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| Voidokoilia, the famous natural harbor from Homer's Iliad---an incredible place to hike and run |
The Olive Harvest
The olive harvest is now progressing at full tilt, from first sun until sunset. Here are photos from the other side of wall.
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| Step one, placing the nets |
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| Pruning while harvesting |
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| Ready for the village co-operative press |
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| Well pruned trees |
Tread Lightly—But Carry a Big Stick
Panagia mou! (Holy Mother of God), Dimitri howled, the power auger
still firmly in his grip.
I looked across the pasture and
witnessed a prodigious geyser of pressurized water shooting a couple of meters
into the air, as if he had hit the mother lode of Texas petroleum. But no, it
was water, and it wasn’t mine. It belonged to my neighbor-farmer, old Leonida,
just down the road.
Damn it. This was the second time
we’ve severed his life in just three years. Oddly enough, it was Dimitri’s
brother Yioryio who nicked it the first time while plowing our field with his
Fiat tractor.
Leonida is a man who no one seems
to like. The very mention of his name causes the other village to put an index
finger to their heads and then turn it violently.
Water is highly coveted in
Greece, a precious commodity that must never be wasted.
“Yianni, we hit the Lotto. A
100-millimeter line in a two-strema [half
acre] field, how in the hell did we find it?”
The first time, years earlier, Leondia
appeared in the field utterly apoplectic, yelling at Yioryio, who sat atop his
tractor replying softing, “Relax, Leonida, please stop screaming.” That time we
repaired the line in a matter of minutes. This time, Dimitri and I were unable
to find the shutoff—because, I learned later, it is a pirated line—and the
water continued to flow ceaselessly.
Many phone calls and no small
amount of head-scratching. Dimitri’s Bangladeshi worker, Oudeen, followed
orders by reaching into the hole we had drilled, pulling out debris to expose
the broken line. After some time we were able to shut the flow but not fix the
problem. Dimitri’s other brother, the plumber Lambros, was far off in the hills
harvesting olives and wasn’t answering his phone.
Leonida’s illegal water line
bisects our property and should never have been there, installed many years
earlier under cover of darkness in order to evade the authorities. This is the
way in Greece: avoid paying for anything until absolutely necessary. Especially
taxes.
I expected the old man to appear
at any moment, enraged, and expressed my concern to Dimitri.
“To hell with him, it’s his
problem not yours!” This was repeated by most of the villagers who I had spoken
with the first time. It made me uncomfortable as the outsider.
But cognizant of being the foreigner,
and with full knowledge of the need for water—he uses it to water his
greenhouses—I took the trouble to approach the water district office in Koroni
(Leonida had harangued me to do so) and put in an application to have the water
line moved up to the right of way on the edge of the road, where it should have
been in the first place—away from the roots of the olive trees, the tines of
the tractor, and the sharpened auger bit. Three years later, nothing had been done.
Rather typical for Greece.
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| Praise the Lord and pass the feta |
So I waited for Leonidas to
appear, which he did at the end of siesta hour. He was fulminating,
gesticulating, and quite incensed—not at me but at my workers, his lifelong
neighbors.
“You need to go back to the water
company and put in another application.” I had been forewarned that he would
make the demand and was told by everyone that I ought to ignore him. But I
couldn’t ignore him. He was so angry he was on the verge of tears.
Of course, like most things in
Greece, there is always more to the story.
This little old man was a fascist—and
not in the figurative sense. He had been an enforcer during the time of the
military junta (1967 to 1974), which modeled itself on Spain’s Francisco
Franco, with a touch of Adolph Hitler and Benito Mussolini for good measure.
Looking at him in 2019, a spindly old toothless man, it was hard to believe he
had once been a holy hell-raiser. And yet he was once much feared and today
totally reviled by many in the village. Many count themselves as communists,
socialists, or at the very least committed anti-fascists. (I fall into the
later category.) The legacy of the junta lives on nearly fifty years after its
demise and the restoration of Greek democracy.
Still I am the outsider, water is
precious, and it is not mine to deny him what is (rightfully not) his. So I
chose to be accommodating and compliant. To a point.
I relayed what had been told to
me. “It’s your problem, not mine. Why don’t you go to the water district and put
in an application yourself. I’ve already done this once.”
His reaction was slightly more violent.
His voice raised, he began poking me in the chest and speaking more loudly. I
resisted responding in kind--after all he is an octogenarian, although still yet strong, judging the poking and shoving. Instead, I raised my voice every time he raised his. Suddenly my Greek
became ever more fluent and effortless, and a bit colorful. He continued to
brow beat me into contrition. He failed in that attempt.
He began goose-stepping in
circles and then poked me one last time.
I am the son of a Marine Corp
colonel, hardened by the Pacific War, and I'm well atuned to being brow-beaten.
One final time he said, “What you
need to do is…”
I didn’t let him finish his
sentence.
“What I need to do, Leonida, is
go to the water district and tell them that you’re stealing water, and have
been for twenty years, while I’m paying for it and so are your neighbors." My
finger was now firmly planted in is his
sternum. For a moment I fantisized speaking to a certain president of the
“unfree” world, another fascist, a word he likely couldn’t even spell. The fantasy
was nothing short of empowering. Standing on the steps of 1600 Pennsylvania
Avenue, yelling at an ignorant old man, my finger stuck in his chest..
Then his kindly wife appeared on
the road’s edge shaking her head, looking down at the ground. I sensed that she
had been down this road for a lifetime, a husband who lived a life of
intimidation and pontification.
I put my finger away and lowered
my voice, leaving him to one side, walking down the roadside with his wife,
while the old man fiddled with his mobile phone.
“Ma’am, I want to be a good
neighbor. I want to do the right thing. Your water is essential and I am so
sorry about the line being cut. I do want to make it right. Tell him that the
plumber will be here after siesta. In the meantime, you can fill a barrel on
your pickup from my tap for now. But also tell him that it’s his
responsibility, not mine, to make this right. Once I’ve completed fencing and
gating the property he will not be able to enter. If I have time, I will take a
few hours of my day and return to Koroni again to inquire. In the meantime, he
should find a way to correct the problem.”
She thanked me. “You don’t have
to go tomorrow, whenever it’s convenient for you.”
I shook his hand and he
goose-stepped away.
---
Later in the day, after an
Albanian had spliced the broken line and turned the main back on, I was told by
many in the village not to go to the
water district. “To hell with Leonida,” they all shouted in the cafeneion, a Greek
chorus of resistance.
And yet I still feel like I want
to do the right thing before I leave here in less than a week.
----
Always New People
I was working on a freelance
project this morning and a woman appeared on a motorbike, asking some questions
to Dimitri in flawless but heavily accented Greek. I appeared on the veranda
and the two of us began conversing in Greek, both aware of the fact that
neither of us was speaking our native tongue.
Oushee, an Austrian woman in her sixties, lives in a nearby market village and has been in Greece for many
years. We traded our stories, spoke of our lives, and became friends instantly.
She has children who are the age of mine and they too speak Greek. It is a
special to meet people who are equally smitten with this incredibly inviting and lovely place.
All morning I have been working
alongside Dimitri and his Bangladeshi worker, Oudeen, all three of us chatting
away in Greek.
Two thousand years ago, Greek was
the lingua franca of the eastern Mediterranean. I suppose in some ways it still
is that common tongue for many peoples.
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| No bad sunsets--looking west toward Finikounda |
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