Chapter One
THE VILLAGE AND ITS PEOPLE
1.1. The Area
Dhermi/Drimades is one of the villages of Himare (official, Albanian name) Himare/Himara (local, Greek name) area. The area stretches about 25 kilometres along the southern Albanian coast and is known as Bregu i Detit, meaning the coastal area. Himare/Himara administratively belongs to Vlore Prefecture [12] and presents an important part of Ionian littoral situated between the cities of Vlore (the capital of the Prefecture) and Saranda. The area lies 42 kilometres away from the northern city of Vlore and about the same from the southern city of Saranda. The Albanian-Greek border is 60 kilometres south. The Thunderbolt Mountains or Malet e Vetetime, also called Acroceraunian mountain range, enclose the area on its northern and north-eastern side. The area opens up on its south-western side with the mountain of Cika and descends towards the Ionian coast and the Greek Islands of Othonas and Corfu in the distance.
Besides the social and geographical area Himare/Himara is also the name of a small town, appointed as a regional municipality in 2000 [13]. Many local people [14] as well as some historians explain that this name dates back to antiquity. Heimarra or Himarra is believed to be its original name. Some local historians suggest that the name Himarra derives from a Greek word himarros and means a small torrential river. They can be found in abundance in
[12] The Republic of Albania is divided in 12 Prefectures or regions which are the territorial and administrative units, usually comprising several communes and municipalities "with geographical, traditional, economical and social links and common interests. The borders of a region correspond to the borders of the comprising communes and municipalities, while the centre of the region is established in one of the municipalities. The territory, name and centre of the region are established by law" (see Albanian Association of Municipalities, 2001: 5 and 17).
[13] From 1992 (since the first local elections after the demise of the communism) till 2000 Himare/Himara area administratively belonged to a commune. According to the law on local government system (Law no. 7275 - The Law on the Functions and the Organisation of the Local Governments) commune represents territorialadministrative unity of rural areas with exceptional urban areas (see Albanian Association of Municipalities, 2001: 18). Though Himare/Himara area does not conjoin the urban areas which is one of the leading conditions for it to be approved as a municipality, the leading local administrators achieved the status of municipality in 2000. One of the main arguments for attaining this status was that Himare/Himara is a potential tourist area.
With this change, Himare/Himara area became administratively more independent in economical, urban planning and partly in decollectivisation processes.
[14] During my fieldwork most of the people who claim to originate from Himare/Himara area have declared themselves as horiani (pl.), meaning locals. Throughout my thesis I will refer to them with the term "locals of Himare/Himara area" or simply as "locals".
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Himare/Himara area (see Koci 2006: 14). Others suggest that the name derives from the mythical beast called Chimara, a Greek mythological symbol that conjoins contrasts [15] (Spirou 1965). The third explanation states that the name Himera derives from Ymera or Hydra or Ydra where hy-u means divinity. The suffix dra or dre(q) means bad or evil. Thus Himera, Hydra or Ydra could be translated as bad divinity (Bixhili 2004: 19). Nowadays, these explanations are often imbued with local, regional or national meanings.
According to the official population registration (INSTAT 2004) Himare/Himara area is populated by 11.257 residents among whom 5.418 people are said to reside in the town of Himare/Himara. The rest live in seven villages of Himare/Himara area (see Appendix 1). Throughout the centuries, Himare/Himara area has been subjected to continuous movements and migrations of its population. This has created a discrepancy between the number of residents and the number of inhabitants in some of Himare/Himara villages, the fact which was repeatedly expressed by several villagers with whom I talked during my preliminary field research in September 2004. Many village inhabitants told me about their feelings of abandonment, which are present also among the residents of other areas of Albania as well as some areas of Greece (e.g. Pogoni of Northern Epirus, see Green 2005: 7). Whilst the discrepancy between the number of inhabitants and the number of residents will be discussed in more detail in the following section of this chapter, let me continue here with a brief
description of Himare/Himara villages.
Throughout the history the size of Himare/Himara area has been continuously changing. The number of villages has varied from 8 to 50. From 15th until 18th century the area conjoined around 50 villages that were scattered throughout the south-eastern plains of Laberia and the southern Ionian coast. In the middle of the 18th century, during the period of Ottoman Empire, Himare/Himara area was reduced in size. Because of the islamisation process of Laberia it comprised only 16 villages that were spread along the Ionian coast from Palasa to Saranda. A century later, in the period of Ali Pasha (1830) the area got the configuration which was kept until present, extending from Palasa to Qeparo (see Sotiri 2004: 263-264, Duka 2004: 64-66, Bixhili 2004: 12, Frasheri 2005: 9-10). Nowadays some of the local people are trying to conjoin the Himare/Himara municipality with the commune of Lukova on the south and
[15] In Greek mythology Chimera is a fire vomiting monster. It is made from the parts of different animals. Descriptions vary - some say that it has the head of a lion, the body of a goat and the tale of a serpent or a dragon. Other descriptions state that it has the head of a goat and a lion, etc. Sighting of Chimera was a sign forecasting storms, shipwrecks and natural disasters (particularly related to active volcanoes).
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declare it as an administratively independent region or prefecture (see Marko 2006: 195). (see Appendix 2). Most of the villages of Himare/Himara area, such as Palasa, Dhermi/Drimades, Ilias/Lates, Vuno, Qeparo/Kiparo, are scattered along the national coastal road while the other two
villages, Pilur which is located on the foothills of Cipthit Mountain and Kudhes situated on the foothill of Gjinvlashi Mountain. Coming from Vlore, after the mountain pass of Llogara (1025 metres) the national road opens to a great view on the first two villages of the area, situated on the hills that stretch behind the Cika Mountain. The first village of Himare/Himara area is Palasa, which was according to the local people originally called Palesti. The legend tells us that somewhere in the 12th or 13th century, pirate attacks drove the "autochthonous" population to flee from their coastal settlement Meghalihora (Big space) and settle in the inland Palesti. Throughout the time the population of Palasa grew and moved further along the coast to other villages. One of these villages is Dhermi/Drimades, situated one kilometre south of Palasa. Similarly to Palasa the village lies on the hills that extend about 150 and 200 metres above the sea level. On its south-western side it opens up into gravel beaches that together with the beaches of Himare/Himara and Vuno represent the main tourist attraction in the summer months. Nowadays tourism provides the main income for the village beside remittances. Narrow coastal road leads further south to the village of Ilias, which lies behind the mountain of Mjegulloshi, a kilometre away from Dhermi/Drimades. Many locals say that its name derives from the word Lates which is said to be the name of the patriline that founded the village. Nowadays Ilias is known by the legend of Saint Kosmas who passed the village on one of his missions through Himare/Himara area in 1778 and 1779 (see Bixhili 2004: 160). Because of the water shortage the villagers could not offer him any when he asked them for it. Insulted by their arrogance Saint Kosmas condemned the village and its people to have no more than 39 houses ever since. Many locals believe that this is one of the main reasons that the village stayed relatively small, populated nowadays by only 118 inhabitants (population registration 2005 of the Municipality of Himare/Himara). When people of Himare/Himara area list its villages they often skip Ilias with the explanation that the place is too small to be called a village. Therefore they often conjoin it either with Dhermi/Drimades or Vuno (cf. INSTAT 2004), both of which are its neighbouring villages.
