Thursday 26 April 2012

So Typical!

"Where the heck is the bus?"  I knew that if it didn't arrive soon I'd be late for the interview.  Pacing anxiously, I scanned the road for the tardy conveyance. I was less than comfortable in the skirt I'd donned to make a good first impression, but for the sake of the possibility of making enough money to feed myself, I'd decided that, for once, femininity might be the way to go.  The interview was to take place in less than an hour and I'd already been waiting for the bus for more than fifteen minutes.  "Come on!  Hurry up!" I couldn't afford to be  late! "Finally!" There it was, rounding the corner. "Thank Heaven," I muttered under my breath as the back doors opened.  My heart sank.  It was packed beyond capacity, people jammed against each other.  There was really no room for me, but I had no choice. If I didn't join the crush, I would be surely be late.  I mounted the steps, squeezed in between an elderly woman and man, and was immediately swarmed. Bodies, some obviously unwashed, pressed against me on all sides.  I tried to remain calm. Canadians need their 'space'; apparently the Greeks didn't. It was very uncomfortable being this close to strangers, and I couldn't wait to disembark. 

There was nothing to hold on to at the back of the bus, but the crowd in front of and behind gave me all the support I needed.  It was virtually impossible to fall. I made eye-contact with the old woman; we nodded at each other.  The teenagers standing close by were having a great time joking, yelling and cursing at each other. The noise of their conversation and laughter hurt the ears.  "Get me off of this bus!" The rank odour of garlic and un-deodorized armpits closed in on me and made me want to gag. I struggled against the urge, breathing through my mouth.

Still so far to go.  "What the?"  A hand....a hand!  Someone was lifting my skirt.  A hand caressed my bottom and held it gently. The blood rushed to my face.  The shock glued me to the spot for several seconds. Gasping in horror, and fighting the crowd, I turned slowly to face my offender.  He was a large, young man. The smile on his face was enraging.  He stared boldly into my eyes. The animal! I could hardly breath, I was so livid!  Raising my arm with difficulty because of the scarcity of space, with all of my might, I slapped the man across the face.  The sound of the impact was apparently quite loud because all conversation stopped....all eyes turned....and regarded me accusingly. The young man who had violated me, shrugged his shoulders and raised his hands in the air, an expression of innocence on his face. "Ti? Giati?" (What? Why?) "'Re Vlaka," (Stupid/Idiot) I countered, not yet having acquired the necessary vocabulary to show the depth of my great displeasure.  The passengers, however, showed their disapproval and glared at me.  So unjust, so typical.  Blame the foreigner. Embarrassed beyond...beyond, I forced my way through the passengers, to the door, stepped down onto the stair that would signal the bus driver that someone wanted to get off, exited as quickly as I could, and knowing I could not possibly make it in time for the interview, that it somehow was just not meant to be, stormed, fuming all the way, the ten long blocks back to my apartment.


Monday 9 April 2012

The West Meets Corfu

It looked like a very large circular, wooden table-top with holes all around its perimeter, a piece of metal or leather..we couldn't tell which from such a distance...dangling below each hole.  This wheel-like structure was resting on what seemed to be a barrel. But what would it be used for? We stood beside our scooters in the hot Greek sunshine, at the edge of the small country road, studying the strange device and trying to imagine what it could be.

Everything else in the picture before us had become familiar over our one-week stay in Corfu...the small farmhouse, the olive, fig, orange and lemon trees, the yucca, the garden planted with beautiful, ornamental cabbages, the chickens pecking at the soil...nothing out of the ordinary.  But that "thing"...what was it? It looked like an ancient instrument of torture.


As we were speculating, a tiny, elderly Greek woman appeared.  Dressed in the usual black garb of mourning, she came out of her small house. Without breaking stride, she grabbed one of the chickens by the legs and carried it squawking and struggling, feathers flying, toward the "wheel".  Once there, she placed the upside-down bird's head through one of the holes and tethered it with the strap beneath to prevent its escape.  She then turned her back on the captive and proceeded to pluck more unsuspecting fowl from their early-afternoon snack, quickly filling the wheel with upside-down chickens. Why didn't they try to escape?  They just continued to peck at the ground, oblivious to their comrades' peril. Except for some minor complaints as the woman walked among them, there was no reaction until they themselves were chosen. That got their attention and evoked the same full-blown response that we'd witnessed with the first victim. The wheel full, the granny picked up a long, sharp knife that rested on it.  I braced myself, knowing that nothing good was about to happen.  I wanted to jump on my bike and tear off down the dusty, dirt road, but instead found myself unable to move.  Like in a nightmare, I was glued to the spot and could not tear my eyes away from the ensuing spectacle.   With swift, efficient movements, the crone began beheading the birds, spinning the wheel with her free hand, to bring each one steadily closer to its demise. She had it down to a science. Even at such a distance, we could see the blood and the freshly decapitated bodies still performing their death dance. We stared, transfixed, aghast at the macabre display, not able to say a word, as we witnessed the final extermination.  When we could, at last, will our legs to move, we mounted our scooters and, shaken out of our innocence, left the scene of the slaughter behind.


Try as I might, I couldn't stop flashing back to the carnage and had to remind myself that those chickens had been raised in relative freedom, had enjoyed the outdoors, had not had to suffer the inhumane treatment inflicted on caged chickens. They'd enjoyed their lives up to the final insult, but had at least been allowed to live normal chicken lives.  


Forcing myself to focus on the present, I turned my attention to the road lined with stately cypress trees, and to the air filled with their beautiful, light bouquet released in the extreme heat of the afternoon sun. This helped to temporarily erase from my mind the gruesome scene we had just observed.


