Epistle from Cyprus VII - 29th November 2006

Food again

It is autumn and the season for wild mushrooms. As you might expect the Cypriots take advantage of all of nature’s bounties. Otto’s coffee shop has the doors closed in the evening now and a kerosene heater stands in the middle. One of Otto’s regular customers is the ‘Mushroom Man’ who visits with a large bag of mushrooms he has collected in the hills and fields nearby.

Fortunately for all the customers the kerosene heater also doubles as a stove. You can see the foil package of mushrooms cooking on top of the stove.

A sharp reminder of where I am

It is the end of November and the temperature is 22C (72F). As I sit here in the late afternoon sunshine it is all too easy to forget exactly where I am. For those not aware this island paradise of Cyprus is actually divided between the north and the south. Divided because of religious and sectarian differences. The south is predominantly Greek Orthodox Christian and the north is Muslim. The separation occurred in 1974 with a bloody war and the two sides glower at each other across a UN peacekeeping line. I read a sharp reminder of that separation in the newspapers and TV.

In the capital of Lefkosia (Nicosia) and in other parts of the island there are a number of International schools which have been set up to bring the two communities together. In the Lefkosia International school an incident took place between a 13 year old and a 12 year old were there was a perceived slight on the others religion. Whether the slight was real or imagined I do not think matters much. The next day a group of masked and hooded pupils from surrounding schools broke into the International school. They were aged 16 to 18 and the proceeded to beat up and terrorize a group of kids who did not share their particular faith. Iraq, Lebanon and Gaza are literally not a million miles from here.

God spare me from such 'faiths'.

Preconceptions and Misconceptions

For the rest of this epistle I will look at something close to home. How what you perceive and may have believed for a long time is not always true.

Strange how we/I make an assumption about something and only when it the assumption is put to an acid test does the truth really emerge.

Mandria

I have been told or warned at least in the local coffee bar about a village called Mandria. The bar talk was that this had become an ex-pat ghetto and should be avoided if at all possible. I had no reason not to believe the accepted wisdom which seemed to be common belief.

I was driving back from a tourist location called Petra Tou Romiou (the Birthplace of Aphrodite) when I saw a sign for Mandia and thought I should just drive through and confirm my prejudices. My suspicions began to be confirmed when I saw that there is only one road into Mandria and that is through an underpass that runs under the motorway. I presumed the locals had done this deliberately so that if necessary they could block the underpass and keep the undesirable ex-pats holed up there.

Once through the underpass however it was a different story. The road to the centre of the village was an avenue of whitewashed trees typical of the south of France. The centre of the village was a group of small tavernas and coffee shops. There was none of the high rise building usually associated with new developments. The area itself was a rich agricultural plain with extensive citrus orchards and olive groves. All this and a beach front as well.

Admittedly there is quite a lot of new development going on but it seemed to be in keeping with the village.



There was one exception to this which was a long row of box like houses each with its obligatory satellite dish so that they could face west and worship their Sky god, Rabid Maddog. What is he now? Australian, British, South African, American? I suspect he may be Indian next as that is what will be paying most.

It seemed such a waste of good agricultural land which is at a premium in this country.

Ayia Napa

I have mentioned Ayia Napa in a previous epistle. I had never been there and based all my opinion on the press and TV coverage of young Brits drinking too much and generally misbehaving. Well at long last I had the chance to go and see myself even though it is at the far end of the island from here. Not too far distance wise but on Cypriot roads and my little old car it was a very long way.

The first thing I saw as we approached were some cows in a field. Big deal you may say but I have not seen a cow for months and they are such a common sight in England. They simply do not exist at this end of the island. Weird how you can miss a simple thing like a cow.

Then we drove into Ayia Napa itself. Well it was clean and tidy and altogether a completely different place to the Ayia Napa of my imagination. The people were friendly and surprise surprise it had a municipal museum with some good displays of ancient ships and artifacts. Good value too at just a few pounds.

