Epistle from Cyprus VIII - 20th December 2006

My big toe and the ‘ians’
Cyprus has been invaded by a number of foreign tribes of what I will call ‘ians’. These are the blue eyed, light-haired and light skinned foreigners from the Balkan and former Soviet bloc countries, Russians, Georgians, Albanians, Rumanians and lots more. (Actually with that physical description I could be one of them.) They occupy the lowest positions in Cyprus working for wages far less than any Cypriot would even consider. They are also blamed every type of social problem on the island. The mere mention of the word ‘Rumanian’ in the coffee shop is enough to set the Cypriot heads nodding in disgust. This is a peculiar Cypriot action of a sharp nod of the head backwards when they disagree or disapprove of something. Once again my illusions were about to be shattered.
I was disturbed early one morning by the doorbell and on answering there was a couple of typical ‘ians’ standing there. I had no idea what language they spoke and as they spoke no English and as little Greek as I did so the communication was limited to signing. I eventually understood they were there to do some work on the pool and so I left them to it. They set to with a will and a jack-hammer so there was no possibility of sleep and they started to remove large sections of stonework and concrete from around the pool. I was a bit nervous as their reputation had gone before them but they were certainly hard working. Even so I decided to wait around and watch what they did. Mid morning there was a big hole next to the pool which was surrounded by large lumps of concrete and stone. At this point they started to fill the pool using a hosepipe and then they both disappeared. After 15 minutes of so I looked out to see the pool about to overflow and panicking over yet another large water bill I ran out to turn off the water. In my rush to save money I tripped over a large stone slab split my nail and burst the end of my large toe. The air was blue as I hopped back into the house.
Now the ‘ians’ returned and carried on working as though nothing had happened. While they continued working I continued to hop around the house looking for cotton wool and sticking plasters leaving a trail of blood across the tiled floors. It is amazing how far a little blood will spread across a tiled surface. The result was something out of a chainsaw horror movie.

As I remember it I used the word 'Ouch'

The ‘ians’ finished the job and I have to say they did a pretty good one.

Rumanian Telecomms
Since then I have met a group of Rumanian guys who are the exact opposite of their reputation. They are well educated, friendly and fun loving. They will always help out if they can. Another of my misconceptions has been shattered.
They have introduced me to yet another system of communication. When they want to ring home and confirm that they are fine and that everything at home is fine they do the following.
Ring home and allow the phone to ring twice. This means “I am OK, I will be sending money home as soon as my next pay check arrives and how are you and the kids?”.
Wait up to 30 minutes for a call which rings just once. This means “Good to hear from you the wife and children and all the relatives are fine and look forward to another extended conversation in 3 days time”. It is a simple and free to use communication system. If they do not receive the single ring back they know there is something to discuss so they phone home from here because phone charges here are less than back home and beside which no one at home has money to call anyway.

Useless tasks
While for the one millionth time cleaning the pool which I cannot use at the moment because it is too cold I pondered that there a number of tasks in life which are a complete waste of time. Brushing and raking leaves in Autumn for examples. I think a blog site should be dedicated to them.

A fat bloke hiding under a large hat sweeps the pool for the 1 millionth time

I will start the ball rolling with my suggestion for the number 1 useless task.
What is the point or ironing? You know that the moment you put something on it is going to crease. Why not save the time and put it on creased in the first place. I don’t care if it is creased or not. I certainly don’t look at other peoples clothes to see if they are creased. Does anybody actually care? Perhaps there is a business somewhere that insists all their staff have carefully ironed blouses and shirts.
OK I know the military do but for heavens sake that is the biggest waste of time of all. Does it matter when a soldier is doing whatever it is soldiers do?
“I am sorry son I can’t let you go into battle today because you do not have a crease in your pants.”
“Oh please sarge please let me go. I promise I will do them when I get back.”
“Sorry son my mind is set. None of my men go into battle without freshly pressed blousons and pants.”

Who invented ironing in the first place. Surely not a man. At least not a man who actually did any ironing. Possibly some military or management type who had a bunch of idle personnel at his disposal and had to think of something for them to do in order to fill their time.
“Come Smithers we can’t have the men stood idly by doing nothing. What can we do?” “Well Mr.Burns I have been toying with this new idea called ‘ironing’. It involves taking all your clothes laying them on a board and rubbing them all over with a hot iron full of steam.”
“Mmmm. Interesting. A complete waste of time and effort eh? I like the sound of it, Smithers.”

