Refugees: The Growing Cloud Over Samos

by Alec Newell

 

Greek official with refugees in Pythagorio, Samos - photo by Newell



The road between Avlakia and Vathi
photo by Newell

Until this year, one of the best things about being on Samos had been a vacation from the US daily news and the angst that always seemed to accompany it.  This season we have been bombarded with news from the folks back home about how bad the economy is here.  We were seeing it all first hand and probably had a better read on how things were than the information we were getting from all the third hand Email sources.  Greece has been having money problems for decades.  No news in that.



Refugees in Pythagorio - photo by Newell

What has really gotten our attention this year hasn't been the Greek economy so much as the hundreds of refugees who have been pouring ashore at night, leaving the beaches littered with scuttled life rafts, discarded clothing, empty plastic water jugs,  inner tubes, and orange life jackets.  Yesterday, almost as comic relief to the situation, I noticed a group of Greek boys swimming behind the seawall at Agios Konstantinos, playing with inner tubes, life vests, and an inflatable raft they'd salvaged from the beach.  Greek Huck Finns on the Aegean.

Greek boys playing in Agios Konstantios - photo by Newell

 

Pythagorio - photo by Newell 

The word from the locals is that these people are fleeing from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Somalia.  Most of them are passing through Turkey to escape the slaughter of Christians and the forced conscription of military aged men into groups like ISIS and the Taliban.  We have heard that Turkish coyotes are charging $1500.00 per adult and $800.00 per child, or about $30,000.00 per trip to tow a boat load of refugees to within a short distance of Samian beaches, then dumping them.  By morning there seem to be small groups of wet refugees and floating debris everywhere.


People who have been coming to Samos for twenty years now, say that there is no precedent for what we are seeing this season.  Web sources estimate that in the first five months of 2015 alone, more than 42,000 illegal "immigrants" have come ashore on Greek islands, or six times the total number that were estimated for all if 2014.  Given all the noisy press Greece has been getting about their economy, we thought it odd that there had been so little in the news about the refugees





Refugees in Pythagorio - photo by Newell

 

Patmos and the Book of Revelation

by Alec Newell

 Monastery of St. John the Theologian - photo by Newell

 

Entrance to the Cave of the Apocolypse
photo by Kristin Brodt

Yesterday I made a day trip to the neighboring island of Patmos with Kristin Brodt, a friend just in from Florida.  Patmos is just two hours south and west of Samos by ferry.  A smaller, drier Island than Samos, its main claim to fame is that it is where the Book of Revelation was written by John the Apostle while in exile from Ephesus during a period of Christian persecution under the Roman Emperor Domitian (reigned: 81 to 96 ad).

John's eighteen month stay on Patmos is fairly well documented, and the island has become a destination for tourists and pilgrims who come there to visit the monastery built in 1088, and to see the cave where the Book of Revelation was written. There is a natural stone niche and writing stand in the cave where the book was dictated from God's lips to John's ears, and faithfully recorded:

photo by Newell

Book of Revelation 1:11 - God to John the Apostle: I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last: and, What thou seest, write in a book, and send it unto the seven churches which are in Asia; unto Ephesus, and unto Smyrna, and unto Pergamos, and unto Thyatira, and unto Sardis, and unto Philadelphia, and unto Laodicea.

 



Tour guided lunch at a large open air restaurant

photo by Newell

 

The monastery has miraculously escaped major looting over the centuries and still has a vast trove of important original icons, relics, and one of the best collections of Biblical manuscripts anywhere outside the Vatican.  There is a manuscript that is believed to be the oldest extant copy of the Gospel according to Mark, and an original rendering of an icon by El Greco on display in the museum.  The excursion took a full day and included a guided tour to the cave, museum, and monastery, a walking tour of Chora, a 16th  Century community built just outside the monastery, lunch at a nice open air restaurant, and a guided bus tour of the south end of the island.

 

 

The waiters who entertained us with traditional Greek dancing
photo by Newell

 

The restaurant is a family operated business where the mother and uncles still do the cooking and the waiters are all brothers and nephews who dress in traditional garb and perform authentic Patmian dances for their guests.  Patmos is a little off the beaten path for most tourists  and picture taking is not allowed inside the monastery church, the museum, or inside the Cave of the Apocalypse, but the experience is worth the trip if you have the time to visit the island.