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Vuno is the next village extending on the hills next to the national coastal road. It is said that because of its location on the hills which ascend to about 300 metres the village is called by the term for a mountain, vuno. Like Dhermi/Drimades and Himare/Himara, Vuno boasts with gravel beaches that attrack many tourists in the summer season (from the mid of May to September). In the past few years one of the Vuno's beaches, called Jaliskari, became a well known summer resort especially for the foreigners, coming from America and Western Europe and working for different NGOs based in Tirana. From Vuno the road curls further south, through the municipal town of Himare/Himara, and leads to Qeparo. It is the last village situated near this road. The oral as well as written historical accounts (Leake 1967: 79) suggest that the original name of the village was Kiepero or Kiparos, which derives from the word kipos, meaning a garden. Nowadays Qeparo is divided in two parts. The old part is located on the hill and ranges from about 300 to 400 metres above the sea level. The new part extends along the coastal road and slowly descends to the coastal sandy beaches. The latter are less attractive for the tourists, than other coastal places of Himare/Himara, Dhermi/Drimades and Vuno mainly because of the bad infrastructure and its distance from Vlore. The last two villages Kudhes and Pilur are situated a couple of kilometres away from the coastal road. Because of their geographical position they are socially and economically quite isolated. Kudhes lies on the mountain hills of Gjivalashi, through which a small creek winds, bearing the same name as the village. One of the local interpretations states that the village got its name after the first settlers who found their shelter here in the period of Ottoman conquest in the 18th century. It is said that the settlers originated from the Kurvelesh area, located behind the Thunderbolt Mountains. At that time many people from Kurvelesh as well as from some mountain places in Northern Albania moved to Himare/Himara area where people never fully submitted to Ottoman rule in contrast to many other areas in central Albania [16] (Winnifrith 2002: 104). Pilur is situated on the hills behind the municipal town of Himare/Himara. Its name is said to derive from the word pile, meaning the top and referring
[16] In his history of southern Albania Winnifrith writes that in 16th century the coastal villages of Himare/Himara the Vlach villages near Voskopoje in the east, the village of Dhrovjan near Sarande and villages of Metsovo (nowadays in Greece) gained special privileges such as some degree of independence, privilege and freedom from taxes (Winnifrith 2002: 104).
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to village's uphill location. Like Kudhes, Pilur is also believed to be founded during the Ottoman period.
1.2. Geomorphological Story
The southern coast is a part of Dinaric Alps mountain range that stretches from the north-west to the south-east of Albania. The coast from Vlore to Dhermi/Drimades consists of rocky wave-cut cliffs. The coast continues in narrow plains with gravel beaches that present one third of the Himare/Himara coastline. After the collapse of communism some of its beaches, such as Livadhi and Potami of Himare/Himara, Gjipe, Jaliskari and the central beach of Dhermi/Drimades, and Jala of Vuno became tourist centres.
Towards inland the gravel beaches change into the landscape of evergreen vegetation, filled with olive terraces and citrus orchards. The terrain quickly elevates from the sea for about 50 to 80 metres inland, towards hilly plains where the villages of Himare/Himara area reside. The area relief is typical karst. The quality of the soil is relatively poor due to the presence of the limestone rocks (see Kabo 2004: 21). This condition has resulted in fragmented landholdings and limited agricultural productivity of the region. Therefore the area is more suitable for sheep and goat breeding, cultivation of olives, oranges, vines and corn in addition to the fishing by the coast.
The climate is Mediterranean. The average winter temperatures range from 10 to 12 degrees with the coldest month in January. The average summer temperatures vary from about 25 to 37 degrees with the hottest month in August (from Pano, Thodorjani, Mustaqi, et.al. 2006: 108).
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Annual Temperatures in Himare/Himara Area
Figure 1. (from Pano, Thodorjani, Mustaqi, et.al. 2006: 108)
The annual rainfall ranges from 1442 millimetres to 1571 millimetres. Around 70% of the rain
falls during the winter period, from January till March. In summer months the quantities of
rain fluctuate only around 60 to 80 millimetres per year. The survey of the rainfall reports that
Himare/Himara area has approximate 91 rainy days. Precipitations often result in strong
showers that may cause severe floods. In October 1964, for example, it was noted that within
24 hours around 313 millimetres of rain fell; and in February 1935 even more, around 350
millimetres (Pano, Thodorjani, Mustaqi, et.al. 2006: 108).
Annual Precipitation in Himare/Himara Area
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the trees such as different kinds of oak (Quercus valonae, Quercus liex, Ceratonia siliqua) and the wild cotton (Gomphocarpus ruticosus and Eophorbia dendrioder) (see Nasi, Prifti et.al. 2004: 22). To a certain extent, in most of the area the vegetation is damaged as the result of building of terraces, fires and goat overgrazing.
The dominant minerals are calcium and other carbonates. The rough relief is imbued with many streams and torrents that disappear in the summer and reappear again in the late autumn and winter. Rainy winters provoke the runoff and sediment loss caused by the precipitation.
The area is tectonically active. According to the report on the conservation of wetland and the coastal ecosystems in the Mediterranean region "tectonic movements and shifting sea-bed morphology determine cliff erosion, creating recesses along the coast in the form of caves and canyons. Weather and the assailing forces of waves from the open Ionian Sea cause basal cliff erosion to the karstic limestone rocks" (1999: 13 United Nations Development Programme Global Environment Facility).
