“Unfortunately my father’s name was Giannis and not Vardinogiannis (a Greek tycoon), that's why I live up here in the wilderness. I have four children, but none of them chose the cattle farmers profession, because the money we make selling one kilo of milk is not even enough for a small bottle of water. It’s not only that merchants sell the milk four times its original value, they also take the butter out of it and the only thing left is the water”.

A witness to decay

Cattle farmer Nick Ntentas from Doiran, takes his cows every day to graze near the lake. He is a cultured man, who sits alone all day in the middle of a huge meadow. All he can do is mull things over. “I never went to school, I am self-taught and I have a good memory. The whole globe is inside my head”.

The landscape around him is magical, at least for the people laying eyes on it for the first time. On the one side there is the blue of the lake and the wild birds, while on the other one there are the vast fields with the fluffy soil. Behind the primitive beauty and peace of this area, however, lies the cruel modern Greek reality. The cattle farmer, with his sharp glance and great perception, sees the waters of Doiran declining and young people abandoning the area.

“Athens eats Greece’s children like the Minotaur. Schools in areas around the borders close one after the other and the ratio of deaths to births in Kilkis is five to one. Muslims in other countries have eight children and families are preserved this way. Aristotelis Onassis had only two children and his family came apart, no one was left. If we old men leave, no one will be left to continue cattle farming. No matter how many foreigners we bring in, we still won’t be able to solve our problem. Until when will the poor Albanians graze our animals? One day their status will rise and they’ll stop doing this job”.

Afraid of evolution

Greeks who live close to the borders get scared when someone tries to change their habits and impose new products with weird foreign names. “We have the best wine, but we import that damned whiskey so that those Scotsmen can get richer. We don’t drink pure tsipouro, which contains no poisons; we even wear trousers writing Buffalo and Texas”.

Mister Nick is a Sarakatsani and he was really happy that his daughter married a man of the same ancestry. “I have the best son in law in Athens. All people are a bit racist, but we Sarakatsani are even worse, this is why we try to mix with people of our own race”.
TEXT-PHOTOS: GEORGE ZAFEIROPOULOS
SOURCE: www.greecewithin.com

MORE PHOTOS

A plava, a type of flat boat without a hull, used exclusively in lakes.

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