 

 


Sporty little convertible at the port of Skala, Patmos
photo by Newell
 

 

A Traditional Greek Village Wedding

by Alec Newell 

 

The receiving line - photos by Newell

 

A typical wedding picture from a home in the village

I don't think I've been in a single home in the village that didn't have at least one traditional wedding picture hanging from its plastered walls.  Greek weddings like the Irish wakes have evolved into national stereotypes, so when we got the word that there would be a wedding in the village, I didn't want to miss it. 

 

Father of the bride

Our house stands about half way between the Orthodox Church where the wedding would be and the village plateia or town square where the banquet and reception was to be held afterward, so even without an invitation, I'd be able to see everything but ceremony itself.  The people in the wedding party:  the couple, the parents, the in-laws, bride's maids, flower girls, and even the Orthodox priest, all looked like they could have just stepped out of central casting for a Hollywood movie.  I'd heard from neighbors that the bride was Greek and that the Groom's accent sounded "British," but that wasn't enough information for a story. I needed to know more.  Their story turned out to be better than fiction.

Flower girls

I discovered that the groom was Welsh and the bride was indeed Greek with maternal family ties to the village going back at least four generations.  The bride's ancestral home, built by her great grandfather, is only six meters or less than twenty feet from the church where her grandmother and aunt had been married.  The bride, from about the age of thirteen, had always expressed an interest in being married in that same church one day.

I arranged a visit with the bride's mother, an aunt and the grandmother, to find out more about the people in the wedding and the family.  Over traditional Greek coffee and cookies from the bakery, I was treated to the whole family history.  It was an interesting and complex tale that closely parallels the national saga in which successive generations of young Greeks have left the country to seek opportunities an foreign countries, only to be drawn back at critical junctures of their lives to reconnect with family members and the villages which have been the cultural taproot that still anchors them to their Greek heritage.

The ancestral home and family portrait

The bride's great grandfather had been a Greek national who had gone to America early in the 20th Century, and had found work there as a lumber jack.  After losing a leg in a logging accident, he returned to Greece, married a girl who had been born here in Vourliotes, and had added a second story to the house where we were having coffee.

The bride's grandmother had met her husband near the village well in the days before the house had been piped for running water.  He was a young soldier from Athens, doing his military service on Samos.  To keep their meetings discreet, she would hang a white towel in an upstairs window of that house to signal the young soldier that she was on her way to the well.  In time the young soldier and his bride left the village for Cardiff, Wales where he found work as a ship's chandler servicing Greek merchant vessels engaged in the Welsh coaling trade.

The village's most recent bride was that ship chandler's granddaughter.  She was born and grew up in the UK, but made frequent summer visits back to their grandmother's house in Vourliotes.  That house is still in the family.  As a youngster, the girl would return home from her summer vacations speaking Greek and dreaming of her own wedding in the old church.  This week's wedding was the culmination of a single dream shared by three generations of women from the same family who had all worked hard to make that vision come true.  
 

The bride and groom

Reception banquet

 



The wedding with its large communal outdoor reception: the large seated banquet, the live music, drinking and dancing were traditions that seemed to breathe a renewed excitement into an aging village.  It was everything I had imagined that a traditional Greek wedding could be, and more.

The bride's maternal grandparents

Talking with the bride's grandmother, I learned an interesting sidebar to this story.  When I asked to see the picture from her own wedding, she told me that the photographer who had taken the picture had also made a blow-up of it as a window display for his studio. The enlarged photo was such a novelty at the time, that it actually drew small crowds on the sidewalk.  When the young couple saw it, they offered to buy the enlargement for themselves, but couldn't afford the price the photographer was asking for it.  The picture shown above went with them to Cardiff, the blow-up stayed behind on Samos, and has been lost to time.