Mountainous terrain and the seasonally wet Mediterranean climate are two main reasons for erosion and land degradation in Himare/Himara area as well as elsewhere on the southern coast and in the Alpine area of the northern Albania (see Dedej 2002:12). Throughout the centuries in some areas the extent of erosion became greater as it was accelerated by unfavourable human activities such as over-cultivation and use of fertilizers [17] (present since 1970), deforestation, creation of artificial water reservoirs and dams, extraction of the inert material like gravel and sand, diverting of rivers from their natural streams, irrational tourism, etc.
1.3. Dhermi/Drimades
Dhermi/Drimades stretches for about three kilometres along the national coastal road and is divided in three hamlets: Kondraca, Gjilek/Gjilekates, and Dhermi/Drimades as the village centre. As people say, Dhermi/Drimades or the centre (e qendra or o kendros) was founded sometime in the 13th century, when the population of Palesti (nowadays Palasa) expanded and moved further on to the neighbouring hills of today's central hamlet of Dhermi/Drimades.
[17] According to the research report on Soil Survey in Albania the usage of fertilizers in Albania began in 1970s with the construction of two factories: one for the nitrogen and another for phosphate fertilizers (Zdruli 2004: 43).
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About a century later the second hamlet Gjilek (official name) or Gjilekates (local name) was formed. And finally after a big earthquake in 1930 the third hamlet of Kondraca was founded.Because of a big damage caused in the central hamlet as well as in Gjilek/Gjilekates some of the families whose houses were destroyed moved downhill to the green plains of Kondraca. In the period of communism, with the opening of the village cooperative in 1957, the hamlet widened and then enlarged when the system of cooperatives ended. Many of the local people of Dhermi/Drimades that nowadays live and work in Greece began to build new houses which are mainly used as holiday houses in summer months. With the growth of new houses the hamlet of Kondraca was divided in two neighbourhoods, Kondraca and Kallam (official name) or Kalami (local name). Many people explain that the neighbourhood Kallam/Kalami (reed) got its name from the reed that grows in the neighbourhood (see Appendix 3). In 1946 the process of the land collectivization took place in Albania following the agricultural reform. Until 1967 most of the private land throughout Albania was collectivized (see de Waal 1996: 171). Based on Hoxha's ideology to build a self-sufficient country (especially after the break of alliance with the former Soviet Union in 1961) the communist party aimed to increase the agricultural production and reduce the investment industry. Between 1950 and 1989 massive terracing, marsh draining, irrigation works and desalination projects took place and the length of the arable land throughout the country doubled (ibid.). After 1958, when Dhermi/Drimades became a part of the agricultural cooperative, the land previously owned by individual proprietors (gardens and olive terraces) and patrilines (pastures and forests) went over to the state cooperative. The cooperative system also brought several other novelties such as water supply, electricity, infrastructure and extension of arable land area [18]. On the coastal plains the members of cooperative (the local inhabitants and a few settlers originating from other parts of Albania) extended the olive and orange terraces which the local people plant after the Second World War (1945-1955) (see Nina 2004: 132). Later on (after 1980, when the private houses too could become owned by the cooperatives) the cooperative took four private houses located by the road in the central hamlet of Dhermi/Drimades. Two of them were used as warehouses, one as the cooperative main office and another one as the cultural house (Shtepia e Kultures). Whilst the owners of one house
[18 ] Along with communist ideology to build equality (at least in theory) between the regions the area of the arable land extended. This was promoted by the slogan: "Let us take to the hills and mountains, and make them as beautiful and fertile as the plains" (de Waal 1996: 175).
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(which was later used as a warehouse) were relocated to Tirana, the other three houses were taken by the cooperative because they were empty. Their owners died and their children - due to the educational reasons - requested for a relocation to Tirana and Vlore [19]. In Kondraqa the members of the cooperative built an olive-oil factory. The communist Party of Labour transformed two buildings which used to serve as warehouses and were situated by in the central hamlet by the national road, into local stores. One of them was selling food and the other was offering general goods such as garden equipment, clothes, etc. The workers hired by the state built health centre and the cooperative house. In the hamlet of Kondraqa they built a three-grade primary school with a kindergarten [20] and an apartment block for the state workers and their families (such as constructors, teachers, doctors, policemen, directors of local shops, hotel managers) who moved to Dhermi/Drimades after 1957. By the coastal plain the constructors hired by the state built Hotel Dhermiu, the government villa or vila tou Enveri and the Camp of Workers or Kampi I Punetoreve [21]. All these buildings were in state ownership [22]. In fulfilling the Hoxha's directive of militarisation of Albanian landscape
[19] In the period of communism the in-country movements were strictly controlled and one needed a special permit from the local authorities to be able to do this. The permit was called pashaportizim and was particularly difficult to obtain for rural-to-urban movements. Part of the party's policy was to keep the population forcibly in the rural areas. However, young men and women were invited to join in working for big projects such as constructions of major railways, bridges, hydro-electric power plants, factories etc. A good number of people working in these projects were volunteers. After the project was completed, they could stay on if they wanted to, provided they had applied for the right kinds of official permits. So a substantial part of rural-to-urban movements took part in the 60s and 70s and many young men and women went to work in places such as Berat, Korce, Koman etc.
At all times certain professionals could move from one city to another. These included officers in the army and other personnel working for the ministries or for the highest local government authorities. Of course their movements have included their families too. In many cases people were not given an opportunity to choose a place where they were appointed to work. This was particularly the case for the people who worked as public servants (e.g. bureaucrats, teachers and doctors, etc.). Along with their occupation of being a public servant they had to accept to move wherever they were appointed. On rare occasions they could make a preference on the location of their appointment. Students from all parts of Albania studying at the University of Tirana, had tried to find work while studying, so that they could make sure to stay in Tirana after completing their studies. Of course not all of them succeeded. Most movements reflected the post-1990 movements, i.e. from all other parts of Albania towards the coast, with Tirana as a favourite destination (Julie Vullnetari, Sussex Centre for Migration Research, University of Sussex, personal communication).
[20] After three years of schooling in Kondraqa the children continued their education in the primary school Gjika Bixhili (built in 1850 by the initiative local man Gjika Bixhili [see Languages, section Language and Education]) in the centre of Dhermi/Drimades. [21] For more detailed information see Negotianting Rubbish.
