Kangaroo court

It’s been very hot here in Greece and that is why it was a little like the torment of Tantalus to see merry clouds hovering above Turkey. In daytime they expanded into huge and impressive cauliflowers and at sunset they turned to gold. At night, with our temperature still not below 30 oC, the clouds were illuminated by a fascinating light show started by orange flashes of lightning that played a game with the clouds. The bolts flashed out of the clouds, and made the cauliflower transparent or coloured its edges bright orange.

We had the lightshow, but not the rain or any cooling off, because showers that were forecast did not fall on the island. I only could imagine how far into the land mass of Turkey people were embracing the rain and totally refreshed by it — enough to sleep in their beds — while here even a swim in the sea wouldn’t cool you down. The sea was as hot as the water in your bath tub!

The flashes of lightning raised our hopes, but, sadly, we cannot complain about an absence of fire on the island. Some weeks ago the wild fires at Molyvos started again and just as they were at the end of last summer they were deliberately kindled. The inhabitants of Mollywood, the region where most fires started, had more sleepless nights and angry residents called for action and formed civil fire-watcher teams.

When there is danger rumours fly around in the village. Last year they were about a group of boys who were supposedly caught taken red handed kindling a fire, although nobody could or wanted to confirm what was really only gossip. The boys were arrested and the grapevine was very busy about who they were, but they were released and afterwards nobody could or wanted to confirm that this group of teenagers was indeed responsible for all the fires that raged last summer. The only fact is that since that time the fires last year stopped.

Last week a huge blaze started outside Kaloni, the biggest fire on the island since 2006 and it threatened several places: one fire front moved to Agia Paraskevi and another towards Klapados. The local firemen, together with helicopters from Chios, Samos and Thessaloniki all fought for 24 hours against this terrible fire, but 600 hectares of wood and agricultural areas went up in flames. When you drive now from Kaloni to Petra you not only see the charcoaled area, but smell it as well.

The rumours about the cause followed pretty quickly. Some said it was started by Turks — a favourite accusation from Greeks. Others said it was last year’s arsonist from Molyvos. In the papers there was talk about sparks from the armoured cars of the army driving around near where the fire started. The only fact is that the investigations into it are still underway.

Around Athens the causes of fires has more than once been connected to the bad behaviour of the real estate industry, but here on Lesvos nobody can profit from a burned out area. Unless, like in Molyvos, you have an arsonist, fires here on Lesvos are mostly accidents, caused by matches or cigarette buts thrown out of car windows, fires that start on illegal dumps or sparks made by machines.

According to a study by the University of the Aegean the wild fires in 2004 on Lesvos were all caused by humans. At the Department of Natural Disasters in Mytilini (the university has departments spread through the islands Lesvos, Samos, Chios, Rhodos, Syros and Lemnos) several studies of fire behaviour and prevention have been made together with research into the development of equipment to prevent, forecast or detect wild fires. However even the best systems, connected to the latest communications technology could not prevent the huge Kalloni catastrophe. Even though there is plenty of publicity and public messages about how to avoid throwing cigarettes out of car windows, burning garbage illegally and the rest, people still carelessly do these things and so the wild fires start.

In Molyvos they have tried to put their own ‘prevention measure’ in place. When the fires started again in June this year again, lots of people thought it was a man in the village. Last year it was said that it was he who encouraged kids to start the fires and when a bunch of angry villagers tried to confront him, he fled on his motorbike. After some more fires the villagers took matters into their own hands and refused to sell him bread, no shop would serve him and he couldn’t get a meal in a café or restaurant. The man fled to Kaloni and since then there are no more fires in Molyvos. But the people in Kaloni must be wondering!

(With thanks to Tony Barrell)

@ Smitaki 2009

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

Fire and water

For weeks Greece was plagued by wild fires. Some days there were hundreds of fires all over the country. Kozani, Ioannina, Peloponesus, Kastoria, Athens, Crete, Kefalonia, Chios and Samos are just some of the familiar names from the long list of places where fires left catastrophic damage.

Indeed it was pretty hot with two heat waves in one month. The weather had never been better for arsonists. Not only nature came under fire, but also the Greek government. The two biggest parties, PASOK and Nea Demokratika, never stopped blaming each other: they weren't organised enough to control the fires and the government never did enough to stop real estate developers building on burnt areas. The majority of Greeks don't believe the burned down forests will be replanted, as premier Karamanlis has pledged.

While in some places there are still fires, in many places people have to get used to the destruction made by the fires and the government hopes that it didn't lose too much goodwill. But the next disaster is already here: drought. Especially on the Cycladic Islands, there is a water shortage, which will only get worse, because not only is the number of foreign tourists increasing, the Greeks also now come in large numbers to the islands, in order to cool off a little and for the celebration of the Ascension of Maria on the 15th of August.

Due to the very dry winter the shortage was predicted by everybody. And of course the two heat waves only made matters worse. Some islands even have money to build water reservoirs and desalination installations. But Greek bureaucracy is so slow that most of the plans still have to reach the design stage.

Lesvos did pretty well in the fiery month of July. We just had some small fires and Lesvos was barely mentioned in the long lists published in the papers daily of the places ravaged by fire. Lesvos is not a part of the thirsty Cycladic Islands, it is part of the North Aegean islands. That doesn't mean we can be careless with the water. Plomari in the south has for weeks had twice daily water cuts and the inhabitants are not allowed to water their plants anymore.

Of course the scientists keep saying: the climate's warming up! The Greeks accuse their government of not taking enough action for a better climate. The ancient Greeks used to blame the Gods on Mount Olympus for such disasters and tried to sweeten them into doing something by making sacrifices.

Nowadays the Greeks can endlessly debate politics and pray to the saints in the thousands of little churches that are built everywhere. The temples of the gods have disappeared, or are in ruins and only serve as moneymakers, thanks to the tourists. No soul looks up to heaven any more, to beg Zeus for a fresh summer rain.

Zeus is mainly responsible for the weather. The god of fire is his son Hephaestos. When Zeus' wife Hera delivered Hephaestus he was so ugly that Hera immediately threw him off Mount Olympus. Hephaestus fell into the sea and came ashore on the island of Limnos. There he built his forge and became best known for making beautiful weaponry.

Then it was Prometheus who stole the fire to bring it to the people on earth. Prometheus was punished for this by being attached to a rock on a mountain, where a vulture came to eat his liver each day, then each night the liver grew again. But the people now had fire. They could warm themselves and they could also use it for destruction.

That's how the fire came to earth. There were no gods on Mount Olympus responsible for extinguishing the fires, it was Zeus who had to decide upon the rains. So would it be smart to ask Zeus again to improve the climate? Governments promise a lot, but seldom do what they promise. We could start with rebuilding some of the temples dedicated to Zeus. On Lesvos you won't find temples anymore. But we could start by piecing together the remains of the Ionian temple at Klopedi near Agia Paraskevi, which was dedicated to Zeus, Hera and Dionysus.

We should also build a temple for Hephaestus. He might be responsible for the fact that his neighbouring island (Lesvos is below Limnos) was spared the summer flames. Look, it isn't thanks to the government that the North of Greece has had rain showers these past few days. Maybe Zeus took pity on the few fire fighters that still have to bring fires under control. And by sending rain to the North of Greece he could've been making clear that he still runs the show.

As usual Lesvos is only getting a few spots of rain. But seeing the dark clouds gathering above Lepetimnos, is a refreshing change from the constant blue heaven.

Copyright © Smitaki 2007