For background information on this post read: "The Greek Diaspora" - 7/1/2013
at:  http://mysamoshome.blogspot.gr/2013/07/the-greek-diaspora.html

Rebetiko Music at Bacchus' Taverna

"Bacchus' Traditional Taverna"
 

 Rebetiko Music

or

 "Greek Oldies" night at Bacchus' Tavern

 

by Alec Newell

 

 

 

The group called Tekeros - photos by Newell and Skaggs

Last night we received a word of mouth invitation to join some neighbors for dinner at a taverna in the upper end of the village that specializes in traditional Greek food and hot baked bread, all prepared on site from meat and vegetables produced by the family on a local plot of their own land.  In addition to the amazing food and local wine, the family had arranged for a quintet of young musicians who specialize in playing a style of Greek music called Rebetiko.




photo from the net

Rebetiko Music it turns out, is a form of urban folk music with complicated roots and traditions that officially dates from the 1920s to the 1950s.  There was a revival of the style beginning in about 1960 that continues today.  There were perhaps only thirty guests in the restaurant, which was a shame because the food and music should have rated a packed house anywhere on Planet Earth.



authentic Greek menu

The up side for us as Americans, was that we had had the incredible good luck to have been invited to such a small and intimate gathering.  As the evening progressed and younger guests trickled in, dishes were emptied and glasses were filled; wine flowed and the guests got mellow, the musicians loosened up and the music only got better.  A few members of the audience, their eyes glistening with wine and nostalgia, joined in the singing. Kathy and I of course, were unfamiliar with the lyrics, but music evokes universal emotions; laughter from the musicians and smiles from other guests drew us in and made us feel right at home.  Except for the Christmas holidays, it's something we rarely experience in our own culture these days.



 



Applause

It was already a very late night when Kathy and I left, but the musicians and younger guests seemed to still be gathering momentum as we started down the steps of the taverna to head home.  The owner followed us out and in very limited English, took our hands and let us know that he had been pleased to have had us as his guests, and hoped that we had enjoyed ourselves.  We stumbled back down the stone paved foot path toward the house in an almost giddy glow as the music trailed off behind us.  Nice party.

The table carnage left in our wake.

 



 

July 5th - "The Ballot" by Alec Newell

The polling station in Vourliotes
photos by Newell

The balloting place for our village is the primary school.  As you enter the  building the first classroom on the left is for voters with last names that begin with Alpha through Kappa, and the first classroom on the immediate right is for voters with last names that begin with Lambda through Omega.  The atmosphere is relaxed.  The poll sitters and voters all seem to be on a first name basis, but the actual voting procedure is fixed and somewhat formal.

The voter hands over a laminated identification card which is checked against a computer generated list, an envelope is stamped and initialed by a poll sitter, and the voter is issued two pieces of paper.  One is a printed ballot sheet with two boxes: one marked Oxi (pronounced O'-hee) meaning No, the other marked Nai (pronounced nay) meaning yes.  The second sheet is an aspero meaning white.  It is a blank sheet of paper that signals a formal abstention.  The voter retires to an aluminum frame cubicle with a curtain to mark the ballot, inserts one of the sheets of paper into the stamped envelope, and drops it into the Plexiglas ballot box in front of the polling attendants.  At this point the voter has his identification card returned.  I saw several instances where older voters walked off forgetting to collect their ID cards, and a polling attendant had to chase the voters down to return them.



A bit of last minute campaign messaging

The impression I got was that the younger voters seemed to favor rejecting the proposal.  One held up his ballot for me and pointed at the box marked Oxi or No.  He encouraged me to take a picture but when I stepped back to include him in the photo he said, "No Face."

The older voters, worried about losing what remains of their dwindling retirement money, seemed to favor the more conservative option.  On one occasion I noticed a man with very limited sight ask for assistance from a poll sitter to help him mark his ballot.  My Greek is limited, but I could hear a very audible "Nay" (yes) spoken from behind the closed curtain.

the voting booth

A restaurant owner from the village recognized me and smiled.  Just before he dropped his envelope in the box, he drew his finger across his throat saying "Ohee" (no) then he signaled a chopping motion to the back of his neck with the edge of his hand and said "Nay" (yes) then he shrugged, turned his palms up and dropped his ballot in the box, indicating that no matter which way today's vote went, no good would come of it.

