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Sofia put her small towel on the ground couple of metres away from the young families and
sat down, while Flutura took Dimitris to the sea in order to wash the excrement off his
bottom. When one of the ladies noticed this she shouted in Albanian, “We have children here
and we don’t want them to swim in the shit!” Flutura blushed and without a comment took
Dimitris further down along the wide and open beach. Meanwhile the lady turned towards her
husband and in Greek language furiously condemned Flutura’s manners. Sofia, who had
already taken off her clothes, asked me to go with her and swim in the sea. Flutura and
Dimitris soon returned. Flutura left him with us while she returned to the fast food restaurant.
She complained that she could not stand sitting on the hot sun. We were playing and laughing
and before long the children of the young couples joined us. When they heard me speaking
Greek with uncommon accent the woman who had been shouting at Flutura asked me where I
was coming from.
My answer that I came from Slovenia stirred up their attention and they invited me to sit with
them under their umbrella. They all originated from Dhërmi/Drimades. When they were still
very young, however, their families moved to Vlorë where they grew up. Kiqos, born in 1969,
said the following:
We return to Drimades every year. As we originally come from here we love this
place. Our parents live here and we visit them as often as we can. Unfortunately we
can visit them only during the summer and sometimes for Pashka (Easter holidays).
Our children really enjoy their stay here. They can run around and spend the entire day
in nature. It is impossible to do this in Athens as it is a very large city.
We always stay on this side of the beach, with the rest of the locals. The other side is
for foreigners, we don’t feel comfortable there. It is very nice here during the summer.
You can meet almost everybody from the village, even those who work in Greece.
During the year, we all work hard and have no time to meet. This is one of the reasons
why we enjoy returning to Drimades, to its beautiful coast. It is a pity that the
Albanians pollute our beach. They throw garbage everywhere. Drimades has the most
beautiful coast around and it is a great shame that the Albanians are polluting it. They
behave like pigs. Did you see that Albanian, who was washing this child’s [pointing
on Dimitris] trousers full of shit in the sea? Right in front of our children, who were
having a swim. Disgusting!
I noted that the lady was married to a village man and Kiqos continued:
Yes, yes […]. What have we come to! Yes, a lot of the locals married somebody from
the outside. What a pity this is! There is more and more Turki living here. Soon there
will be more of them than horiani. O kratos [the state] tries to make this place
Albanian. But this place is Greek, because it has Greek toponimia [toponomy]. Do you
know the name of that nice beach that you can see from Lloghara? Meghalihora. And
do you know the place before Meghalihora? It is Grammata and than Meghalihora.
After that is Jaliskari […].
Vangjelis who was sitting next to Kiqos disagreed:
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