Most surprising was the lack of Brits. Perhaps they were all in bed with hangovers but the population seemed to be made up of Scandinavians. Swedes, Norwegians and Finns. If you popped around to Sweden to borrow a cup of sugar you and found that it was closed up and no one was home don’t worry. They were all in Ayia Napa.

Caged dogs

Down at the Otto’s coffee bar there was a holidaymaker who must have lost his way. I say that because the village is not exactly on the on the tourist map. He was launching into a vitriolic diatribe against the Cypriots as cruel and heartless because he had seen a dog that was kept in a cage outside someone’s house. I have to admit that I had fallen into the same trap when I arrived here but kept my mouth shut. It was only much later that I learned that only the people who care about their dogs keep them in a cage. The reason is that the farmers in this part use a poison called ‘lanate’ to keep the snake population down. The poison is almost always fatal when ingested by dogs and cats and acts with a matter of hours. Unfortunately it is not unknown for some despicable individuals to deliberately leave scraps of food that have been spiked with ‘lanate’ in public places.

In such an environment caging your pet dog does not seem quite so cruel.

The cemetery view

The road from my place to the shop where I buy the daily newspaper runs by a bungalow that has an ‘alley way like’ entrance. That is the entrance is set back between two typical white walls. In front of the entrance is a table and 4 chairs and there is an elderly man who sits there from morning to night looking out down the alley and over the road, across the valley and away into the distance. He always has a carton of wine in front of him and he could easily pass for a character from Steinbeck’s Tortilla Flat who live from one gallon of red wine to another. In recent days I have met him and spoke to him a few times in our broken English and Greek as he walked up to the kiosk for his next carton of wine.

His name is Alekos and he told me he sits by his door so he can look out at the cemetery across the road where his wife who died last year is interred.

I thought the view across the valley to the cemetery was pretty but he gave it a whole new perspective.

Finally

There are years that melt in the seas of life

Like drops in the ocean of time;

And the joys they bring are as soon forgot

As the words of a careless rhyme.

Thanks to GH for telling me about that poem. G cannot read or write but remembers the poem from his schooldays over 75 years ago.

The eccentricity of the ex-pat - 15th November 2006

What you are looking at is a cat apartment building up on the first floor balcony of an ex-pat neighbour here in Cyprus. If you examine it closely you will see that it has a small flight of steps up to its very own small balcony on the roof. After all we wouldn't want pussy to strain himself climbing up onto the roof to have his nap.
Around the edge of the veranda is a safety rail in case pussy should roll over in his sleep and fall off and hurt himself. If you look closely you can even see pussy having a little nap in the late afternoon sunshine. The fact that pussy had to climb up on a 9 foot carport and jump a 4 foot gap to get onto the balcony appears to have gone unnoticed by the owners.

There is a school of thought that says that I am well at home here in Cyprus with this kind of eccentricity.

There is another school of thought closer to home which says I am far beyond eccentric. As I haven't yet built a catbox with a balcony and safety rail so I guess there is still hope for me.

More on Kleftiko - 12th November 2006

Food is a subject never far from my heart. Literally. So it is only natural that I should devote another entry to Kleftiko.
As I stated in a previous note the original kleftiko was cooked by poachers when and where they took their catch. These days it is usually prepared in a traditional stone outdoor oven. These are dome shaped and vary in size between 6 or 7 feet (2 meters) high to that of a small hill which would feed the entire village. Many of the village house have their own oven in the garden.

One of our local butchers has four or five such ovens outside his shop as seen in the picture.


The sign states:

ΚΛΕΦΤΙΚΟ

ΚΑΘΕ ΠΕΜΠΤH


Kleftiko - Every Thursday. (Hey this night school class has not been entirely wasted.)
The butcher prepares Kleftiko as a special take-away dish during the summer.
The oven works by filling it with wood and starting a fire then leaving it with a metal plate to act as a door. Once the wood has burned away the oven is opened and the ash removed. By this stage the inside of the oven is glowing red hot. Then the meat is placed into the oven in foil packages. Each package contains meat, vegetables and herbs. The oven is then sealed up again and left for 6 to 8 hours while the meat slowly cooks and the vegetables cook in the meat juices. The result is delicious.
I was surprised that a hot dish like this was only cooked during the summer but I have been educated to the fact that during the winter the ovens do not keep hot enough to allow the kleftiko to cook properly. Simple really.


