Memory Lane part 2.

When I came to the old school yard, where my siblings and I attended the company school as youngsters, I walked down the hill to the small olive orchard that is behind the slide and monkey bar area. I noticed, sadly, that the yellow piant on the bars had peeled, and much rust showed through. I'm sure they hadn't been painted since we last swung on them over thirty years ago. I could hear echoes of Freddy greasing up the slide with wax-paper and then sliding at break-neck speed from top to bottom. This day, it didn't look very far from the top of the slide. I'm sure it seemed farther when someone fell off the ladder backwards as it happened a few times. Enough to knock the wind out of you.

I continued down the little hill to the loop that encircled the homes below. The Blacks lived to the left, the Andrews/Conners at the very bottom. Their homes were not very well cared for. Paint peeled from the eves and from the doors. Plaster had worn through. The road that encircled the Parnell's/Hunter's home in the middle of the area was almost non-existent. Instead of asphalt, it was a crumbling mass of pebbles.

The Black's House

Takis' New Digs (The Andrews'/Conner's Old House)

I took a few pictures and then headed back up to the olive grove to play with the dinky cars I had bought at Mavros the day before. Carefully, I recreated a little clearing with parking places for all the cars under a large, gnarled olive tree that had probably grown there for the last two thousand years. Undoubtedly, it had heard our voices calling to each other in the school yard while we grew up a little bit with them. They were the elders, for sure.

Our Dinks at the Foot of the Olive Tree

Hearing a voice of greeting and inquiry, in present time, I looked up to see a man ducking under the olive branches and taking off his hat. He looked familiar, so I asked him his name. "Christos" he said, and I told him who I was. Kirios Moore's daughter from CMC. "AHHHH," he said. "Tell your father, I am Takis who take care of the pipe in the house." I thought you said your name was Christos... "ChrisTAKIS," he explained. Turns out that he was the plumber for the ex-pat families employed at Cyprus Mines Corp. He now lives in the Andrews' old house (with the chicken coops in the backyard) and he invited me have some refreshment and to talk. I went along with him to his house and we had a lovely chat. He told me how he and his wife had lived in Pendayia "in the old days" and when the Turks invaded, his family had been forced to flee. He lost all his property. So now they live as refugees in this home that used to belong to other people. There is a lot of that in Cyprus.

Takis "who fix the pipe in the house."

At one point, I asked him if he knew Thespina, the woman who used to work in our house. He did and he offered to take me to her house in Katytada, the little village just above ours. We jumped in the rental car and motored up the road to Thespina's. She was so happy to see us and called her sister, Lula, who worked for the Blacks. Much reminiscing followed, with Takis translating when needed. By the time we finished sharing stories, Takis had heard a lot of it twice. I would soon discover that he was quickly becoming an expert on my life...

Takis, Thespina's husband, Thespina, Lula's husband, and Lula

After that, we went in search of Theodora, the very first domestic help we had when we moved to Cyprus. She was like a second mother to me as a young child and I called her Doda. She was delighted to see me (though a little confused at first), and brought out Cyprus coffee and home-made cookies. More questions about my mother, my father, the twins... Takis began to answer before I did!

Takis, Dora's Son-In-Law, Dora's Daughter,
and Theodora (Dora or Doda)

After a lovely afternoon of reconnecting, I took my guide back to his home. Before we parted ways, we walked though the UN camp to see the office where my father worked, the old Orthodox chapel on the hill, and the club (commmunity center) and pool. Several off-duty UN soldiers were lounging in and around the pool. I wanted to say, "Hey! That's ours!" but it isn't any more. Takis and I walked back up the little hill the same way I used to when coming home from the pool. Up the path, up the stairs, and along the hill above the teachers' house.

Dad's Office

The Pool

A very emotional afternoon. Nothing was the same, but it had the same feel. It was as if I were walking through a ghost town. The theme music from "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly" played in my mind as I wandered through the compound. Tumbleweeds (also in my mind) blew across the deteriorating roads. Cicadas chirped continuously and loudly.

Because Skouriotissa is so close to the green line between the Greek and the Turkish areas, no one comes to pull weeds. No one comes to paint the buildings. Except at the UN colonel's home... our house.

