Corfu Magazine - Vol. 3, No. 3; March 2008
Oasis
by David A. Ross
O-a-sis-- (from the Greek) a fertile place in the desert, due to the presence of water
-Webster's New World Dictionary
During the 1980's and 1990's I travelled quite extensively. In the time spanning 1987 to 2001, I crossed the ocean (Atlantic and Pacific) some thirty times. I visited more than twenty foreign countries, many more than once. While I certainly had a few experiences one might call wierd, I never encountered circumstances that felt truly threatening. Since 2001, when I first landed on Corfu, I have not once been off this rock, so to speak. So I suppose one can tire of ecstacy, too.
These days, from my sedentary seat here on this tiny oasis in the Med, I can't help thinking that the world has changed a great deal during the last twenty years. As I said, in times past I travelled without reservation to country after country, and without incident, but I fear that the negotiable world has grown quite smaller during the past fifteen years. Because of politics, or religious strife, or famine, or disease, or what-have-you, I find fewer and fewer places that I might travel to in comfort, confidence and safety.
For example: The Middle East seems intent on courting Armageddon; one hundred people per day die in Iraq by violence; innocent aid workers are slaughtered in Sri Lanka; Islamic Fundamentalism is taking over North Africa, the Philipines, Indonesia; Aids has deprived the entire African continent of two and maybe three generations; violence and starvation ravage Darfour; the Balkans, though mostly peaceful now, are still a bit dicey; only a strong-arm government in Egypt is keeping the lid on a religious/cultural explosion; Britain, France and Germany
all have serious immigration problems; and in my home country (USA) the literacy level in the city of Detroit has fallen below fifty per cent, less than thirty per cent of all high school studends in Los Angeles actually graduate, New Orleans has been left to rot in a stinking, rancid sewer, and one third of all children are medicated (drugged) with Ritalin (or other psychoactive, brain-shrinking drugs) to mainstream their behaviour (the ultimate price being the neutralisation of creativity!). Meanwhile, we walk through our privileged Western lives under the constant surveillance of video cameras. Is it any wonder that I've not left this little 'oasis' for more than six years now?
While remote in some respects, Corfu is certainly not cut off from world events. CNN comes piping through my TV clear as the Kontokali church bell I hear each morning. But like most Westerners, I suppose, the drone of catastrophic events portrayed daily on the news washes over me like an Ionian wave. A big splash that receeds without any real impact. Starvation may be rampant in Africa, and half the world's people may be living on less than two dollars a day, but here on Corfu, this little oasis in the Med, life moves on in a sort of bucolic wonderment. Not to say that we have no problems here, but of course degree is everything, isn't it?
Perhaps we're locked inside a bubble here. And perhaps the scope of such catastophic events is lost on us as we bask in sunshine, eat our Feta, and debate whether or not the euro has been good for Greece. Sure we bitch and moan about the decrease in tourism, but let's face it, thirty years ago the cash crop here was olives, not tourists. All in all, Corfu is an oaisis, a fertile place in the desert of inequality, strife and intolerence. How very lucky we are in our blindness!
Corfu - Then & Now
by Rick Johansen
I first visited Corfu in the summer of 1985. I knew nothing of the island other than what I gleaned from people who kept telling me I really must come.
“It’s a beautiful place,” my friend would say. “You’ll fall in love with it.”
Pah! Fall in love with a place where you have to put soiled toilet paper into a bin next to the toilet? I don’t think so.
But, to cut a long and highly uninteresting story short, I decided to make my first visit.
“I stay in a room in Garitsa, just near the airport,” said my friend. “I’ll telephone the guy, book it for you. Just book a flight.”
I didn’t even know you could book just a flight. I thought you had to book the whole holiday. But I booked it and soon I was seated on a cronky old Dan Air Boeing 727 headed for Corfu.
We landed at some crazy time in the middle of the night. This was good news, I concluded. The airport would be deserted and we – I went with a mate called Pete – would be in our digs, crashed out within the hour.
Whoops! Big misjudgement.
There were more than a few aircraft humming and screaming on the apron and now and then one would roar past on the runway before taking off into the starlit sky.
