The “eventful” side of Sunday: Seeing poverty in the countryside, Immigrants in Greece, and beggars
This blog post is in response to a chat with Abe about how my day seemed “boring” or rather “uneventful.” That was just because yesterday (Sunday) I wrote mostly about the actual activities. Now, in the words of the immortal Abraham, will come the “Stuff of legends....” (or at least the more interesting and eventful parts). In short: On the bus ride from Delphi to Athens, I saw poverty stricken Indian workers scything wheat by hand. I also saw lots of literal shantytowns. All indian men were living together, and their wives and children in make believe houses. Tin sides, mismatched pieces of wood, low ceilings because the sides of the house were short, “houses” with posts but plastic or sheets for walls. From my observations, America is filled with people from all over the world. In Greece, it appears that the only people who have immigrated into the country are Indians (mostly males), and they do a lot of low level work, such as agriculture or hawking items on the street. Other “eventful” moments are yesterday were being harassed by an impertinent man, and having an interesting experience as Andy's wife was molested by a woman beggar trying to force balloons on us (and trade them for money, of course). Paula, Karen, the girls, Andy and I had all just gotten gyros for dinner and were sitting eating when this lady comes up and throws these two balloons on Karen. She is talking in Greek, but the jist is that she has a small daughter and is trying to sell the balloons. Karen made the mistake of not immediately returning the balloons, and listening first. When she tried to return them, at Andy's insistence, the woman refused to take them and kept getting more upset that we weren't paying her. Finally, once when Karen held out the balloons, a young boy came up and grabbed them! That got the lady pretty mad :) Anyway, after we kept ignoring her, she went away, but it was definitely akward. I found it ironic that the most we were molested by beggars and odd persons was when we had two little girls with us (they are 6 and 7). Finally, we were followed by a high (on drugs, that is) Pakistani man wanting money. He mumbled at us while we were eating gyros, then reappeared after we had gelato, mumbled for several minutes, then left. Luckily, I think the little girls are a little young to be too bothered by their scarring experiences, but I am sure it made Andy and Karen uncomfortable.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
WOW, your description of the poverty level of the indians working/living and Greece is stunning. It's so hard to imagine that here I am, in America, having had morning coffee with creamer, wearing one of many sets of clothing I own, being washed by the cool A/C in the SUB, with the only concerns on my mind being two: I'm starving (well, by comparison to those impoverished indians, just mildly hungry), and I miss you. And that's largely it. Sure, I could complain about worry about money, jobs, and certain...ahem, PLANS that you and I have (grin), but when I think of indians scything wheat with their hands...my worries/concerns don't seem like that big of a deal.
ReplyDeleteI really like these stories from you because they are epic because they have drama, emotion, contrast! Even hearing about that persistently inappropriate guy that accosted you was dramatic and "legendary" because it's so unusual and contrary to our "norms." My question is how that effects Greek society. Do those kinds of men target tourist women? Or do they target women indiscriminately: Greeks and foreigners alike? And are their attitudes representative of underlying attitudes of, say, Greek men toward women (in general). So, do they have more stable successful marriages because women get really good about deliberately picking good men and then saying no so many times? Or do they have more infidelity and stuff because the opportunities for infidelity are so much more present? That's what I think is interesting. It's like France, there there is a cultural expectancy (as far as I've heard at least) that men will have mistresses...which is totally weird by American standards. It's differences like that that I wonder what effects they have both on how women perceive themselves, how men perceive themselves, how stable and successful the society is economically (perhaps it has some effect), and and the success and happiness of relationships and marriages.
Fascinating stuff!