload, there are never power cuts which will impact upon the Greek housewife's cooking schedules. So they do not occur at breakfast time and when getting the children off to school. After 9am is shopping time so that is vulnerable to cuts, but from 11am onwards lunch is a priority. And so on. The power of the Greek housewife far exceeds and problems company bosses may experience; such as the priorities of this bankrupt nation. Food and family will always outweigh nation building and economic capitalism. Of course there are some wonderful sociological benefits of such attitudes; it is just that somehow or other a balance is needed for a socio-economic society.
We are in the middle of breakfast when Petros telephones. He tells Waldo that there is a machine at the bottom of our road. Petros's house is just across the bottom of the valley and he can see the beginning of our road easily. He cannot see out car there and so assumes, rightly, that we do not know about the machine. Grateful for Petros' information, we leave our breakfast and rush down the road. The man with the grader is already working on the road, smoothing out the bumps, cracks, fissures and irregularities causes by the winter rains. He is the same man who did a very good job on the road two years ago. Despite that, Waldo immediately starts shouting instructions which I have to translate. I struggle to have a conversation in Greek about social life, philosophy or the finer things in life, but of necessity my vocabulary easily spans anything to do with building houses, plastering, digging holes, road making, repairing machinery, tree cutting, bulldozers, water systems and ground works. The biggest problem with the road has been caused by the farmer in the adjoining field. Two years ago the grader cut a massive gully both sides of the road to carry the amazing amount of water that runs off the mountain in the heavy storms. Without concern for this, the farmer filled in the gully at the entrance to his field. Instead of putting down a pipe for the water to flow through and then building up around it, he simply pushed earth into the gully and compacted it with his tractor. Thus the water pours down the gully to this spot, overflows and has created all manner of almost impassable cracks and fissures in the road.
The grader driver will not touch this gully. The farmer, whether by chance or cunning, has run water hoses nearby and the grader operator clearly does not want to be responsible for breaking these. I tell him what a good job he did before, when he made the original gully. I then tell him that he is such a good driver that I surprised that he now doesn't want to tackle this very short piece of gully. He preens and smiles. I give a smile of resignation and, with a shrug of my shoulders, I show him that I am disappointed but ask him to do what he can. As we walk back up to the car he is reversing, consolidating the track where he has put additional dirt. Most of the road is looking better already.
Throughout the day, the drivers of the few vehicles that come up the road parp their horn and wave at us. Usually they just wave if they see us outside the house. Now they shout 'Bravo' and some even give a thumbs up signal. It is much later in the day when we take a trip down the road only to fin that not only has the dirt track been smoothed and the piece of gully remade, but there are also two lengths of concrete that have been laid. One on the steep corner, just covering the inside half of the road. The second strip, also not covering the whole width of the road but filling in the worst of the bumps and cracks. This is motorway by comparison. We feel delighted that all of our chasing, telephone calls and meetings have paid off. It is only slightly disconcerting to realise that two years of weekly, and at times daily, chasing up has resulted in about 3 hours work. It has changed our life for sure. Friends can now visit, I can go out in the car whenever I wish without worrying about whether or not I can get up the road, and we have a lot of additional time to ourselves without having to go to the mayor's office, telephone the mayor, telephone the contractors and do all the chasing up.
We treat ourselves and go for a meal in the evening at a local taverna. There is live traditional music which we enjoy for a time. The musicians are all local people who just love what they do, and it comes through in the music. Most of then, including their engineer dress as rebels with boiler suits and long hair in pony-tails. One is the local heart surgeon, who amazing chain smokes. But he plays a good bouzouki and sings well. Thankfully for the islanders he forgoes what surely would have been a glittering career in Athens or one of the other major city hospitals. Disillusioned with the politics of health care he long since decided that his calling was to deal with people and to help them. Hence we have the services of one of the best heart surgeons in Greece as he lives here to focus on his work and not play politics.