The voter turnout for this referendum was unusually high today, and the results from the ballot could even be in before I post this, so we'll see.

the ballot box



 



July 4th - Star Spangled Souvlaki




photos by Newell

Watermelon, Fireworks from the Grill,

and Cucumber Sorbet

by Alec Newell



Heinrich Schliemann's Face of Agamemnon
National Archeological Museum of Athens

"Agamemnon, king of men, sacrificed an ox, a male five years old, to the exalted son of Cronos. They flayed the beast, prepared and carved it up, chopping it skillfully into pieces.                                                        
They skewered these on spits, cooked them carefully, and drew them off. This done, they prepared a meal and ate. No one went unsatisfied. All feasted equally"

Homer's Illiad, Book VII - 370

 
Traditional American Independence Day celebrations are a hard thing to give up, even when you happen to be in a foreign country.  As the old saw advises, "When in Rome..."  or at least try to make some suitable adaptation to whatever country you happen to be in.

 

ancient souvlaki skewers and brazier
National Archaeological Museum of Athens

Meat cooked on skewers is a Greek tradition that goes back at least to the time when Agamemnon and his bronze-bright warriors camped, made sacrifices to Zeus, and feasted on brazed beef near the plains of ancient Troy.  This time honored tradition is still a part of Greek cuisine that is today called souvlaki.  In America it goes by the name of sish-kabob, the perfect choice for an American style cook-out with a Greek pedigree. 
 
We generally use chicken or sometimes pork when we make souvlaki, but out of deference to far older traditions, I decided to use beef.  Kathy put together some side dishes, I located a locally grown watermelon, and we invited Susan and Dimitris Trovas, a Greco-American couple and long time friends over to help celebrate.




ad hoc Greek cucumber sorbet

By mid morning a bag of cucumbers had shown up on our doorstep which Kathy turned into  another one of those on-the-fly dishes she creates from the unexpected vegetables that our neighbors frequently bring us.  Some went into the salad, the rest got turned into a lime green cucumber sorbet we had for dessert.

Growing up, dessert was always something you got for eating all the vegetables on your plate, and if you don't count pumpkin pie, vegetables as dessert was something I'd never really considered before.  It turned out to much better than what I'd imagined.




Beef souvlaki with onions and peppers

The souvlaki turned out well too.  Staring at the hot coals in the grill after dinner sparked a final thought on Agamemnon and the long-haired Achaeans - the regal simplicity of grilled meat and fire to celebrate the occasion.  I think our guests enjoyed themselves too.  To paraphrase lines from Homer himself, "No one went unsatisfied.  All (had) feasted liberally"



Real 4th of July  fireworks or pyrotechnics

pʌɪrə(ʊ)ˈtɛknɪks/  from the grill



Greek Economic Referendum - 2015

by Alec Newell


ATM lines in Karlovasi this week
photos by Newell

  

Ancient Greek voting machine
the Agora Museum of Athens

Since arriving on Samos, we've been bombarded almost daily, with questions from concerned friends and neighbors about how the EU's impending Sword of Damocles is affecting us.  The good news is that it's not, at least not in the short run.  This week the Greek government limited ATM withdrawals for Greek nationals, to 60 Euros per day.  Fear has resulted in long lines at some ATMs and a major inconvenience for older, retired Greeks many of whom are having to get by on about 300 Euros a month, or about half of what their retirement benefits had been before austerity measures were imposed.  But there have been no real  limits on American credit cards and ATM withdrawals.  The only limits are imposed by American banks and credit unions that are only there as security measures to protect their customers against theft and credit card fraud.  ATM withdrawal limits drawn against US bank accounts still hover between 300 and 400 Euros per transaction.

 

Political battles are nothing new to the Greek people.  In ancient times ostracism was used as an expedient to remove political opponents.  Today, the tactics have become more refined, but the game hasn't changed.

The referendum scheduled for this Sunday has huge implications for the future of Greek economy with the outcome way to close to call.  It would be the first national referendum to actually hit the polls since 1974, and with the 20 million Euros it would cost to implement, the latest rumor in the wind is that it may even be cancelled, though there is no constitutional procedure in place for that.


Ancient ostracism tokens
the Agora Museum of Athens



Greece - For Sale

I am not a Greek and I don't have a crystal ball, but what I am seeing is a lot of Greek real estate on the. market for increasingly more affordable prices; and with my wife casting avaricious glances at all those For Sale signs, this whole thing is making me very, very nervous.   

