I cry for you, Greece

While many fires still rage through Greece, a state of emergency has been declared for the whole country and there are three days of mourning. Those three days are already nearly finished, the number of victims keeps on increasing and new fires still flare up daily. This disaster is not to be rectified with three days of mourning. This is a disaster such as has never been seen before in Greece.

From Saturday onwards TV stations showed non stop not only the terrible images of the fires, but also intense discussions between notables and anchor women, apparently not disturbed at all by phone calls from mayors desperately begging for help, describing how close the fire had approached their village, and angry people who didn't understand why nobody was coming to help them.

Words and images on TV are not enough to portray this huge disaster. Even the numbers of the ongoing outbreaking fires cannot describe it. Headlines shout: "Greece is burning!". Greece is crying.

Because you cry when you see villagers and homeowners desperately fighting against huge flames that threaten their properties: they fight with branches, buckets and garden-hoses, but in most cases in vain...

The government has stopped commenting. They themselves are now under fire because of the emergency service failures. Premier Karamanlis blames it all on arsonists, but no way do I believe that all fifty or so new fires that break out each day are the work of unscrupulous people.

The Greek government should be ashamed. Not only the current governing party, Nea Demokratia, but also PASOK. They ruled the country for years and are also responsible for this failing system that could not save people, homes, animals and land quickly enough.

In a Dutch book, 'Oriste, een reiswijzer Griekenland' (Oriste, a travelservice Greece) published by Teleac-Not in 1999 on page 154 they write about the fire brigade: "One of the developments to be concerned about is the increase in the number of wild fires and the failing fight against them. Until recently the forest administration was responsible for this, but now the responsibility has been transferred to the fire brigade. Fights between the two services, poor equipment, combined with often high temperatures, are not contributing to safe woods. It is as well to know that in a dry country such as Greece a thrown cigarette stub can cause an enormous disaster."

The Greek government only thinks of public enemy number one: Turkey. They invest huge amounts of money in the military. They forget the other enemy: fire. On a day that Greece was hit with about 180 fires, there were a thousand firemen battling against the flames, helped by 20 planes and 19 helicopters. How can you try to get control of so many fires with so few people and so little equipment?

It's very easy to blame it on landowners who see their land worth more when the trees are gone or on real estate agents that see in burned land ideal building sites. Of course they are to blame for some of the fires. But I'm afraid there are other causes that a government of a modern country should have dealt with long ago.

Was the government ever concerned about the illegal rubbish dumps in the Greek landscape? On every walk you make you will pass at least one such illegal dump. There only needs to be a bottle that works like a magnifying glass and whoops, there's a fire. Did the government ever encourage the building of garbage plants so that all those legal garbage sites would disappear? Last year such a dump caused a big fire close to Thessaloniki releasing toxic clouds. That's never happened in Molyvos, but whenever in the autumn they set fire to the garbage dump in order to clean up the place, it's frightening. Not to mention all the toxic fumes that you have to endure for days.

Some news broadcasters also mentioned the electricity poles that spark. On Lesvos we also have these poles that spread sparks. We even have one just beside the house. Especially in winter time, when there is wind and rain, they can make firework displays. I myself once saw a fire that started like that. But happily enough that was in the winter when we could only dream of drought and heat.

So just as the Chinese are said to be the cause of the increasing price of milk in Europe, the arsonists are all to blame for the devastating fires in Greece. The government should be ashamed. In a few weeks, on the 16th September, there will be elections. Early in the weekend of the disaster, all the leaders of the biggest parties (Nea Demokratia, PASOK and KKE, the communist party) ceased their campaigning in order to visit the worst hit places. Now that the criticism really starts, they stay under cover, too afraid to make a wrong move. Part of the campaign money is to be given to the victims, but you can never tell how people in a rage will react.

The heat wave seems to be over, although the weather reports keep on forecasting hot weather. The fires are far from being extinguished. When the time comes for the Greeks to vote, then the full disaster of human misery, the destruction of the ecological and the economical systems can be fully seen. It is promising to be very hot election days.

Copyright © Smitaki 2007

Invisible grief

We've just had the fourth heat wave of the year and again Lesvos came out of it without any fires. In some places in the country they're still fighting the flames. Although the weather forecast predicted that we should have some showers, none of them came to the island, they just stayed in the north of the country, in Evia and some of them in the Peloponnese, where the burnt and barren landscape was already threatened with another disaster: floods.