The weekend disappears in a cloud of heat, power cuts, and shopping. The weather is quite bizarre as more clouds come into the sky; not the usual tiny fluffy 'Kytheran clouda' but the more recognisable grey or black rain clouds. The mornings feel cooler, but the heat seems to rise quickly through the day. By Sunday afternoon, the sun has disappeared and Waldo counts 50 rain drops on the pool. It is uncomfortably hot and humid. What Waldo checks our new weather station on the kitchen patio, the temperature reads 51.5'C - no wonder we feel hot!
I spend most of Monday pottering in the kitchen, cooking around the power cuts. Our Dutch visitors are coming to tea with two young men who are visiting them. I make shortbread biscuit sandwiches filled with date and orange puree, bran and raisin muffins, oat and lemon cupcakes, Greek orange and almond cake made with semolina and ground almonds instead of flour. They arrive at six and almost everything goes as we sit and chat and laugh and graze the food until almost mid-night. Nobody had noticed the time; the conversation just keeps going as we seemed so easy in each others company and touched on politics, religion, sex, the Olympics, history, colonialism, America, education, smoking, entrepreneurship, engineering and what's to do and see on the island. The young men eventually decide that they need to feed their 6ft 7" and 6ft 4" bodies and take-off on their scooters to get some take-away kebabs whilst the rest of us head for our beds.
Tuesday starts with yet another power cut. Obviously the heat is causing problems for the island's already overloaded power system. We take off in the car to go to Livadi; a village just south of the centre of Kythera. The name Livadi, means 'meadow' and the village is built on the edge of a large flood plain which is rich in nutrients and vegetation. It seems to have built up as a shopping centre for electrical and household goods as well as a location for practising professionals such as the veterinary surgeon, optician, dentist and the Kythera radio and TV station when it had funding. We are there to collect two wall lights that we ordered last week. These modern glass and silver coloured metal lights will go over our bed and replace the awful brown ones that we have lived with for so long.
Waldo wants to buy a large torch. His son and friends are visiting soon and we want to be able to take them to some distant churches built in caves. We visit our usual electrical store. Just on the entrance to the shop is a wonderful day-bed. It has three metal sides in a rambling rose pattern and is just what I have been wanting for years. The mattress is rather soft and squidgy, but Nicos is quite happy to supply an alternative one. After negotiating the price of bed, mattress , torch and batteries we talk about delivery. Amazingly Nicos tells us it will be at the house at 7pm. I double check that he means today and not another day in the vague future, but 7pm tonight it will be.
Greece is quite a way to the Eastern Mediterranean and as such there are not long evenings. The sun rises and sets quickly so there is either sunshine or darkness and not much in between. Whilst the sun is shining at 7pm, it is dark by 8.30pm. It is after 8.30pm that our day-bed arrives. Waldo has the dangerous job of helping carry it down our stone steps, right around the pool, up to the kitchen patio, around the front of the lounge to the back patio and then into the room where the bed is to be located. This room has always intended to be Waldo's office and to serve as an extra single bedroom should the need arise. Because it is rarely used it has become a depository for everything that does not have a place. So it has been a great exercise in clearing out the room. This pushes me ever nearer to moving into my office, the AcropoLiz. I am determined to have this room space up and running before we leave next week.
Thursday dawns hot and clear. I bake another date shortcake sandwich. As I take it out of the oven we have yet another power cut! That's the end of my baking for the morning! More of our Dutch neighbours are coming for coffee this morning. The woman who owns the house is the niece of the man who did so much for this island and designed the three houses known as Dutchman's Hill here. He was very much influenced by the architect Frank Lloyd Wright in the architecture and interior of the properties. Amazing, although Hommine has been coming to Kythera for over 40 years she has never been inside our house. So it is a morning of cleaning, hoovering and generally tidying up. We don't really live in such chaos, we just work on the basis that we can live as things are and rather than clean on a regular schedule just have a mad clear up when people come. It works fine for us.