[22] In the rural areas where the agricultural reform took place the communist property could be differentiated between two types. The first type was the cooperative property that was managed and controlled by the head of the cooperative (Kryetari i Kooperatives) who was elected by the members of cooperative. They were paid according to their product, the price of which was determined according to the normative amount (so called normativa) of the daily productivity (e.g. 250 old Lek per 50 kilos of olives [which is about 2,07 Euro according to the exchange rate 1 Euro is 120,822 Leks, from August, 2007]). In Dhermi/Drimades, for example, it was a practice that the members of cooperative were usually paid daily, with the amount estimated according to the previous year. When their productivity overreached the normative amount and the cooperative had a profit they could receive extra payment. According to several discussions with the ex members of cooperative, this rarely happened as the normative amount continuously grew according to general ideology of the maximal productivity. The second type was the state property that was managed and controlled by director who was nominated by the Communist Party of Labour. Director and the workers had a fixed salary.
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mushroom-like bunkers were placed on the hilly and coastal part of the village. Bunkers are nowadays still in place all over Albania. Most of these structures are now, after the end of communism and massive emigration of local population, desolated and left to decay similarly to old family houses in the village.
The village is nowadays led by the village councillor and the village council that conjoins five village men. All of them are elected by the local community on the local elections that use to be held every five three years and after 2006 every four years. The village councillor, after consulting the village council, decides about the important village issues such as land claims and improvement of the village infrastructure and disputes. When important matters arise, e.g. national elections or land tenure issues, the councillor assembles the village council and then the meeting of the whole village is announced. When I lived in Dhermi/Drimades these meetings always took place in the courtyard of one of the main churches in the village, Ag. Haralamb.
1.4. Ambiguous Name
The ambiguity of a dual name Dhermi/Drimades already indicates some of the social boundaries that permeate the village spaces. A number of inhabitants, especially those who believe to originate from the village or the Himare/Himara area and declare themselves as locals or horiani, believe that the original name of the village is Drimades and that it derives from Greek language. They explained that the name Dhermi was introduced later, sometime during the period of King Zogu (1924-1939), and became the official name during the communist regime. On the other hand, the interpretations of Albanian historians and politicians state that the name Drimades was brought into use by Greek traders when the villages of the Himare/Himara area (as well as other parts of southern Albania) were part of a Greek colony already in the 4th century B.C. (see Memushaj 2003, Bixhili 2004, Frasheri 2005).
This inconsistency of historical data is partly related to several attempts to rewrite history during various periods in the past. The puzzles from the Himare/Himara area remain unsolved
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even today. This creates disagreements that are unlikely to be solved in the near future. Due to the constant nationalistic tendencies of the Greek and Albanian states it is hard to objectively determine when the names Drimades and Dhermi truly appeared. There were a few foreign travellers who passed through Dhermi/Drimades and mentioned it in their published works that could be taken as more objective historical sources. Hobhouse (1813) and his companion the famous poet Byron (1891), Pouqueville (1825), Leake (1835), Lear (1851), Hammond (1967), et. al., are some of the writers who talked about Himare/Himara or Dhermi/Drimades and wrote the names in a slightly different manner. Lord Byron (1891) described the fighting spirit of the Albanian people and the revengefulness of the Himare/Himara people. In his poem Child Harold he wrote the following words:
Shall the sons of Chimara who never forgive
The fault of a friend, bid an enemy life?
Let those guns so unerring such vengeance forgo?
What's mark is so fair as the breast of a foe? (1891: XX)
Besides the famous Byron Himare/Himara and its people were also mentioned by the Belgian historian Pouqueville (1825) who like Byron failed to mention Dhermi/Drimades. In his work entitled Travels in Northern Greece (1967) the English historian Leake who traveled throughout Epirus in 1804 mentioned Dhermi/Drimades as Dhrymadhes about which he jotted the following words:
At Corfu I met a certain Count Gika, of Dhrymadhes, who described that place as very picturesque, with a river running through it: [...] (1967: 88). In the later years these places were visited by the English landscape painter Edward Lear (1812-1888), who left us his drawings of Dhermi/Drimades besides his travel notes, both of which were published in the book Journals of a Landscape Painter in Greece and Albania.
Lear mentioned the village by the name of Dhrymadhes, when he wrote:
Anastasio fired off his pistol at the last point of the rock where the town was visible, and I went on my way to dine and draw at Dhrymadhes, which I reached half past ten [...] I drew constantly till noon, the magnificence of this place being inexhaustible (Lear 1851: 147).
A century later the English historian Hammond refered to Dhermi/Drimades by Dherm or Zrimazes and wrote about the village the following words:
From Himare I walked through the Greek-speaking villages, taking three hours via Vuno and Vijates to reach Zrimazes (350 houses) bellow which Roman remains are
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reported [23]. At Zrimazes I spent a night, rendered hideous by the women keening for a young man killed by vendetta (Hammond 1967: 125). There are generally not many sources that would allow a consistent conclusion regarding the name of the village, which is an issue that is becoming increasingly important if one takes into account the current land tenure debate between the villagers and the political elite (see Bollano, Milo et.al. 2006). Foreign travellers' accounts seem to be more valid than the various nationally oriented notes of historians, for they embraced the local people's declarations, in spite of their tendencies to discover the "exotic other". Nevertheless, the meaning of the name Dhermi/Drimades is still dubious and ambiguous. Nowadays with the raising land tenure issues in Dhermi/Drimades (as well as in the Himare/Himara area) the ambiguity of the village name that appears in the local representations, history books, media reveals the contestation that constantly oscillates between conflict and consensus.
Various interpretations of the village origin stand behind different diametrically opposed interpretations of two names. In short, I could divide them into pro-Greek and pro-Albanian explanations, each of them using different political aspirations in order to interpret the meaning of the village name. One of the pro-Greek interpretations states that the name derives from the word drima-dhes for which the local people say that it meant "an oak tree" in ancient Greek and that it used to be typical for the village vegetation. The second also a pro-Greek explanation states that the name derives from the word dhromos which means "a road" or "a path" close to which the village is situated. The third interpretation explains that the name is related to the word drimos [24], "a creek". The fourth explanation says that the name derives from the Albanian word dhe-mih which means "to dig the land". The latter is supposed to be connected to the influence that the local land degradation has for the village economy. Petro Marko who originates from Dhermi/Drimades offers a different interpretation of the name Dhermi/Drimades. In his story for teenagers entitled The Cave of Pirates (Shpella e Pirateve), published in Tirana in 1998, Petro Marko described the movement of the local population from the so-called place of Vreke to the caves called Qendrushe (qendra centre or qendrim sojourn). At Qendrushe there is e madhe (big) dhri. While Petro Marko did not offer an explanation for dhri, Foto Bixhili, another local historian originating from Dhermi/Drimades, who recently published his work on the history of the Himare/Himara area and its villages,
[23] In his history book Hammond refers to Philippson and Kirsten (1950) who quoted Lampros saying that a Roman bath was found bellow Zrimazes (Hammond 1967: 125).
