The date is August 19th and we have a baptism to get to! A bunch of us hop on the boat from Faros to get back to Agios and then up the mountain to Tsouretho. This baptism is special for me because when I spent my first summer in Ikaria at the age of 10 I made a fast friend. I spoke of her in my previous blog about that journey. This is the baptism of her child. I absolutely am going. The winds are kicking up on this day as they have traveled through the atmosphere from Africa. They are called the Sirocco winds and they carry the dust through the atmosphere and it falls on the island. It also brings very warm weather. It is something my mom got to experience and I say this with a laugh. Stick with me here. First the baptism! The baptism was at 8:15pm. That’s correct, PM. We rest all day and then we party. Nikola got baptized and then we headed to the school for the Glendi. A beautiful feast and celebration and I gave up by 2:00am. I left a lot of people there and I know they went until the sun came up so congratulations to them. I headed back to the village home to get some rest.
August 19th could not prepare us for August 20th. You know those warm winds I mentioned? They were about to remind us that we could perish. No water for the trip. Nothing. Well, we woke up around 9am and rather than finding a ride back to Agios we decided to take the footpath. I have got to laugh because my mother was completely confident that I knew where the footpath was. Nope! So I did the next best thing. I tried to fake it and failed miserably. We headed out for what was to be an hours long journey and I chose horrible shoes for this. Remember we are walking down a mountain. Let’s go! It started off casually as I said “Over here mom. Here is the path.” I could see a home nestled in the valley of this path but was NOT prepared for the wild dogs we encountered. “Mom…turn around immediately! This isn’t the path!” Now we are climbing uphill through brush and heat. My legs were trembling from fear. If mom was concerned she did a good job at two stepping it so I was glad for that. I grabbed some large stones as we fled the area in case we needed to defend ourselves. Dramatic? Maybe? But wasn’t taking any chances. We got lost 3 different times and the sweat was unstoppable. Other things we saw on our waterless death march included a cow, donkey and they were roaming free. We also heard the “Theka-octo” bird. It is a bird that just mocks you while it sings “theka-octo” constantly. Did I mention we didn’t have water. What should have been 15 minutes down the footpath turned into the better part of the day. We stopped multiple times and I listened to my mom give me her philosophy on how we will perish on this day. We almost peed ourselves laughing because we were delirious. I finally got us to the road, which in theory sounds good, but it was a switchback which means back and forth for unnecessary miles. We arrived back to Agios at 4:00pm! We couldn’t even talk anymore so we slept for 2 hours and then only thing we did after that was head to the Platia for dinner and then back to bed. The best part was seeing everyone at the Platia that took the footpath back early in the day. Everyone was wondering where we were. LOL! Have a seat and listen.
A Voice For Women 