I am overcome when Hommine gives me an old plate which belonged to her uncle. It has a quotation from the work of Robert Louise Stevenson on it and is decorated with pink flowers and a gold filigree pattern. It is so lovely to have something that links back to the architect of designer of the house and how was she to know that my kitchen is pink and that the back wall hosts a collection of old plates! The generosity of people on this island never fails to surprise and touch me. Having meaning to life is so important and recognised as such. People take time to care about others, they take time to think about things and they take time to do things for other people. Yes there are frustrations with power cuts, and roads, and inefficiency, and time and much more. But that is the business part of life. For the Greek people, and the people of this island particularly what matters is family, friends and neighbours. Those are the priorities and everything else comes way down the list. Young people are not thrown out of their homes when they go to college or start work, they are nurtured, still an integral part of the family. Elderly people are not left to fend for themselves or shut away in institutions but brought back from independent living into the body of the family home where they are respected, nurtured and made to feel useful. neighbours are cared for, not just in an emergency but as a matter of daily course. If a housewife is making a casserole she will pop into the oven a small dish for her neighbour. If a fisherman has had a good catch he will drop one in to his neighbour on his way home. If someone had a glut of fruit or vegetables they will share them with their neighbours.
None of us live in isolation here. We live as a community but are respected sufficiently to be able to enter, centre or distance ourselves as our own needs demand.
Throughout the day, the drivers of the few vehicles that come up the road parp their horn and wave at us. Usually they just wave if they see us outside the house. Now they shout 'Bravo' and some even give a thumbs up signal. It is much later in the day when we take a trip down the road only to fin that not only has the dirt track been smoothed and the piece of gully remade, but there are also two lengths of concrete that have been laid. One on the steep corner, just covering the inside half of the road. The second strip, also not covering the whole width of the road but filling in the worst of the bumps and cracks. This is motorway by comparison. We feel delighted that all of our chasing, telephone calls and meetings have paid off. It is only slightly disconcerting to realise that two years of weekly, and at times daily, chasing up has resulted in about 3 hours work. It has changed our life for sure. Friends can now visit, I can go out in the car whenever I wish without worrying about whether or not I can get up the road, and we have a lot of additional time to ourselves without having to go to the mayor's office, telephone the mayor, telephone the contractors and do all the chasing up.
We treat ourselves and go for a meal in the evening at a local taverna. There is live traditional music which we enjoy for a time. The musicians are all local people who just love what they do, and it comes through in the music. Most of then, including their engineer dress as rebels with boiler suits and long hair in pony-tails. One is the local heart surgeon, who amazing chain smokes. But he plays a good bouzouki and sings well. Thankfully for the islanders he forgoes what surely would have been a glittering career in Athens or one of the other major city hospitals. Disillusioned with the politics of health care he long since decided that his calling was to deal with people and to help them. Hence we have the services of one of the best heart surgeons in Greece as he lives here to focus on his work and not play politics.
The weekend disappears in a cloud of heat, power cuts, and shopping. The weather is quite bizarre as more clouds come into the sky; not the usual tiny fluffy 'Kytheran clouda' but the more recognisable grey or black rain clouds. The mornings feel cooler, but the heat seems to rise quickly through the day. By Sunday afternoon, the sun has disappeared and Waldo counts 50 rain drops on the pool. It is uncomfortably hot and humid. What Waldo checks our new weather station on the kitchen patio, the temperature reads 51.5'C - no wonder we feel hot!
I spend most of Monday pottering in the kitchen, cooking around the power cuts. Our Dutch visitors are coming to tea with two young men who are visiting them. I make shortbread biscuit sandwiches filled with date and orange puree, bran and raisin muffins, oat and lemon cupcakes, Greek orange and almond cake made with semolina and ground almonds instead of flour. They arrive at six and almost everything goes as we sit and chat and laugh and graze the food until almost mid-night. Nobody had noticed the time; the conversation just keeps going as we seemed so easy in each others company and touched on politics, religion, sex, the Olympics, history, colonialism, America, education, smoking, entrepreneurship, engineering and what's to do and see on the island. The young men eventually decide that they need to feed their 6ft 7" and 6ft 4" bodies and take-off on their scooters to get some take-away kebabs whilst the rest of us head for our beds.
