It is not by coincidence that the cliché “It’s all Greek to me” connotes incomprehension.  While Greek, spoken or written, is notoriously tough to master, its difficulties have an unusual twist on the island.  The dozen-odd subdialects of the mother tongue can be quite confusing to the untrained ear.

A fairly common sublingo is Bar Greek, a language tailored to obtaining service, ordering rounds, and eventually calculating the tab. An inmate of the rock may hereby specify exact wishes, such as a beer and a bottle of chilled white wine with four glasses:

“Parakalo, mia beira, ke ena boukali pargomeni aspro grasie meh tessera bouteria.”

Impressive bar banter in the Hellenic third person can ensue at length to include ashtrays and directions to the head.

Once having spent an enjoyable afternoon with one old timer on the port, I stopped a muleteer and asked my companion if he could explain about keys and the whereabouts of a house for guests that were arriving. After introductions and a brief discussion about the weather, my translator ran dry.

“My dear fellow, I don’t understand a word he is saying.”

He explained that while he was fluent in taverna and café Greek, when it came to other matters, the language became a blur.

One local bloke, an Auzzie skipper marooned for over three decades on the Rock, admits that he will never get his tongue around the language—but he does speak fluent Nautical Greek. He knows the names of obscure things like grappling hook, and complicated phrases like “Your anchor is laying port side of my chain so be cautious when raising yours, as our respective yachts could become entangled.”  On land, the man needs a translator.

Similarly, other versions of Greek could leave one with the impression that all participants to an exchange were fully conversant. Ex-patriots who have dabbled in the building trade appear to be multilingual, but are in fact only partially bilingual. Cement we can order, ink not.

My pidgin has a broader base due to the selection of tasks I have performed, but the reality is that no matter how many new words I learn, there will always be some that can trip me up. A slight slant in vowel enunciation can produce an exciting response.

Early on I learned the word for soft, malakoe, so that I could explain to the chef at the Breakfast Club my preferance for runny, rather than rubber-fried, eggs with my bacon.

“Parakalo thelo avga ke baycon—malaka, “ I said, emphasizing the new word I had practiced.

“Tea!!??” my chef queried. The volume of his response indicated that he wasn’t asking me what beverage I wanted with breakfast, and anyway, I knew tea in Greek meant what.

“Malaka emay? Essee ena Malaka.”

The animated chef, unamused by my order, was calling me soft back?

“You know, you just called the guy a wanker,” said a nearby inmate coming to my rescue. He then explained to the chef that a twisted vowel had been the culprit and that I had indeed being trying to impress the bloke with my newly found linguistic skills. “Greeks are used to foreigners making a hash of their language,” he laughed. I never got yokes my fork could bounce on after that.

Another trick in expanding one’s vocabulary is to fiddle with the English word, generally adding a vowel or two.

A mate and I were in Four Corners minimarket searching for mustard.  I explained in pidgen what we were after:

“You eat it with meat, hot on the tongue, a kind of paste, you know mustard.”

Dimitri’s eyebrows jerked in the negative with each additional in description. I was running out of vocabulary, when he saw a glimmer and proudly produced a bottle of tomato sauce.

“Not tomato sauce, mustard.”

“Neh, ketzup. Sauce for food.”

“Ketzup, aye? You say potato and I say—that’s another word learned, but oxi the right sauce, the one I want is yellow in colour.”

Dimitri scratched his head muttering, and we gave up.  As we were heading out the door, his voice boomed with the dawning:

“Ahh, moustardo! Ella egho.”

On another occasion we spent an interesting morning going through the chaotic piles of stock at the Plastic Man.  The Plastic Man sold everything, but he also sported the largest selection of plastic kitchen utensils and furniture, and so by description of his store, he had inherited the nickname. Many shops on the island had acquired such monikers: the Frozen Man, not surprisingly a chap who sold frozen victuals, the Video and Gunpowder Man, whose shop sold pyrotechnics next to videos for rent, and so on.

Saying the word avga (egg), accompanied by some miming, would do the trick, we thought, an egg flipper being a common kitchen device and all. In our search for said item he unearthed a 1950s East German eggbeater, pans, whisks, poachers, and anything else connected to cooking an egg.

“Everything except a spatula,” said my mate shaking his head in awe at the selection.

“Ahh, spatoula,” beamed the Plastic man, who dove to an exact spot in the mountain of paraphernalia.

One inmate had a delivery “delay” of over a year due to a single vowel.  Once, every so often, she would go to the local courier to enquire when her parcel would arrive. The words for never and when are so similar that it is easy to see where confusion and time-lapses can occur:  pote (emphasis on e) and pote (emphasis on o) makes the difference between an immanent package and one marked “never.”

Another tip in increasing one’s vocabulary is to differentiate the object into time periods.  If it was built or invented in the last century or so, the word for it will often have an anglicized base: aeroplane, an aeroplano, tellyorasie, a television, komputer, a computer, etc.