The Managers' Old House
(Burgess and Bakewell)

After leaving Takis in Skouriotissa, I returned to the Economides' home in Kakopetria, hoping to connect with Lefkos. When I went through the creaky gate again, I was met by Lefkos' wife Eleni (the phantom voice from downstairs on my first go-around). She explained to me (in broken English) that Lefkos had waited for me for several hours and then had left to attend a town wedding. After we chatted for a few minutes while she braided her hair, she decided to telephone Lefkos (he must have been enroute to the wedding, perhaps stopping at his favorite watering hole). Several minutes later, Lefkos came striding across the asphalt of the gas station next door with his customary wide and welcoming grin on his gentle face. We greeted each other and I explained who I was. As usual, it took a minute for him to really register what I was saying. After he finally got it, he re-explained that he was attending a wedding as a representative of his family and so had to rush off. When I offered to return in the morning, he and his wife invited me to lunch. Apparently, their daughter and son-in-law would be coming out from Nicosia and they would be delighted for me to join them.

With that settled, I returned to my hotel where I enjoyed a typical Cyprus meze in their quaint restaurant, complete with live Greek accordion music. The spread included stuffed grape leaves (koupepia), Greek salad, olives, yogurt, and halloumi which I washed down with a small glass of sweet, Cyprus wine (Commandaria).

Cyprus Meze

That night in my little hotel room, I was treated to my first experience with rowdy British tourists in the adjoining room. Those old Cyprus houses may have thick adobe outside walls but the newer inside walls must be made of paper. My neighbors watched television till about 2AM and then talked and laughed for another hour or so. They settled down just in time for the village roosters to begin crowing. By that time, I was so distraught I had trouble falling asleep. What a night!

My morning shower revivied me sufficiently for me to check out of the hotel and drive to the Economides house at the appointed time for lunch. By this time in my travels, however, my curling iron was non-functional because of a blown transformer. I had purchased it at a store in Fair Oaks for the sole purpose of using it with the curling iron. When I got it home, before I left on this trip, and realized that the wattage of the transformer was less than the specifications on the curling iron, I tried to exchange it for a more expensive transformer that could handle the load. Oh no, the owner of the store assured me. If I used the curling iron on the lowest setting, it would be fine. Trust me. We've never had a problem with that before. Well, I guess there's a first time for everything. I tried the curling iron on my first day at the Lysithea Hotel, where it heated up almost as much as the curling iron. From then on, nada. No transformer, and by default, no curling iron.

So, I showed up on time and somewhat mop-headed at the Economides'. I was introduced to Lefkos' daughter, Phrosso and her husband, Andros, who had driven out from Nicosia that morning. Andros was educated in London, and Phrosso in London and New York (she has her Masters Degree from Cornell), so they conversed in English easily, as did Lefkos. Only Eleni, Lefkos' wife, had trouble with English, so for her I did my best to speak in the little Greek I remembered and the others translated when appropriate. We lunched on tender, slow-cooked lamb, artichoke hearts, and potatoes with a dessert of watermelon. The first of the season for them, they said.

Lefkos told about how he went searching for a job after Cyprus Mines Corporation's demise following the Turkish invasion. His little gas station didn't bring in enough revenue to provide for his family with two grown children in college overseas. One day, he answered an ad in the paper looking for someone to work for a start-up company in Riyaad, Saudi Arabia. He sent in his qualifications, including his experience working for CMC, and waited for a response. When they replied, they told him he was just the man they were looking for and could he start in a week. Just like that, he was off to Saudi Arabia.

Lefkos recalled that Riyaad was a dirty, uninviting city when he first went there. The construction company that hired him was charged with cleaning things up and creating new buildings to bring the city into the modern age. Lefkos and his team of Cypriots were instrumental in accomplishing this task in three short years. Today, Riyaad is a bustling, western style metropolis in the midst of a desert. What was meant to be a short-term job turned into ten years of working away from Cyprus with occasional visits back home.

Lefkos recounted another story about how he acquired his first wheels. Back in the early days of Cyprus Mines Corporation, when Lefkos and his wife were still living down the hill in a little town called Petra, the Cyprus government purchased about a half dozen motorcycles. I believe they were leftover from World War II somehow. The government made them available for purchase to people who demonstrated a need. Lefkos went to the manager of CMC, Mr. Hendricks, and asked him to write a letter recommending that his employee be permitted to purchase one of the motorcycles. According to Lefkos, because Britain governed Cyprus at the time, and CMC was in tight with the governor, a word from the manager of the company carried some weight with the reigning bureaucrats. Mr. Hendricks obliged, and in no time, Lefkos had bought himself a motorcylcle for something like 50 pounds. Instead of riding his bicycle up the hill from Petra, he could now use motorpower. Within a couple of years, Lefkos was able to sell the motorcycle at a profit (about 150 pounds) and buy himself a small used car, a forest-green Mini that I recall him driving to work daily.