Chicken Booty

 

Minding the Language Gap

by Alec Newell

"When you call me that, smile."  Gary Cooper, in The Virginian (1946)

 

 

Fortunately, most Greeks have at least a rudimentary grasp of the English language, and  that is especially true of the young people who see fluency in English as a requisite skill that opens doors to all the better paying jobs in this country.  In some cases it has been their ticket out of the country to parts of the globe offering better jobs when the Greek economy was in the tank.  It is not unusual to hear repatriated Greeks who speak English with thick South African, or Australian accents. But as you move out into the more isolated parts of the country, it is almost essential to be able to speak just a little Greek, if only to show some polite measure of accommodation to the natives.  Nothing goes farther to build good will than to attempt even a few mangled words of greeting or appreciation during daily transactions; but those attempts are not always without snares and pitfalls.

 

The Anglo ear and tongue are not always nuanced enough to grasp the subtle differences that can make the difference between a courteous comment and an veiled insult.  The confusion English speakers have with kalimera (good morning) and calamari (squid) have become almost a cliché, and the difference between yerOS (strong) and YERos (old) is just a matter of a slight accent shift, an easy mistake for western tongues to make.

So last week Kathy and I were in a butcher shop in Karlovasi, looking for something to cook on the grill.  I spotted some nice looking thigh quarters behind the glass counter, pointed at them and said to the butcher,  "Kotopoulo, parakalo (The chicken please)."

Butcher: "Bouti?"

Me:  "No, no, the chicken - kotopoulo."

Butcher:  "Ah yes, kotopoulo bouti, you want?"

Me:  "Chicken....... booty?!  No, the leg quarters."

Kathy and the butcher's wife both laughing now.

The butcher indicating Greek lettering on the price tag in the meat case and looking somewhat puzzled now, "Yes, chicken bouti, (chicken thigh) you still like it?"

Pause

Me:  "Well... yes, but in America," pointing at my backside now, "booty means this."

We were back in that same shop again yesterday and the shop owner recognized me immediately, "Ah, you are back!  More chicken booty for you today?"

"Yes, four please."
 

The Funeral

by Alec Newell

 

The Church of St. John
photo by Kathy Skaggs

There was a funeral here Saturday.  There had been more foot traffic in the village than usual, then an odd tolling of the church bells; not the loud cacophony we usually hear on Sundays, but something shorter, more quiet.  What followed was the sound of muffled singing or chanting coming from the church. Later there was more bell ringing and the sound of many footsteps and quiet chatter outside the window.  I looked down to see perhaps 200 villagers dressed in somber clothing, all moving in the same direction along  the narrow street below, a coffin born aloft on their shoulders.  What I was witnessing looked like something I might expect to see in a movie, but never from my own upstairs window.  Before I could grab the camera, the vanguard of the procession bearing the coffin had reached the bottom of the street and had turned west toward the cemetery.  I was left holding the camera feeling a bit like a voyeur.  It is something very familiar to the people of the village, but an event that probably very few Americans ever get to see.

The next day I learned that the funeral had been for Andreas Lagos, a man in his nineties who had grown up here in Vourliotes and had died just the day before the funeral.  A notice of his death had been posted in the street less than twenty feet from our door, but not being fluent in Greek, we were not aware of its significance until later.

 




Funeral Notice for Andreas Lagos 

Bodies here are not embalmed, rather they are buried immediately after death and allowed to decompose in a grave for a period of five years, then the bones are exhumed.  They are carefully cleaned by members of the family then transferred to a special box that is then housed in an ossuary for as long as there are relatives alive to care for them.  At each point in the process there are rituals, services, and even special meals to commemorate passages of the dead.

An hour or so after the funeral procession had passed, Kathy was in the alley watering her plants when she was passed by three men returning from the cemetery, one of them carrying a pair of shovels.  It set me thinking about the cemetery and of the children we see playing in that same alley every evening, children we have been watching grow with each passing season, and of other familiar neighbors who have already begun to slip away in the short time we've been coming here.  These are the uncomplicated rhythms of village life, already so familiar to us in some ways and yet still so foreign to us in others.

To see more on local funerary customs visit:

http://mysamoshome.blogspot.gr/2013/06/the-cemetery_24.html

http://mysamoshome.blogspot.gr/2013/07/the-exumation.html