A lot of words are the basic foundation for the same word in in many major languages: democrasia, philosophia, catastrophia, and most phobias.  Even an association of the word’s root, a branch of it, can assist the linguistically handicapped like myself.  An earthquake is a seismos and to steal is to klepsie.  Great words that one tends to adopt in time.

Some words just look the same—difficult is disscolo. Others simply seem impossible. A toothpick is an othontaglyffeetha.

It’s a question of mixing and matching words and associations. Another few thekahdes, and I reckon I’ll have this glossa down pat  (Greek for tongue and language, borrowed no doubt from our word glossary).

Easy this language stuff, really.

The strange, almost haunting noise that reverberates periodically, day or night, through Kamini valley has apparently had locals perplexed for the past couple of years—a sound so unlike the familiar braying donkeys, crowing roosters, yapping dogs, and yowling cats that it has caused many to wonder as to its source.

I was sitting on our terrace recently with a local mate, Pavlos, over morning coffee when it happened again.

It’s a din difficult to describe, perhaps like some deep-based, demented didgeridoo or a beast from a foreign jungle, but certainly not like anything native to our island.

“What is that?” he asked.

“You don’t know?” I answered, surprised that he didn’t as locals know just about everything that occurs in our little valley. “My dear fellow, it’s the call of a horny ostrich.”

In a field behind Sotiris’s mansion situated at the back of our gorge is a small flock of these enormous, flightless African birds. Some people keep canaries, others parrots, but Sotiris’s pets are a little more exotic.

“The male ostrich is an enthusiastic courter and announces his desire vocally enough for all to hear,” I explained.

Pavlos chuckled. “Well, that solves a mystery many of us have been wondering about for years.”

The fires are out, but the debate continues…

SHAME …

It was our plan to present things in humorous light, articles that would show the lighter side of life on our little Rock. But there is nothing funny about this: in fact, even any humor in the initial rhubarb in which conspiracy theorists claimed that one of the contestants in the ongoing mayoral dispute of 2006/2007 was to blame has paled with the smoke-screened sun.

Yes, our duelling “mayors” were in Athens in court on July 25 (our future-former-post-almost mayors), and the rumor that one of their “henchmen” had deliberately set the Mandraki dump alight in order to embarrass the other is now yesterday’s bad joke.

Our poor island has never seen the likes of this fire: neither the great fire of ’85 in which three brave volunteers died nor the three-day blaze in ’87 subdued Hydra like this.

It’s akin to a war zone. Helicopters, fire planes, and the navy have shown unbelievable skill and courage in fighting this blaze from dawn till dusk for two days now.

Our headline could have been anything from “Fire Fight for Survival” to “Brave Pilots Fly Every Daylight Hour to Save the Town.” But we have simply called this one “Shame.” Shame, because this should not have happened, and it’s about time we stood up and said so.

It could well be diplomatically correct to point out that with literally hundreds of wildfires raging across the country as a direct result of record-breaking heat wave temperatures, this was an inevitable result and yet further proof that this global warming stuff is for real. But the truth is that our island is on fire because of a simple lack of foresight, which is a polite way of saying stupidity.

It’s not like we didn’t have fair warning or time to plan for this disaster, as both previous serious fires started at the garbage dump, and already this summer two minor fires were extinguished in the same location.

So why shame? We are not experts in municipal economics, but it doesn’t take much logic to understand that the cost of the capsized and unsuccessful Miaoulis fireworks boat could have saved us from this.

How? A pump and/or small reservoir at the “skoopethia” landfill could have stopped the fire in its tracks long before it spread. Now, our beautiful isle looks like it has been blitzed. In a way it has, and the cost cannot be tallied in terms of cash loss.

Why does it always take a disaster to make folks shout for what is right? In their efforts to gain favour with the popular vote, our “authorities” have advocated such wonderful schemes as paving and illuminating a road to Vlichos, spending thousands on the placement of pretty little benches and other artistic paraphernalia to enhance Hydra’s unique landscape. Grand ideas to be sure, but shouldn’t somebody have reserved just a few coins for the unattractive but practical project of ensuring that the repetitive source of fire could be combated before it became an island emergency?

It is too easy with hindsight to point fingers and lay blame, but come on chaps …

One would assume that now, maybe, something will be done to prevent such a catastrophe from occurring in future. But then, we said that in ’85, and again in’87, and heard it murmured about after several small-fire near misses subsequently.

In closing … absolute kudos to and admiration for the firefighting pilots and volunteers who have fought so desperately to save our island from total incineration.

Perhaps now, with Mr. Anastopoulos’s uncontested reinstatement as mayor, we can focus on serious matters.

David and Jennifer took the following pictures of the fire’s aftermath
during a boat trip around the island.

An entire valley destroyed on the back of Hydra Island

The new forest destroyed

Beautiful Limonitze bay blackened

More evidence of devastation on the back of the island

Fire devastation down to the water’s edge

A coastal chaple saved

A coastal home destroyed

Thanks to Jan McGiffin for sharing her photos from the days of the fires and from a hike to Episcopi showing the aftermath.