I hereby declare that for the rest of my sojourn in Cyprus I will not iron another item of clothing. I urge others to take of the banner (a creased one of course). Shake off the shackles of convention, the chains that tie you to the ironing board. Think or the hours you will save yourselves to do something more fulfilling and meaningful. Learn to skate. Take up karate. Spend time with your grandmother. Free yourselves.

Christmas in Cyprus
Traditionally the Cypriots do not celebrate Christmas. Their big religious festival is Easter. However they would easily allow a money making opportunity to pass by and so they have taken to Christmas with a will. The TV advertising and supermarkets are overflowing with Christmas hype. However they have still not quite got the hang of things.
I was asked to assist a couple of Rumanians friends with the ‘removal’ of a Christmas tree from a forestry area for some English people. All very naughty but real Christmas trees are at a premium here. However the tree had been selected by a Cypriot who thought he knew what a Christmas tree looked like and cut down by a Rumanian who did not care what one looked like. Bearing in mind that most people are more careful about selecting their Christmas tree than almost any other purchase they make over the holiday period. It has to be just right. The correct height and of course bushy. Cyprus is excellent for growing oranges, lemons, grapes, olives and a host of other goodies. It is not good for growing Christmas trees. As soon as I same the tree I knew that it had been sacrificed in vain. As we loaded it in the van I could picture the recipient shaking their heads.

A fine example of a Cypriot Christmas Tree

Two further trees died before it was decided
1. A Cypriot cannot select a Christmas tree.
2. A Rumanian will cut down anything you tell them if the money is right.
3. Buying an artificial tree was the best solution. (Failing then above the send a Brit. to carefully inspect the gardens in the neighbourhood and then send the Rumanians to do the rest. I plead not guilty m’lud.)

I like to kid myself that I am familiar with some unusual Christmas traditions. The Swedish “julbok”, the 13 Icelandic “Jolasveinar” and the Mexican “piñata”. I was not prepared for the following Cypriot “thing” I noticed when driving into Paphos. I am still not sure what it is even though I have asked around. At first I thought it was 6 pigs but when I stopped to photograph it I saw it was 6 bears. I am still none the wiser as I have never heard of the 6 Christmas bears or the 6 Christmas pigs.

Are they Christmas Bears or Christmas Pigs?

Christmas Dinner arrives Cyprus style

Cultural exchange
As part of my stay I here I have begun to introduce some new ideas to the locals. One of theSe is a Combined exeRcise in frUit pruning and wealth restribution. At hoMe this would usually involve apPle trees but I have fouNd that the local oranGe, tangerine and mandarin trees are an ideal substitute. My Rumanian friends have taken to this and have not just a natural talent but a positive flare for it. They think it is capital fun.

Politics
There is no escape even here in Cyprus. Just when you think you have found paradise. Sunday 17th December was the day of the local elections. Each town and village elects both the mukhtar (village president) and councillors. In Tremithousa there are 6 councillors. As with politics anywhere it is a murky business. The position of mukhtar is very powerful. He can decide where money is spent and which planning applications to allow. In this village the council agreed to purchase 2 cars for use by the villagers themselves. One of the vehicles has disappeared and rumour has it that it is in use by one of the mukhtar’s relatives. In another local village the mukhtar requested a personal payment of £5000 before a construction project could continue. The construction company passed the request to their sub-contractor who refused to pay as this was not the usual way of doing things in the EU(European Union). Actually I suspect it may be more common than we think in Mediterranean countries and as the EU grows it will become the de facto business standard.
The current mukhtar in Tremithousa just happens to have 4 of his first cousins as council members and he does not show the account details to the 2 independent councillors. In fact he reportedly does not show them to the government inspectors either.
So there has been a plan afoot to try and replace the current mukhtar and some of the council members. Otto who runs the coffee shop has been standing for the position of mukhtar. A group of others got together to put up a candidate to oppose the mukhtar. Now you would think that this would be easy and they would simply put forward the best candidate. That is not the way things are done in Cyprus. Here the person most likely to win an election is the person with the largest extended family so the best opposition candidate is simply the one with the largest family. Are you with it so far? Good.
However there is a joker card in the pack in Tremithousa. Despite the fact that there are several hundred ex-pats living in Termithousa only 36 have registered to vote. Now 36 ex-pat voters can be considered a very large extended family and so all the candidates have been courting the ex-pats who are eligible. However nothing is ever that simple. The current mukhtar has the list of voters and their addresses and he has been very reluctant to allow the list out of his control. Eventually the list was handed over so that all candidates can have the opportunity to canvass the voters. So now the ex-pats can be targeted as a group.Great.
Not quite.The voting list of English and other names has been phonetically translated into Greek so although they have the addresses no one knows their names. Even the people themselves do not recognize their own names. There was then the painstaking task of translating the Greek sounds back into an approximation of English names so that the voters can be canvassed. And you thought it was complicated at home.
The day of the vote arrived and suddenly what was the sleepy village centre becomes a hive of activity. Everyone is out in their Sunday best outfit. Even Alekos takes time out from his cemetery vigil and box of red wine to have a shave put on his best suit and totter down to the village hall to vote. The village has a carnival atmosphere. All the candidates greet the voters outside the village hall as they go in to vote.
Later in the evening as the election results are declared the church bells in the local villages start to ring out and fireworks let off. All is well except in the coffee shop which is all the fun of a wake. Otto has not been elected. Not to worry though as because of the unusual vote counting system he can combine his votes with another candidate George giving a grand total of 60 votes which gives George sufficient votes to be elected.
At the end of the day all that has been established is that the current mukhtar still has the largest extended family and Otto can count on most of the eligible ex-pats votes but will not get elected but that doesn’t matter because the votes are transferable to someone else who will get elected. Confused? I still am.