It is harvest time now: the almonds fall off the trees, the figs have already been ripe for some weeks and the grapes hang in clusters ready to be picked. Soon the walnuts will be ripe and the quinces will follow. Then, if the weather gods love us, there will be some rain and the snails will creep out into the open and mushrooms will peep above the ground. Then it will be time for the olive harvest. In October the nets have to be laid out under the trees.

Lesvos is a farmers land. They have a small export of sardines, ouzo and olive oil and most people have many olive trees, some fruit trees, pieces of land where they grow vegetables and have sheep and goats from whom they get milk to make cheese. Around Agia Paraskevi there are many cows. So the island can be seen as self-supporting.

The people of the island live a lot off their own produce. Most of them are not rich and life in Greece can be very expensive. Vegetables and fruit from the garden, almonds and walnuts to make sweets, grapes to make wine, all these products help to make life easier. In the autumn many people go picking chestnuts around Agiasos (there are also some chestnut trees in Argenos), in autumn and winter masses of people are gathering mushrooms and in the winter and in spring they look on the fields for wild greens (chorta and wild asparagus). In most villages there are womens co-operatives that produce jams, sweet fruit (spoon sweets or koutalia gliko), tomato sauce, cookies and marzipan cakes.

And then there are the olives that are to be preserved and to be pressed for oil. Greeks use about 35 litres per person per year. Olives are not only used for consumption. On Lesvos the soap industry has livened up a little thanks to all the tourists. Most people on Lesvos have their own oil that they distribute amongst their family, even if they live in Athens. And when they need money they can sell some oil through the co-operatives.

It was not easy to learn how to make jam or how to preserve the olives. We got to know that quinces make a good basis for liqueur. I have endlessly cracked almonds and pine nuts for marzipan, pesto, cakes or roasted almonds to be served with a drink. For weeks I had dirty brown hands because I forgot to put on gloves when peeling walnuts. I have skinned hundreds of tomatoes. I have picked kilos of strawberries, taken stones out of thousands of cherries, cooked I do not know how many apricots. I have pricked myself so many times during the picking of blackberries because I love blackberry liqueur. I have baked dozens of apple pies. I have learnt to look for wild asparagus and to know which mushrooms to pick. I'm starting to learning what wild greens you can eat and I learned to make syrup in a big kettle with figs (pettimessi).

I still don't know how to make cheese, because we have no goats or sheep. I am good at finding snails, but I've never prepared them for dinner. I love to eat them, especially when they are cooked according to a local recipe with quinces, but I still have problems preparing the snails to be cooked.

Especially if as a city dweller you come to live on such a green island, you go crazy about all the fruit and vegetables that grow in abundance. For centuries the Greeks knew how to preserve fruit and vegetables for the winter, although nowadays more and more people living in the city and modern mothers forget how to preserve.

Greeks who do not live in the big cities and are not farmers love to go to their gardens or plots of land after their regular jobs, in order to take care of their animals and their crops. When the tourists disappear at the end of the season, on Lesvos they all hurry to their olive trees in order to start the preparations for the olive harvest.

The victims of the huge fires on the Peloponnese and on Evia are going to have a very hard time. Most of them not only lost members of their family, friends or their house, they also lost a lot of gardens, where they worked so hard for so many years in order to get oil, fruit, vegetables, milk and meat. 3% of the national olive harvest is lost, 60,000 goats and sheep burnt alive. These numbers can hardly tell how the lives of these Greeks are disrupted. Their houses can be rebuilt or repaired, but they can no longer go to their land to prune the trees, to pick the fruit, to lay out the nets under the olive trees. They can no longer take care of their cattle or make feta. And even if they got new animals, what would they eat? It takes 8 to 10 years before an olive tree bears fruit. The 80 to 100 years old trees give the best and the most fruit. It will take years before the charred landscapes will produce grass and chorta again.

National as well as international millions were collected for the victims. These coming month they will still be the talk of the country. But when the Greeks go to their orchards to harvest the Greek gold, a lot of people will be forgotten. Those who stay seated at their kitchen tables because there is no harvest, those who ask themselves what in heaven they should do with their blackened plot of land...

Copyright © Smitaki 2007