Nobal Glomad

Walnut

After 7 days I’ve experienced my first twinkle of localism. First point was scored at checkpoint Kapsali, successfully jumping in my ‘I can’t believe it starts’ rental car from the driver’s side. Reaching the pedals from the passenger seat is truly a challenge. Next was strolling through the Hora town. I used my extensive Greek vocabulary of “ya-sas” to greet practically every passer by. Most seemed to smile. There were no discussions about the up and coming elections as such, but in time I know they’d be cooking me dinner. The old girl owner of my rented  accommodation has decided I am now completely fluent, discussing the finer points of feeding her dozen cats, latest fashion trends and I’m certain she mentioned something about her soon to be published mid-wife’s guide to organic Greek cookery.

Traveling solo in the off-season to destinations where life literally shuts down, or remotely in any foreign country for that matter, is a challenge. I’m good with my own company – some say perhaps a little to good, but when you find yourself in a remote little village on a Greek Island speaking only a few greetings and menu choices, not the most intelligent of conversational tools, it requires a certain amount of ‘I like me’ factor to stick it out.

Kicking these barriers aside I decided to revisit Milapotamos. I needed to locate the boarded-up house of my donkey loving, olive oil hoarding Great Aunt and I knew someone there could help me. Leaving Kythira knowing it was ‘somewhere around there’ would have been like going to New Delhi and deciding it was just too much trouble popping down to Agra for the Taj Mahal. My colleague who did exactly that returned frustrated 6 months later to fulfill the Taj tick-off.

I found a local gentleman of similar vintage to my Yai Ya standing in the street… his full head of platinum white hair refusing to bald, the shaggy dog used to fit him suit jacket and survivor of the endless wash checked shirt, his well aged olive complexion and the disconnected clink of his ever-worrying worry beads. “Hi. I’m looking for the house of my Great Aunti Vass.” Did I just say that? He continued flipping his beads. Paused. Then he yelled to some other guy he spotted wandering up the street, who then in turn yelled to some other guy, who then yelled back to me in English. I can’t remember the mouthful that was his name but I remember in Greek it meant Walnut. And so I met Walnut.

Walnut, had just finished working in his garden. He’s 82 and fit, with a cheeky spark in his smile. He spends half the year in Chicago closer to his son and the rest of his time here at his family home, tending the wild ravine-hugging garden scattered with soccor-sized lemons, t-shirt staining pomegranates, roses, basil, wild parsley, figs (I can’t believe I missed the season… another reason to come back), succulents, piles of fly happy cow dung, a few three legged plastic chairs and a small Aphrodite and the head of the promenade.

More importantly he’d been a local friend of my Great Aunt. He led me through a maze of interconnected lane-ways passing houses in varied states of restoration and collapse, telling stories of communal walled clay ovens that once filled the streets with aromas of fresh bread, baked lamb and moussaka. Left, right and left again until we finally reached her now boarded up residence. I remembered this place. It was familiar from when we visited as a family in my youth. White washed walls and aged mint coloured wooden shutters sitting firmly closed. Around the back I found a window with a pane of glass missing. I managed to peek in, hoping to find Aunti Vass sitting in her chair softly asleep. I sensed a place that is waiting for it’s rebirth.

Walnut told me the story of my Aunti’s later years when she started to go a bit off the rails. One day she came to his place concerned. She sat down on the couch beside him and said “I need you to call me a taxi. They’ve put some evil magic on me which I need to wash off in the ocean.” It is sad to know her family couldn’t be closer for those final lonelier years. There’s no right or wrong in these situations, it just isn’t the perfect it could have been.

We walked to the local Taverna to meet ‘the men’ at 4pm for coffee and yelling. All ten of them (most of the town’s population) aged from 3oish to mid 80s sit in a big circle and loudly abuse each other for the scheduled hour. I loved it. It was like being home with my mates for Saturday morning breakfast. There’s lot’s of cross-wired conversations not really designed to resolve anything in particular, rather just being together is what counts. Being with the pack. One of the older gents went to school with my Yai Ya. One had worked with her when my grandparents owned a cafe in the outback town of Charleville, Queensland. Walking back to my car we passed the former school, now fully restored but vacant. “There used to be 90 kids at that school. So many of us left in the 1940s heading to Australia, it was that or the war” Walnut said.

Perhaps this post has turned into too much of an ‘Eat Pray Love’ moment. The message is that it’s important we seek out our sense of place on this earth and have some idea of how the hell we ended up being here. Now is what matters, but none of now would have happened, if it weren’t for our past.

This week of Greek Island time has been enlightening, delightening and reconnecting. As a rule I don’t tend to re-visit places already experienced opting mostly to seek out the new. Sometimes though it’s not only about driving Route 66, hiking the Himilayas or swinging with the Gibbons in Laos. An experience can be more connected, more local and more real the more time we choose to dedicate to its discovery.

A barrage of aliens flock to Kythira between the end of May until the middle of September, the population of 3,500 quadrupling. There’s a splattering of festivals for this and that, truckloads of meatballs and ouzo, late night beach parties and celebration with not a spare bed to be found. Step outside this time and it’s a shadow dancing solo in the dark. In a week I’ll be buzzing to a completely different beat in Barcelona, knee deep in the confusion of a two week Spanish course. I also know this Island’s seasonal rhythm will continue to beat until I return again one day soon to enjoy more of her magic and to connect more closely to my past.