[24] A similar word, drimus, can also be found in the Oxford Greek Dictionary (1997), meaning "pungent" or "sharp".
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offers an explanation of Agim Shehu. He translated the word dhri as a vine that grows on the slopes above the caves (Bixhili 2004: 41). When Bixhili refered to Shehu, he did not offer a detailed reference (year of publishing and page) on Shehu's book. Bixhili continued that besides olive terraces and oak trees (which are these days rather scarce) the village of Dhermi is characteristic for madhe - big dhri - vines (ibid.). He also leaves the reader in doubts, for he does not explain whether dhri derives from Albanian, Greek or any other language. The word dhri does not exist - even as a prefix - in the modern Albanian-English dictionary (Ramazan Hysa 2005), in the modern Albanian dictionary (Fjalor I Shqipes se sotme 1980), or in the Oxford Greek Dictionary (1997). In the modern Albanian dictionary of the Albanian Academy of Science there is a word drim which marks the first twelve days of August or the last three days of March when it is according to the folk believes a bad weather. In his book Drimades of Himara (Drimades tis Himaras) published in Athens another local historian Kosta Dede explains that the word dhrimadhe derives from the word dhrimos which meant "forest" in ancient Greek, while in Modern Greek it denotes a natural park (Dede 1978: 10). Along with these interpretations there are several others: literal, scientific and folk. All of them, however, are usually coloured with the political content of different national interests, either pro-Greek or pro-Albanian. It is important to note that most of the explanations are burdened with national or regional/local explanations that point towards historical and social mapping of the area. Therefore the contexts in which these interpretations appear and the ways in which they are used in everyday village discourse are of a much greater interest for an ethnographer than their historico-linguistic origins.
1.5. Shifting Localities
Considering the everyday use of the names Dhermi and Drimades, there seems to be a distinction between those inhabitants, whose predecessors originate from Dhermi/Drimades and declare themselves as locals, horiani or Drimadiotes, and those inhabitants and seasonal workers who moved to the village from other parts of Albania, either during the period of communism or after it. While the latter inhabitants almost exclusively use the name Dhermi, the former often use both. The use of different names does not depend merely on the origin of the speaker, but also on the language he uses at the time. Thus whenever local inhabitants speak to their fellow locals in local Greek dialect, they mainly use the name Drimades, and when they talk in the Albanian dialect, they use the official name Dhermi.
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1.5.1. Shifting of the "Local"
When asked about the meaning of the term horianos (the local), many people of Dhermi/Drimades explained that horianos means apo ton topo, "of the place". The indicative "of the place" relates to the referent's origin which has to be from Dhermi/Drimades or the Himare/Himara area. In the colloquial language numerous villagers differentiate between those horiani, who originate and live in the village most of their lifetime, those who originate from the village but have lived for most of their life in other places of Albania and/or Greece and recently returned to their natal village, those who originate from the village but live in other places in Albania or in emigration in Greece or United States, those who originate and live in one of the villages of the Himare/Himara area, and finally those who originate from one of the villages of the Himare/Himara area and live either in Albania or in emigration in Greece or US.
These categorisations often come forward whenever locals discuss the history of their village and its past spaces. For example, eighty-five years old Luka, who was born in Dhermi/Drimades and has spent most of his lifetime in the village, declares himself as horianos as opposed to those locals who returned to the village during the last few years. He often refers to them as kseni or foreigners. When asked if these foreigners are any different from the recent settlers and seasonal workers who originate from other places in Albania, Luka explained that they are kseni because they forgot "the village" and its "history". They are not familiar with the "old" village places and the names of now desolated neighbourhoods, abandoned fields and pastures in the village's outskirts, etc. Like many other elderly locals Luka noted that those locals, who moved to the village during the last few years, got "deprived", halase, while living elsewhere in Albania and/or in Greece. I halase to kozmos edo "the people got spoiled/are deprived", explained Luka and nostalgically, "in those times people in the village were in friendly relations. In those times there were rules. Today people
are is in dispute with each other and they gossip all around!" A different view from Luka's was declared by forty-eight years old Spiros and his four years younger wife, both of whom originate from the village but spent many years in Vlore (25 years) and Athens (5 years). They returned to Dhermi/Drimades only a few years ago. Urania and Spiros declare themselves as horiani though they are considered by Luka as kseni. Similarly to Luka, Urania and Spiros have talked about village's past, according to which, as Herzfeld suggests, they generated images of "spurious equality" and eradicated memories of group differences
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(Herzfeld 1991: 77). But whenever asked about something they were not familiar with, they suggested that I should ask those elderly locals who have lived in the village for all their life. The given examples shoe that horianos or "the local" does not mean the same for the people whose local identities are often questioned. Moreover, being "of the place" does not necessarily refer to the "physical" place. Based upon Luka's distinctions between him and Janis and Urania I suggest that the meaning "of the place" also refers to the knowledge of place which is in Dhermi/Drimades related to different reconstructions of the past. The latter become important in reconstructing the local identities which are continuously negotiated in the course of re-establishing the "single" and "true" history of the village and its people.