And finally

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

A Day in a Life - 12th December 2006

It is 08:00 on Sunday morning the 10^th of December. The sun is shining and it is 16C (61F) so I decide to walk to the supermarket at the other side of the village to fetch my Sunday paper. As I turn out of the drive the final bells are tolling for the church opposite and the priest and his team have turned on the loudspeakers and have begun to sing. One or two boys are making their reluctant way to church. I walk down past the yard of the man who produces hand-made fibre glass moldings. His yard is like a junk yard that has been hit by a bomb and yet in the middle is a pristine £20000 3 wheel Honda Gold Wing custom bike. I continue past the villa that Chris has built for his grand-daughter and is now rented out to Barry a millionaire from Jersey who, so rumour has it, pays £3000 per month in rent. I walk by the village centre and hope that ‘Fidel Castro’ is not about. Fidel is a bit of a pain as he is always trying to sell me something and it is always something that I do not want or need, oranges, lemons and nuts. In any other country he would work as a highly paid salesman for a computer company but in Tremithousa he is just a nuisance. I don’t know Fidel’s real name but as all the village call him ‘Fidel Castro’ on account of his wild hair and beard but by that yardstick three quarters of the village would be ‘Fidel Castro’ including some of the women.

As I walk to the edge of the village the sound of the loudspeakers from the Tremithousa church starts to fade and I can hear the loudspeakers from the church in the neighbouring village of Mesogi.

I pass over the bridge and by the cemetery and look out for Alekos but he is not around just yet. The small shrine outside the cemetery has its candles burning still. They seem to burn 24 hours a day. As I walk out on to the main road that runs from Paphos to Polis the majority of the traffic are the hunters in their 4x4s. Hunting is only allowed on Wednesday and Sunday mornings in Cyprus which is just as well. There are many people shot and domestic animals killed in accidents. When I was out in the Argaka peninsula last weekend the hunters were zooming back and forth in their 4x4s chasing anything that moved. I hardly dared step foot out of the car and it was small wonder that there was not a single soul to be seen in the small Turkish Cypriot village I went to see.

The picture shows one of the Turkish Cypriot villages in the Argaka region.

I pick up my paper and wander back home. As I walk by there a few individuals out washing their cars. I greet them in Greek and they respond in English. The only others out working on the constructions sites are a few ‘ians’. In Cyprus very few people work on Sunday except for the godless ‘ians’. They don’t seem to care.

I pass the coffee shop run by the village matriarch. Her coffee shop opens before 6 o’clock each morning. During the week people pop in for a coffee on their way to work and on Sunday it is the hunters who visit. This is particularly true in the more remote villages in the Argaka peninsular where the coffee shops are taken over by hunters drinking coffee and ‘sivenia’ and sitting and chatting. ‘Sivenia’ is the local fire water which comes in different qualities. There is the kind that is sipped ice cold and the kind that is used to clean the windows and as an alcohol rub on arthritic joints.