I was not used to this. Airports back at home pretty well shut down after midnight but this one was a seething, sweating mass of humanity waiting for its luggage. And waiting and waiting and waiting.
The squeaking, clanking conveyor belt eventually brought our luggage and we headed away from the airport. The sun was beginning to rise.
We were too early for our room so we waited for the local café to open and open it did. The caffeine had little effect so when we found our room, we slept.
Corfu Town was much the same 22 years ago except maybe in one area: the smell.
We walked to the Bay of Garitsa and, boy, it smelled bad. It didn’t look to clever, either. The many boats appeared to be bobbing about on what was, to all intents and purposes, an open sewer.
But the smell was all I didn’t like. Corfu Town was bewitching.
Having done no research before I arrived, I knew nothing about St Spiridon, the Venetians or Ginger Beer but I was getting hooked on something.
Travelling the island was an experience in itself.
The north was a spectacular combination of spectacular views and terrifying switchback roads and as you went further south the roads turned into dirt tracks – and that was before Kavos, not after.
And Kavos was the big surprise.
We drove through Benitses late one evening and it was jam-packed with, I regret to say, thousands of drunken Brits, some of whom were dressed. I knew Benitses was where it was at, as they said, but when I saw the place in broad daylight I wondered what the attraction to anyone other than a nightclubber could be.
It was an old fishing village at one point but it looked nothing like one now.
We made Kavos one night to find young men urinating on the beach: nice!
1985 and Kavos was tiny up to what it is now. Even then I thanked the Corfiots for developing the resort which is
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Commentary
Letters From Our Readers...
The problems (in Corfu's tourism industry) are manifold but not insurmountable. Spain could be held up as an example of a popular tourist destination of long standing that recently has had a boom in residency from (the) UK and other countries in Europe. They now enjoy "cheap as chips" flights - not only for residents going back and forth to the UK, but also relatives visiting, who patronize various shops, restaurants and other facilities on a year round basis. If handled correctly in Corfu this could have a rejuvenating effect rather than a detrimental effect on the revenue from tourism.
I understand that the Corfiot and Greek people want to make as much as they can out of tourism (in many cases without wanting to put any effort into it) and that is an understandable sentiment in people who have always
had to work very hard for their money (olive-cultivation is extremely labour intensive and only rewarding to those who put their backs in to it year after year), and there are many who gain my undying respect. But some of the younger generation inheriting olive groves have had a shift of attitude and realise that they can make a fast buck by selling a bit of land for a lot of money (this usually entails removing a few olive trees; albeit illegal to do this now and thereby sowing the seeds of an ailing economy if tourism dries up and they no longer have the volume of olives to bring in a decent living). It worries me quite a lot when a little forethought and long term planning could solve the problems and give them a very bright future.
I realise now that I live here that there are may facets to the Corfiot psyche, some damaging and some enlightening and invigorating, and it would be a pity if the former elements were allowed to overtake the latter two.
Greed...plays a big part - and we ex-pats are not without
that trait - although we see it as "a better quality of life". It is a better quality of life, I believe, and enables us to save for our old age. We are "retired early" residents and have only injected cash into the Corfu economy without taking one penny out. We don't want to see Corfu going back to being a poor island reliant on scraping a living without the benefits that tourism brings. Many are impatient with tourists and fed up with tourism and look forward to their island "closing down for the winter". That I also understand, Edinburgh being my native city and for years having the problem of commuting to the city when the Edinburgh Festival was on. But we all understood it was necessary, not only for revenue but for the goodwill it generated on the global stage.
The underlying problem appears to be political and there seems to be a strange paradox in Corfu where they try to marry up a hate of capitalism with making as much money as they can in a short a time possible. Anyone who has set up home here would be able to verify this. But this can all be dealt with on a day to day basis in a good natured way where possible, and a mutual respect develops. The main issue seems to be to try to get the Chief of Tourism for the Island to address the problem of the landing charges without any qualms even on an experimental basis for a couple of years and see what difference it makes. He seems merely to pay lip service to tourism in Corfu in only the most general way. Maybe some new blood is required.
Name withheld by request
©Happy Holidays Corfu
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