1.5.2. The "Local" and the "Other" - Distinctions and Interrelations
The above mentioned categorisations of the "local" become negligible when the locals refer to recent settlers and seasonal workers who originate from other places in Albania. In their dayto- day conversation, the locals often differentiate between "us", that is horiani, Drimadiotes, and "them" or kseni, that is outsiders, "newcomers" or foreigners. The locals also use pejorative names such as Turkos or Alvanos, which according to them mark the differences in language skills, religion, financial position, social status and the possibility of unrestricted crossing of the Albanian - Greek border. During my fieldwork locals often warned me of kseni whom they often accused of stealing and cheating. In these warnings they differentiated between those few kseni who migrated to the village in the period of communism and those kseni who migrated afterwards. In the last group of "outsiders" are seasonal workers (e.g. constructors and other physical workers) who live in the village only temporarily. The "newcomers" who moved to Dhermi/Drimades mainly originate from the villages of Laberia (such as, for example, Vranisht, Sevaster, Bolene, Shales) in the south-eastern part of Albania, villages around the city of Vlore (Dukati, Peshkepi, Selenice, Ballsh) in the northeast, villages in the north-west such as Lushnja, while some even came from Mirdita area in the far north, close to the border between Albania and Montenegro. Together with their young families they moved to Dhermi/Drimades largely due to economical reasons. Only a few families (five of all) moved here in the period of communism and most of them (about forty families) moved after its end. Because the young locals are going out of the country and moving mainly to Greece, there is a need for a young working force in order to help the
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elderly who stayed behind. Those who came to the village in the period of communism used to work in the agricultural cooperatives. Nowadays some of them are shop or cafe owners, while others work as seasonal workers. The rest of "newcomers", who settled here after the collapse of communism, either work as construction workers or perform other physical work (such as working in the gardens, picking olives, grapes and oranges, working in local restaurants and bars on the coast), that is everything that pensioners are not capable of doing anymore. Many of them, especially if they were not born too far, visit their birthplaces, where most of them are still registered as residents. These "newcomers" often declare themselves according to the place from where their patrilinear ancestors originate. Throughout my fieldwork I have never heard them referring to themselves as villagers or fshataret.
In a number of conversations with the "newcomers" I often asked them about the locals' attitude towards them. At the beginning of our talks they were usually rather reserved. Later on, however, most of them expressed negative feelings towards the rude attitude of the fshataret (villagers), referring to them as njerez te keqinj (bad people) and raciste (racists). One of my companions was Enkeleida, who moved [25] to Dhermi/Drimades from Mallakastra (a place north-east of the Himare/Himara area) together with her family (husband, daughter and son) in 1984. At the beginning she said that when they moved to the village they did not have any problems. "The locals accepted us warmly" she noted. But through the hours of our conversation Enkeleida became more talkative and when describing her work in the agricultural cooperative she said:
When I moved here I did not know any Greek. I often cried as I couldn't understand the language of my co-workers. But after a while I learned their language and today I can speak Greek.
Later on Enkeleida noted:
Although I have lived here for twenty-five years, people still perceive me as being Turkish. Most of them are racist like the Serbs in Kosovo. Still, I could say that those who returned to their native village after a number of years in emigration are quite different from those locals who never migrated.
[25] Similarly to other citizens who migrated within the country, the migration of Enkeleida and her family was - following their application - approved by the Communist Party or the so-called Party of Labour of Albania (PLA). They were decreed to move to Dhermi/Drimades, where they worked in one of the largest agricultural cooperatives in the coastal (Bregu) area. A few years after the collapse of communism, Enkeleida's youngest son immigrated to Italy, where he is studying economy, while her oldest daughter moved to Vlore and got married there. Five years ago Enkeleida and her husband bought an old house in the village centre, which they are now slowly renovating with the money they earn during the summer in their fast-food kiosk on the beach. Throughout the year Enkeleida's husband earns money performing occasional jobs in the village and its surroundings.
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Although Enkeleida tried to remain respectful in order not to offend her village friend -married to a "local" by birth - who was accompanying me, she explicitly showed her dislike for the locals' attitude. Later on, when I spoke to some other inhabitants who moved to Dhermi/Drimades during the era of communism or later (referred to as "newcomers" further on), they expressed certain doubts regarding the locals' "Greekness" and their "racist" attitude, which has recently become an important issue.
The majority of the "newcomers" explained that the reason for locals to sympathise with the Greeks could be found in the fact that those locals whose predecessors originate from the Himare/Himara area are receiving the so-called pension Greke (Greek pension) provided by the Greek government. Most of the inhabitants who originate from other places throughout Albania and have moved to Dhermi/Drimades, bear a gridge against those who in their view only simulate their Greekness. A primary school teacher, who originates from one of the villages in Laberia and has, together with her husband, moved to Dhermi/Drimades about forty years ago, angrily explained: "They are not Greeks and they never were Greeks. They only pretend to be Greeks because of the money they receive from the Greek government [26]", and continued: "If they were Greeks their women would sing in Greek language, especially in the hardest moments such as a death taking place in their family. Himare/Himara women express grief and sing lament songs in Albanian language and not in Greek. A number of historians wrote about this. And this is the main argument that proves that the locals from Himare/Himara are Albanians. Most of them learned Greek while living and working in Greece following the end of communist regime." During this explanation her otherwise gentle and peaceful face showed an angry and distressed expression wanting me to follow her arguments for which she was convinced to be the truth.
During the later phase of my fieldwork I interviewed numerous village inhabitants who moved to the village from other places in Albania. I also spoke with Albanian tourists who were visiting the village coast during the summer. They confirmed these observations, but they also drew my attention to the local Greek dialect [27] used on the day-to-day basis of numerous local people, for which they said is incorrect one, because it includes numerous
[26] The majority of the local pensioners of Dhermi/Drimades and the Himare/Himara area receive pensions from the Greek government following the Ministerial decision of the Greek Republic No. 106841/1983 (see Tsitselikis 2003: 7).
[27] When discussing about the local Greek dialect, let me note that most of the tourists, emigrants, seasonal workers and recent settlers coming from other place in Albania, referred to it as Greek language.
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words that do not exist in Greek. A seasonal cook in one of the coastal hotels owned by the local complained about their "broken Greek". She originally came from the village close to Fier, a town situated approximately seventy kilometres north-east of Dhermi/Drimades. As her sister lived and worked in Greece for several years, the cook considered herself to be familiar with the Greek language. "For example", she explained in an upset and agitated manner, "the word okso which according to the locals means "out" does not exist in the Greek language. It is ekso and not okso as they pronounce it." I offered her the explanation that some of the locals stated that okso is an archaic Greek word preserved in the local Greek dialect.
From the beginning of the communist rule in 1945 the Albanian borders were closed for fortyfive years and because the Greek schools in the Himare/Himara area were also closed, people stuck to their language, which slowly became archaic and no longer functional when they emigrated to Greece after 1990. The cook did not want to accept this explanation saying that this is merely the locals' excuse. According to her opinion, those who are "really Greek" are people from the recognised Greek minority, living in the villages around Saranda, Gjirokastra and Delvina. Her opinion that only the "standard language" is "real" while any other dialect or idiom [28] is "false" is shared with not only the seasonal workers or "newcomers" but also with the local people of Dhermi/Drimades [29].