Rounding a bend in the narrow road, we found ourselves approaching another small farmhouse, this one surrounded by a white fence.  Standing at the gate was another yiayia, this one a good twenty years older than the previous one. Due to extreme scoliosis of the spine, she looked to be about four feet tall.  It was easy to imagine her bent over a washboard year after year, scrubbing her family's clothing.  Her spine had frozen in that hunched-over position. Her crooked fingers were rife with arthritis, the swollen knuckles painful to look at. The years had not been kind.  


The old woman smiled a toothless grin at us, her eyes twinkling in the bright sunlight, and with her right hand, palm up, she made a beckoning motion with her fingers. (*See below) What could she want?  We stopped.  I got off my moped and walked up to her. The top of her black babushka reached my lower chest. Up close, the years of hard manual labour were even more apparent.  Her leathery skin was crisscrossed with deep crevasses. I greeted her. "Yeia sas."Yeia sou," replied the elder.  That and parakalo, efcharisto and antio were the only Greek words I knew at the time, so conversation came to an abrupt halt.  We stared at each other for several uncomfortable beats, then she looked down and pointed to one of the many silver rings that, in those days, adorned my hands.   Impulsively, I removed the piece of jewelry and handed it to her thinking that it would not even fit the tip of her stubby, baby finger. She flushed and blinked slowly several times. Looking up, she said in a gravelly whisper, "Efcharisto para poly." Smiling and feeling warmly satisfied by her surprise, I bid her "Antio."  


That night, we were invited for dinner by Manolis and his wonderful, nurturing wife Victoria, the owners of our hostel. Victoria, our newly-adopted Greek mother, had promised us a treat: a local delicacy.  After our long day in the sun, we were famished and couldn't wait for some traditional food: moussaka or pastitsio, perhaps calamari. We took our places at the round table under the heavily-laden grape trellis and smiled at Manolis in hungry anticipation. Glowing with pride, Victoria made her entrance into the courtyard carrying a huge, covered platter. She placed it carefully in the middle of the table.  With great flourish, her husband uncovered the piece de resistance. It's been said that presentation is half the meal and I just knew that something incredible awaited us under that lid. I was right. There, lying on the tray, were dozens of tiny cooked birds, their beady, dead eyes staring vacantly into space. 


For the second time that day, I was traumatized by dead birds.  The merit in the old crone's spinning wheel of decapitation became clear.  Without heads, there is a lot less eye contact with one's food, and it turns out that for me, that is a trait that is quite desirable indeed.

                                                            ***


4 feet = 1.2 metres


Later that evening, we learned that the old woman wasn't beckoning us to come closer; that's how the people in Corfu wave to each other.


yiayia = grandmother 


babushka = headscarf


yeia sas = formal way to say hello (to an elder)


yeia sou = informal hello 


parakalo = please


efcharisto = thank you / efcharisto para poly = thank you very much


antio = goodbye


moussaka = Moussaka is an eggplant, or potato-based dish, often including ground meat.


pastitsio = a Greek baked pasta dish that contains ground beef and bechamel sauce


calamari = squid


Monday 2 April 2012

A Sign

I believe that God sends us all little signs here and there, and that we can either choose to recognize them or we can choose to ignore them.  Some call these signs 'coincidences', but I have experienced so many, that I gave up calling them that many years ago.  I like to say, the first time it's perhaps a coincidence, and the second and the third and maybe the fourth, but after the tenth or fifteenth or twentieth, it's obvious that there is a greater power at work. 

Many of us had been praying for Cynthia.  It had been a particularly bad year and a half for the poor woman.  She'd suffered so much emotional pain waiting for the double mastectomy that she would have to undergo. Her family and friends didn't know if she would make it after the operation because of the complications that arose. Her physical pain was, of course, no minor thing. The depression that followed was great, but as the months passed, the healing began, and her family was encouraged by her progress.  They began to hope again. Sadly, a year later there came another great blow. The doctors determined that she now had a tumour on her spine. The cycle of worry, depression and hopelessness began anew.

Cynthia's good friend telephoned me to tell me of the latest diagnosis. "Can you please ask your friends to pray for her?"  So, once again, we all started to lift her up in prayer. The operation was to take place on a Friday morning in February.

That same morning, several friends were at my house for our weekly Bible study and prayer meeting.  As soon as they got in the door, I asked them if we could pray together since Cynthia would be having the operation at that time.  They agreed, of course, and began to pray. We prayed for Cynthia once more before we left the house that afternoon. Then, it was upstairs to the computer, to feed my Scrabble addiction.

It was 1:50 p.m. when I opened the game app, and there on the board to my amazement, were these seven letters....CYNTHAI...with just a little tweaking they spelled the name CYNTHIA!!!!  This was incredible.  I'd been playing on-line scrabble for years and had never before had anything like that happen! I, of course, took this as a sign to pray once again.  I had learned from many experiences in the past, of God's love for His children.  This to me, was sure proof of just that!  He loved Cynthia and was going to show His love for her.  I felt a great sense of excitement and knew at that point that the outcome of the operation would be good!  Just as I'd turned the letters around to make the name right, He was going to turn the situation around, to make it right.

The operation was successful!  Now, they would have to wait about three weeks for the results.  During that time, we continued our prayer vigil, but now we prayed giving thanks, with the certainty that the results would be great.

Three weeks passed and I heard from Cynthia's friend that not only was the operation a success, but that my conviction that the outcome would be good, was correct.  The tumour was benign!