‘The beautiful forest will grow again one day’
The desks had been moved up next to each other. There were no schoolbooks or pencil cases on them, only election forms and envelopes. The seats were occupied by tax committees and electoral representatives, but in a few hours they would be occupied by pupils of the Ileia prefecture who were going back to school two days later. You’d think school would be the last thing these children had on their minds after the tough time they went through in the recent wildfires. Yet though their minds must have been straying to the scenes outside the school’s windows, they were preparing to sit down and write a composition for a test. Perhaps it was the best way for them to gradually get over the shock. «They’ve lost their games, the natural environment, the animals they used to play with. The landscape has changed and they need time to adjust. But they also want school to start again. They see it as an outlet. And they are anxious; they want to see what happened to their friends, hear their news,» explained Vassiliki Pavlo-poulou, headmistress of the Nea Figaleia primary school. At noon last Tuesday she was in her office with colleagues and pupils. On the floor, carefully stacked up, were some 50 school satchels from the 2nd Technical College of Pyrgos, where the prefecture’s Teachers’ Initiative is collecting school goods from all over Greece. «The parents won’t have to buy anything,» she said, opening a bag at random. It was full of copybooks, notepads and a fully equipped pencil case. «Everything was chosen by other pupils, children shopping for children,» she explained. During a break from sorting out the things, some of the children spoke to Kathimerini. A little hesitantly at first, they eventually opened up. Some got paper and pencils and wrote down their thoughts and feelings.