While the "newcomers" see the villagers' pension Greke as the main reason of disparities forming between them and the horiani, the latter consider their pensions as assistance from the Greek government. Following the Ministerial decision of the Greek government, the local people of Dhermi/Drimades and Himare/Himara area are given the right to attain dual citizenship [30] along with other members of Greek minority. This allowed them to retain their
[28] I use the term dialect as synonymous to idiom which is defined as "neutral concept that is superior to all the units that are part of the unity of various languages. The concept of idiom includes language, dialect, local language system and any other sociolect (Skiljan 2002: 12, fn.6). [29] For a more detailed discussion on language and dialects see subchapter 1.6. Languages.
[30] According to Greek constitution the law of naturalisation gives the aliens of Greek descent (of which the members of Greek minority living in Albania are part) possibility to attain dual citizenship. "Naturalisation is the principal process by which an alien may acquire a Greek nationality and thus attain dual citizenship. Potential candidates for dual citizenship in Greece are aliens, whose country of origin tolerates dual citizenship: 1. Repatriating Greek emigrants or refugees who have acquired the citizenship of their host country; 2. Members of Greek minorities who emigrated to other countries and are now 'returning'; 3. Non-ethnic Greek immigrants; 4. Spouses and children of mixed marriages (Greek and alien), and 5. 'Repatriating' homogenies from countries of the former USSR... According to article 2-2 of Law 2910/2001 on aliens and naturalization, 'Persons, who have multiple nationalities, including Greek nationality, are considered Greek nationals and have the rights and obligations of Greek citizens... According to the article 31 paragraph 1 of the Greek Civil Code, 'if the person in question is multinational and one of the nationalities he/she possesses is Greek, than Greek nationality is applied as deciding factor of nationality'. Thus, a Greek judge considers the person in question to be a Greek national and will apply Greek law in the case examined, regardless of whether the multinational person in question is actually related to Greece" (Tsitselikis 2003: 5-6).
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ties with their birthplace and natal country. According to the dual citizenship rules themembers of Greek minority in Albania (as well as in Turkey and Egypt) who lived and worked in Greece at least for some years, are eligible to receive Greek pensions after they retire. This system allowed the elderly people of Greek minority to apply for the Special Identity Cards of Greek Descent, which according to the Albanian policy excluded the locals of the Himare/Himara area, to return to their natal country after their retirement. Most of them live with their Albanian pensions (from 50 to 100 Euro) and partly from their Greek pensions (218 Euro in total), while they invest the remaining of Greek pensions or their other savings and remittances sent by their children working in Greece in repairing of old, decaying houses or building of new ones. For this purpose they hire the constructors and other physical workers who moved to the village after the end of communism.
Thus, for example, in 1998 when Dimitris approached his 65th year he returned to his natal village of Dhermi/Drimades. In 1990 he emigrated to Greece working there as a physical worker in agriculture. In 1992 his wife, who also originates from Dhermi/Drimades, and children who were already married, joined him. A year later children emigrated to United States. Since then Dimitris has lived together with his brother and his family in Ioannina. In 1998, upon retirement, he acquired the farmer's pension from Greece as an Albanian refugee of Greek descent working in agriculture, amounting to 218 Euro monthly, provided by the Agricultural Insurance Organisation (OGA) in Greece. As a dual citizen Dimitris was allowed to retain his Albanian citizenship.
Therefore after his return to Albania he began to receive the Albanian partial pension too, amounting to around 50 Euro per month. Back in the village he decided to build a new house on the parcel of land situated next to his parents' house. The latter initially belonged to his brother who lives and works in Greece and visits the village only in the summer months. During the months he was building this new house, he was living in his brother's house. Being on his own, he decided to hire a young family to take care of him and to do the necessary housework. When querying around, he was told by his colleague from Lushnja, with whom he worked in the cooperative, about a reliable and hard-working couple living in Lushnja, who were searching for a job.
Behar, originating from Shkodra, and Ana, originating from Lushnja, responded to Dimitris' query and came to Dhermi/Drimades in 1999. They moved in his partly constructed house which was built with the savings he earned in Greece and remittances sent by his wife and children. He hired constructors from Mirdita which were in that season living in Dhermi/Drimades and constructing houses for some other locals. He spent around 15.000 Euro to build the first floor (around 5.000 Euro he 62 paid to the constructors for their 5 months of work while the rest he spent for materials, transport, arranging the water supply, electricity etc.). Since Behar and Ana moved in his house, Ana was doing all the housework while Behar was helping Dimitris with construction and other physical work. With the help of his Greek pension, economized throughout years and with remittances sent by his children and wife, Dimitris completed the second floor of their house, where they nowadays live. For this he spent another 15.000 Euros. To the hired constructors, people explain, he paid again around 5.000 Euro for five months of work. As he was now helped by Behar and his in-law who moved with his family to Dimitris' house in 2002, he also gave them some extra money (around 500 Euros each). At present Ana, Behar, their two years old son and their in-laws are living in a separate part of the Dimitris' new house. Whenever Behar and his in-law are not helping Dimitris, they are doing occasional work for other elderly villagers, who usually hire them for one to five days and pay them with the money from their Greek and Albanian pensions. For their physical work Behar and his inlaw are paid around 10 to 15 Euro per day, like the rest of the new coming workers. Behar spends a part of the earnings for his living costs, economizes the other part, while some of the money occasionally goes to his or Ana's family in Shkodra and Lushnja. Dimitris has a very good opinion about Behar and Ana and they also speak respectfully about him. Though many of the locals do not agree with Dimitri's cohabitation with "Albanian family", they respect Behar who is perceived as a good and fair worker, "not like other Turkos who came here to steal from the locals and take advantage of them".