Tuesday starts with yet another power cut. Obviously the heat is causing problems for the island's already overloaded power system. We take off in the car to go to Livadi; a village just south of the centre of Kythera. The name Livadi, means 'meadow' and the village is built on the edge of a large flood plain which is rich in nutrients and vegetation. It seems to have built up as a shopping centre for electrical and household goods as well as a location for practising professionals such as the veterinary surgeon, optician, dentist and the Kythera radio and TV station when it had funding. We are there to collect two wall lights that we ordered last week. These modern glass and silver coloured metal lights will go over our bed and replace the awful brown ones that we have lived with for so long.
Waldo wants to buy a large torch. His son and friends are visiting soon and we want to be able to take them to some distant churches built in caves. We visit our usual electrical store. Just on the entrance to the shop is a wonderful day-bed. It has three metal sides in a rambling rose pattern and is just what I have been wanting for years. The mattress is rather soft and squidgy, but Nicos is quite happy to supply an alternative one. After negotiating the price of bed, mattress , torch and batteries we talk about delivery. Amazingly Nicos tells us it will be at the house at 7pm. I double check that he means today and not another day in the vague future, but 7pm tonight it will be.
Greece is quite a way to the Eastern Mediterranean and as such there are not long evenings. The sun rises and sets quickly so there is either sunshine or darkness and not much in between. Whilst the sun is shining at 7pm, it is dark by 8.30pm. It is after 8.30pm that our day-bed arrives. Waldo has the dangerous job of helping carry it down our stone steps, right around the pool, up to the kitchen patio, around the front of the lounge to the back patio and then into the room where the bed is to be located. This room has always intended to be Waldo's office and to serve as an extra single bedroom should the need arise. Because it is rarely used it has become a depository for everything that does not have a place. So it has been a great exercise in clearing out the room. This pushes me ever nearer to moving into my office, the AcropoLiz. I am determined to have this room space up and running before we leave next week.
Thursday dawns hot and clear. I bake another date shortcake sandwich. As I take it out of the oven we have yet another power cut! That's the end of my baking for the morning! More of our Dutch neighbours are coming for coffee this morning. The woman who owns the house is the niece of the man who did so much for this island and designed the three houses known as Dutchman's Hill here. He was very much influenced by the architect Frank Lloyd Wright in the architecture and interior of the properties. Amazing, although Hommine has been coming to Kythera for over 40 years she has never been inside our house. So it is a morning of cleaning, hoovering and generally tidying up. We don't really live in such chaos, we just work on the basis that we can live as things are and rather than clean on a regular schedule just have a mad clear up when people come. It works fine for us.
I am overcome when Hommine gives me an old plate which belonged to her uncle. It has a quotation from the work of Robert Louise Stevenson on it and is decorated with pink flowers and a gold filigree pattern. It is so lovely to have something that links back to the architect of designer of the house and how was she to know that my kitchen is pink and that the back wall hosts a collection of old plates! The generosity of people on this island never fails to surprise and touch me. Having meaning to life is so important and recognised as such. People take time to care about others, they take time to think about things and they take time to do things for other people. Yes there are frustrations with power cuts, and roads, and inefficiency, and time and much more. But that is the business part of life. For the Greek people, and the people of this island particularly what matters is family, friends and neighbours. Those are the priorities and everything else comes way down the list. Young people are not thrown out of their homes when they go to college or start work, they are nurtured, still an integral part of the family. Elderly people are not left to fend for themselves or shut away in institutions but brought back from independent living into the body of the family home where they are respected, nurtured and made to feel useful. neighbours are cared for, not just in an emergency but as a matter of daily course. If a housewife is making a casserole she will pop into the oven a small dish for her neighbour. If a fisherman has had a good catch he will drop one in to his neighbour on his way home. If someone had a glut of fruit or vegetables they will share them with their neighbours.
None of us live in isolation here. We live as a community but are respected sufficiently to be able to enter, centre or distance ourselves as our own needs demand.
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