A chronicle of devastation
Outside the single-teacher primary school in Makistos, in the western Peloponnese, which survived the conflagration, a few local residents sit at a plastic table beneath an awning, facing tins of tuna fish and bottled water. A woman in black of around 40 is bent over a blue school copybook. When I approach and introduce myself, she says: «I want to read you what I’m writing. I lost my mother in the fire and now I’m writing about her, my family, the village. About what we went through.» Ioanna Vlachou reads us her painful diary, giving her own account amid tears and far from cold numbers. Every page she turns brings a lump to the throat. «I’m in the old Makistos primary school, where I first learned to read and write. Now I am a local councillor in the municipality of Zacharo. My mother, aged 74, relatives and friends, Nikos and Marigo, Uncle Nionios and Eleni, and Giorgos and Georgia Pothou from Kretsena all died in this holocaust. They were burnt alive but their houses are intact. «Athanassia Harisis and their four children, and Sakis Lambropoulos who were burnt were our relatives. Panayiotis and Stathis lost their mother and little Philippos, who had blond hair and blue eyes. «My mother came from the village of Artemida- Koumouthreka. She was burnt in the car crash at Dafnoula, Artemida, near her brother’s field. In 2003, she had had an accident. Her cow had injured her seriously and she had to have an operation. They put in a metal plate with 17 screws. When my sister went to give blood [after the fires] and have her DNA identified, they said they had found ‘the body with the plate and a small ring.’ I am shattered. We thought that the cow that hit her was burnt. I went to my father’s farm and I found it there, alive. My mother is dead and the cow is alive… «At Kotrona, my father and brother with 170 goats were in danger from the fire. In our misfortune, we had some luck. My father had not taken the flock out to pasture; when the fire caught up with them they were at the farm and were able to fight the flames. My father is so sad. I don’t know if he will manage to survive this disaster. «On Mount Lapitha, an age-old holm oak still stands there proudly with 12 pines. The vineyard was untouched. My house in the village is untouched, so my family can stay there, thank God.»