Finally I wander back passed Chris’ villa where the Philipino maid is just returning from walking Barry’s 2 labrador dogs. We briefly discuss the weather and continue home. It is 08:45 and the priest will continue singing for another 45 minutes yet. Just time to sit and read my paper and have a cup of coffee. An American friend called Alan from Chicago told me last week they had 12 inches of snow back home in the USA. News from home is that they had a tornado in London.

Today is just starting to warm up nicely. I think I may go and treat myself to a chocolate ice cream along on the sea front this afternoon. Surely it can’t last.

Mid-morning and the paper is read. Guilt gets the better of me so I decide I really should do some Christmas shopping. Anyway the CD player in the car is fixed so Chuck Berry, Johnny B Goode and I head down to the old part of town to see if the tourist shops are open.

On the way I pass some the Sri Lankan and Indian girls out walking. Sunday is their one day off each week and they walk in twos and threes into and out of town. They never take a bus or taxi. These girls work as domestic servants and their day starts about 6 in the morning and finishes at 9 around night. Somehow they survive on the most menial wages and yet manage to wire money back home. The Employment Wanted section of the newspaper holds their adverts seeking domestic/household positions and often includes their preference to work for an English or German employer rather than a Cypriot.

A section from the local Cyprus English language paper.

They are easily recognized as they invariably carry an umbrella to keep off the sun. As they walk they play with their mobile phones which seem to be their only luxury and a tenuous link home.

I park up near the centre of town. Should I put money in the parking meter? Nah no one else bothers around here and parking meters are treated as street decorations.

As I walk toward the tourist market the streets are blocked off by police and traffic wardens so I assume there is an accident. No. There is a street festival for Christmas. There are magicians, stilt walkers, balloon artists, face painters, choirs of school kids in their school uniform, brass bands and other musical groups. Father Christmas (Santa Claus) has even put in an appearance riding on the open sided street train which is hauling the kids around the crowded streets. He appears to be sweating profusely inside his full Christmas outfit. It is now 22C (72F) and Father Christmas’ red face makes him look like he is suffering from heat exhaustion rather than fat and jolly.

The brass bands are blaring out Christmas tunes and there is a Punch and Judy show going for the children. I decide to stop and watch for a while. It doesn’t make any difference that I do not understand what is being said because no one can hear anyway over the brass band.

Despite it being so warm the Cypriots are sporting Sunday suits, heavy sweaters and leather jackets. The tourists and I are instantly recognizable as we are the only ones in shorts and shirts.

The tourist market is not open so I decide to head down to the sea front and have that chocolate ice cream I promised myself. Parking is easy at this time of year as the swarms of red-plated hire cars have mostly disappeared and left the roads free for the locals. The timeshare sales riff-raff (I resist the temptation to use a stronger word) are still there at the sea front. Their ‘substance’ fuelled and frenzied efforts to get tourists back to their office appear to have calmed slightly. Amazing how many of them seem to have a cold even in this mild climate. It is unfortunate that they have not been made illegal here as they have in so many other EU countries.

I walk along the sea front passed the taxi drivers who are either gambling at backgammon or fishing with long poles. At this time of year there is a similarity between being a taxi driver and fishing. Most of the time you sit and wait and when you do get a bite it is usually for little reward.



The picture shows the taxi drivers playing backgammon. Their fishing poles are in the background.

What! The ice cream shop is not open! 22C and the ice cream shop is closed! I knew it could not last. Guess I will just have to sit by the pool in the sun and get an ice cream from the freezer.

Troll Hunting with a Couple of Rapscallions

This entry is purely self-indulgence

Troll Hunting with two Horrid and Handsome Boys
A little while back we went hunting for trolls in the mountains. Well actually we went to the mountains and kept really really quiet lest the trolls should hear us and come out of their caves and drag us down into the halls of the mountain king and chew on our bones.


We just about got away with it (being quiet that is) and we have the pictures to prove we were there.

Left to right are Jack and Sebastian. Later we had a picnic, played 'pee-ow pee-ow' (known to the rest of the world Laser Quest), made some new friends who were very interested in 'pee-ow pee-ow', played Spider-man and generally had a good time.
With all that playing it is hard to believe the trolls did not hear us but in hindsight they probably did and decided not to bite off more than they could chew.