The group wanted to hear about my exploits and impressions of Cyprus after being away so long. When I mentioned that I had purchased some mosphilo jelly in Limassol, Eleni proudly brought out some of hers that was homemade. She gave it to me as a gift. To this, she added a couple of bags of dried spearmint from her garden. (Now that I am home, I am pleased to report to Eleni that her mosphilo jelly trumps the other stuff, hands down. It is so much more flavorful.) I began to wonder how I was going to get all these jars home in my carry-on bag. It was getting heavier by the minute!

Before I left on the rest of my journey, Phrosso and Androse encouraged me to give them a call when I returned from the Beirut portion of my trip. We took some photographs, exhanged hugs and kisses all around, and I took off over the mountain road to Paphos. ('Now you be careful overtaking," admonished Lefkos in his fatherly way. I assured him that I wouldn't be doing anything like passing other cars on those narrow roads.)

Andros, Lefkos, Phrosso, and Eleni

Lefkos, Mop-head, Phrosso, and Eleni

On my way out to the car, Phrosso asked me if I would like to accompany her and her mother to the little church down the street where they go occasionally to pray. They wanted to light a couple of candles. Apparently, Eleni has the key because she takes care of the church in some capacity. According to Phrosso, the church dates back to around 1100AD and is a historic treasure. At some time in the past, the Turks supposedly scratched out the eyes of some of the saints in the frescoes on the walls. Nevertheless, the paintings are beautiful. I was honored to be allowed to see the inside of this special landmark. After a few minutes, I said goodbye to allow Phrosso and her mother their quiet moments alone in the church.

Eleni lighting a candle in the church.

Frescoes in the Church (from around 1100AD)

I was sad to leave Lefkos and his clan. They treated me so warmly and so kindly, as if I were a member of the family. But I resolved to call Andros and Phrosso when I returned to Cyprus from Beirut, and off I went on the road to Paphos.

Paphos is an ancient city on the West coast of Cyprus. It's not quite as touristy as Limassol but there are some beautiful resorts in an area to the north called Coral Bay. I found an apartment hotel I had seen on the internet, but the front doors were locked. After some searching, I determined (through a young workman on the grounds) that the hotel had been purchased the previous week by a new owner and was being renovated. In other words, it was closed.

Paphos was hosting a Spring Flower festival that evening and the main seaside drag was closed to automobiles for a parade. This snarled traffic and made the journey back to the other end of the town take twice as long. On my way into town, I had inquired about a room at another hotel just in case I didn't find the Dimitea Apartment Hotel. By the time I returned to the back-up hotel, the Russian receptionist had given away the room she promised to hold for me because I took so long. Not to worry, she came up with another one. While it wasn't the Ritz, it would do. I stowed my things and went in search of an internet cafe.

I wish I had had more time to spend in Paphos. The next day, Monday, I was booked on a Cyprus Airways flight at 10PM to Beirut and I had a lot to do before then. I had resolved to go back into Limassol to pick up something I saw for my sister, and I had made arrangements to visit the family of a friend in Nicosia during the lunch time. This friend's friend, a Cypriot named Lakis, is the manager of the Lexus dealership in town, and his Dutch wife, Marjolijn, is a translator. Lakis had made an appointment for me with a man at Price Waterhouse to talk about the feasability of setting up a chiropractic practice in Cyprus (just in case I ever get the desire to return there.)

Amazingly enough, on Monday morning, without knowing where I was going, I turned on my inner radar and, on the first try, drove right to the little shop I was looking for in old Limassol . From there, I motored into Nicosia to keep all my appointments, and drove all the way back to the Larnaca airport by 8PM. The car-hire guy had given me instructions to take a ticket from the machine upon entering the car park, park the car anywhere, and then, leaving the car unlocked, place the key and the ticket under the mat. How casual and how trusting! You'd never find a rental company in the US doing that!

Larnaca Airport On the Way to Beirut

Now the Beirut portion of my journey...