Sadly many of these ovens have fallen into disrepair. However I have found that they are very useful for getting small children to behave. After all it is a well known fact that these ovens are used by witches for cooking badly behaved children.


Well it is well known in my household anyway. :)






One final thing. The international dialling code for Cyprus is +357 but I am not sure if the butcher has a home delivery service.

Epistle from Cyprus VI - 11th November 2006

Apologies for the length of time between this and the previous note. I am afraid the Muses have literally deserted me. This morning however I have just returned from a walk around the old market part of Paphos. To put it in context you must first know a little about the current state of Cyprus. Cyprus is in the middle of a development frenzy. There is new building work almost everywhere you look. Every other shop is a real estate agent and almost everything appears to revolve around tourism and selling property to foreigners.
The old market next to the abandoned mosque in Paphos next is a small island in this storm of building activity. There are a group of old-fashioned open fronted shops with their owners making every conceivable object from metal and wood. Tables, chairs, cabinets, pots, pans, buckets and all made by hand in front of your eyes. Amid this the old ladies scurry back and forth from their coffee shops to the store owners carrying small cups of thick strong Greek coffee. Each coffee cup only the size of an egg cup but always accompanied by a glass of water. In front of the coffee shops the taxi drivers sit and play backgammon and small groups of passers-by gather to watch. The smell of the coffee, the wood from the carpenter’s shops is wonderful. Nearby there is a small street where the villagers from outlying towns come to sell their produce. Apples, pears, nuts, beans, fresh vegetables and host of other things that I do not recognize and certainly could not pronounce the Greek names. This is a world away from the large supermarkets and modern antiseptic malls I am more familiar with.

Old fossils in Cyprus
So you thought I was the only old fossil here. Seems that the BBC are on my trail. I am expecting a camera crew at the door any moment.

Check this out http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6043648.stm

Kleftiko
In a previous note I mentioned eating a local specialty dish 'kleftiko'. The origins of the word Kleftiko are from 'kleftis' meaning a thief. The 'kleftiko' is traditionally a sheep or goat that has been stolen and then cooked in a shallow pit dug by the poachers. Nowadays the meat is purchased from the butcher and cooked in one of the traditional ovens.

At Jimmy the scouser’s housewarming/leaving party kleftiko was prepared and cooked by Jimmy's landlord Christakis (or Chris as he is known by the ex-pats). I say housewarming/leaving because Jimmy has never actually stayed there and has now gone back to the UK to nurse his lady friend while she convalesces from her cataract operation.
The food was delicious and afterwards Chris told a story of how when he was a boy in Northern Cyprus before partition he and his brother went walking in the mountains where his grandfather's goats were grazing. While there they smelled kleftiko cooking and after searching up and down wind they discovered a goat roasting inside a hidden pit dug in the ground and covered with the goatskin and branches and leaves. As they waited an old man with the traditional Greek handle-bar mustache approached carrying a flagon of red wine. It was apparent that he was the thief who had returned to enjoy his booty.
He sat down and invited them to drink a large cup of the wine even though they far too young. They refused at first but he was so insistent they eventually agreed and had a large cup of wine each. The old man did not drink. When they had finished the drink the old man uncovered the kleftiko to eat. The two boys however could hardly eat a thing. The old man told them how he had tricked them both as by drinking the wine first had sated their appetite and he would now eat the lion's share of the goat. He then proceeded to eat the entire goat while the two boys looked on.

Weather
Do not let anyone tell you that it does not rain in Cyprus. This is not true. What they mean is for long summer months there is no rain at all. Then when it does decide to rain they have some truly awesome storms. The thunder and lightning has to be seen to be believed and the hailstones well... if I told you they were as big as golf balls that would be a lie however they are big enough to put dents in the bonnet of your car and tear holes in the fly screens on the windows.
We sat and watched while the planes continued to try and land at Paphos airport in the middle of this storm. The lightning was flashing on all sides of the planes and they appeared so pathetic and fragile. Yes I have seen the Van Der Graaf generator tests (For the sad old ones reading this I am talking Robert J. and not the 70s rock band) and I know the theory that the electrostatic charge only touches the very surface of the object it strikes but theory goes out the window when put to so practical a test. It did nothing for my pteromerhanophobia and only confirmed my prejudice that airline companies care nothing for passenger safety and only for profit. Heaven help the poor people who were up there in those planes trying to land before they closed the airport.

I have started to attend night school classes in Greek in a village called Emba a little further down the hill. Last Monday night's class was held in the middle of a mighty thunder and lightning storm. The class had just started when the school building shook to its foundations as it was struck by lightning. Being in a building which is struck by lightning is not an experience I care to repeat. We lost all power except to the alarms so class for that evening was cancelled. Almost as bad was the car journey home as the roads that lead up the hills had turned to Water courses for the flooding. Only later did I find out that another car with a husband and wife in it driving between Emba and another village had been swept away into a ravine by the torrent. As I write this they are still searching for the body of one of the occupants.

The rain did have a couple of unexpected benefits. First were the snails which are another Cypriot delicacy. Otto was complaining of an upset stomach after only 35 snails. No I did not partake of the snails I have to draw the line somewhere. Maybe next time.

The other amazing thing was that springtime came again. Suddenly out in the brown and parched orchards and olive groves the leaves turned green and fresh grass appeared out of the hard sun-baked clay. Very strange indeed to see this occur in October.

OK I know I am not a fashion guru. I prefer to delude myself that fashions will one day get around to the crumpled brown corduroy look and I will be trendy. I do have one observation though. While sitting in the arrivals lounge at Paphos 'International' Airport I had a revelation. Why is it that larger ladies with extremely tight see-thru white trousers insist on wearing a thong? Please ladies spare us. It is not fashionable or tasteful. It never was and it never will be. I had planned to get photographic evidence to accompany this note but then decided I did not want to see the inside of a Cypriot prison. I have seen the film Midnight Express and have a suspicion that a Cypriot prison may be similar to a Turkish one. Let’s just call a truce. I promise I won't wear Lycra if you promise to wear dark trousers.

One other effect of the weather has been on the electricity supply.
The electric supply has been up and down like the Assyrian Empire. About 3 inches of rain in 90 minutes can do that. Anyway as I said the electric supply went off so I called the landlords agent who also happens to be his brother-in-law to ask him how to switch it back on using the main safety cut out switch. I am outside in the dark with a candle and a mobile phone peering into a wooden box that houses the main fuses on the side of the house.
Me: "OK I am looking in the main fuse box now."
Agent: "Good. You should see 2 buttons. One red and one white."
Me: "OK.”
Agent: "Now press the red one then the white one and that will bring the power back on."
Me: "Mmmm. OK I tried that and it did not work."
Agent: "Well that is the procedure."
Me: "What about this black button above the other two?"
Agent: "Black button? Sorry don't know anything about that one."

Guess which button turned the power back on?

How to determine if a house is owned by an ex-pat
It is easy really you look to see if the house has a roof. If it has a roof then it is owned by an ex-pat if not then it is owned by a Cypriot. The more astute reader will now be asking the question 'Why would a house not have a roof?'. The answer is two-fold.
By leaving off the roof and using a flat concrete base that has been waterproofed you can always extend the house upwards at a later date. This is useful in Cypriot society where they have extended families and it is the father's responsibility to provide a home for his daughter and new son-in-law when she marries. Indeed this is the reason that the Cypriot will tell you there is no roof.
The ex-pats are more cynical about it. They believe it is because when a house is completed with a roof then there is a substantial 'Completion Tax' due on the property.
There are some very old properties here without rooves!

Someone had doubts about a comment I made in a previous note about the nearby church and whether or not it really does have a loudspeaker to broadcast to the neighbourhood. Well here it is...


.. and finally one whole brownie point to those who noticed the Monty Python reference. That does not include you Ian as you have the script memorized.