It seems that monthly pensions that the majority of the locals receive from the Greek government help to create well-being in the daily practice of the inhabitants of Dhermi/Drimades. They allow easier return for those elderly villagers who lived and worked in Greece for some period and they also give young families originating from other places of Albania a possibility of employment in their home country. Distinctions between locals and outsiders or "newcomers" are also a constructive and constitutive part of the identification process along with different categorizations and continuous hierarchizations of the notion of "local". As Gupta and Ferguson suggest, the term "local" is not something separate from regional, national, international or global. The perception of locality is not given but is discursively and historically constructed together with the community (Gupta and Ferguson 2001: 6). Gupta and Ferguson suggest that instead of studying what locality is, it is better to focus on how it is formed and lived in all its
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differences and sameness. The meaning of locality does not relate to similarities as much as it relates to various forms of exclusion and construction of otherness (Gupta and Ferguson 2001: 13). In Dhermi/Drimades the constructions of the "other" relate also to the differences within the group of those who declare themselves as being local and not only between those who are local and who are not. For example, a local man Luka, who lives in the village all his life beside the "newcomers" (such as Ana and Behar) and seasonal workers (cook from Fier),
perceives Urania and Janis, who actually originate from Dhermi/Drimades, as kseni. In contrast to Luka, Urania and Spiros moved out of the village in the period of communism and returned only couple of years ago. Moreover, in the Gupta and Ferguson's view "construction of difference is neither a matter of recognizing an already present commonality nor of inventing an 'identity' out of whole cloth but an effect of structural relations of power and inequality" (2001: 14). Power, place and identity are intertwined. Rather than homogeneous and based on equality, place and identity are continually contested domains (ibid.). In congruence with their words, Luka's construction of differences between him, Urania and Janis reflect the configuration of his power. According to Luka's definition, the inequality between him and Urania and Janis is based on the knowledge of the village's past. Following Luka's conceptualization, being "of the place" or. horianos means to have power which is ascribed to those who lived in the village for all of their lifetime.
1.6. Languages
Language is one of the important characteristics upon which the local people of Dhermi/Drimades claim their distinct locality. In their day-to-day conversations locals of Dhermi/Drimades, Palasa and Himare/Himara mainly use a local Greek dialect [31] and partly a southern Albanian (Tosk) dialect, while the locals of Ilias, Vuno, Qeparo, Kudhes and Pilur mainly speak the southern Albanian (Tosk) dialect. In spite of a short distance between the villages which are the subjects of language diglossia [32] , the accents of the dialects are
[31] The local people of Dhermi/Drimades refer to their local dialect or idiom as dialect or sometimes language. The scholars (Sotiri 2001, Hatzhiantoniou 2002) who studied the dialect of Himare/Himara area refer to it as being a dialect. I will follow the same categorisation throughout my thesis.
[32] According to linguistic theories different dialects and modes of speaking co-exist in many societies, often named as language "registers", "styles" or "codes". Contemporary linguistic scholars argue that differences between particular dialects should be understood in terms of the social differences at large. Ferguson (1959) introduces the term diglossia, which is defined as situation when two varieties of a language are spoken by the different the members of the same community. Ferguson explains that diglossia is "associated with a division of social life into sets of institutions or activities (domains) in which... one of the languages ... is expected or appropriate or obligatory" (see Grillo 1996: 327). He differentiates between H(igh) language which might be used in education and L(ow) language which is used in family conversations. Ferguson notes that two languages are interrelated (ibid.).
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different. When explaining these differences, some of the locals as well as Albanian scholars see the parallels between the dialect of Himare/Himara and Crete Island and between Dhermian/Drimadean and Palasa dialect and the dialect of Corfu Island. A local historian Bixhili suggests that the reasons for such similarities are the long existing trading relations, seasonal migrations and marriage links between inhabitants of Himare/Himara, Dhermi/Drimades and Palasa and other Greek places in the period of Greek colonies (see Bixhili 2004: Sotiri 2004: 264). Dhermi/Drimades [1a] Rotise eki, prin nambis tis ambulanca. Otan peris to strofi kei pas eci eftja apano meria. Ask there, before you reach the health post. After the curve go left and turn uphill. [2a] Sikonete I mana tu ke t'cipe: Kalimera Shpiruuuuuuu! Pos eksimeroses jetat x'manas. His mother wakes up and says to him: Good mornnig Spiro! Did you sleep well (lit. how did you wake up) my son (lit. the life of
mother)? [3a] No'mu psiha nero jetat x'manas. Give me a bit of water my son.
Palasa
[1b] Rotis'e eki, prin nambis' ti s' ambulanca. Otan peris' to s'trofi kei pas' eci eftja apano meria.
[2b] S'ikonete I mana tu ke t'cipe: Kalimera S'piruuuuuuu. Pos'eks'himeros'es' jetat x'manas'. [3b] No'mu ps'iha nero jetat x'manas'.
Himare/Himara
[1c] Rotise eki, prin nambis tis ambulanca. Otan peris to strofi ke pas eci eftja apano meria.
[2c] Sikonete I mana tu ke t'cipe: Kalimera Spiruuuuuuu. Pos eksimeroses jetat x'manas.
[3c] No'mu psiha nero jetat x'manas.
The examples given illustrate the differences in writing of the local dialect spoken by the people who originate from Dhermi/Drimades, Palasa and Himare/Himara, which represent
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places with language diglossia. In these villages the phoneme /s/ is pronounced in a slightly different way: in Dhermi/Drimades as a soft /s/; in Palasa as a half-hard /s'/ and in Himare/Himara area as a hard /s/. Moreover, the people who originate from Himare/Himara pronounce /k/ as /c/ (as in cherry). These pronunciations of the phonemes /s/, /s'/, /s/ and /k/ can be mainly heard by the elderly inhabitants (born before 1950). In contrary many of the younger generation (born after 1950) do not use the hard accentuations anymore. In the period of communism many members of the younger generation applied for relocation and lived in other places throughout Albania. After the fall of communism they migrated to Greece, where they largely adopted the Athenian accent or Athenika. The examples [1a,b,c and 3a,b,c] illustrate the code-switching which is a common strategy used by the bilingual speakers when they alternatively use two or more languages (Grosjean 1982: 145, Hamers and Blanc 1989: 148; cf. Petrovic 2006: 57). The statements [1a,b and c] show that local dialect conjoins together with Greek words (rotise eki, prin nambis tis), also
the Albanian words such as ambulance, meaning "the health post". In statement [2, 3] the compound jetat x'manas or "life of the mother" is usually used by mother or grandmother to express her love and attachment to her children or grandchildren. Jeta in Albanian language means "life" whilst mana means "mother" in Greek and is mainly heard by the elderly mothers. The example [2a,b,c] shows the way of calling or shouting (probably because the villages are located on the hills). In Shpiruuuuuuu, for example, the intonation of the last syllable is accentuated higher than the first one. The example [3 a,b,c] presents some words, which are typical for the local dialect. They are used mainly by the elderly people (no'mu or Greek dino mou, "give me"; psiha, or "little").
1.6.1. In Search of the "First Language"
Similar to etymological interpretations of the villages' names, the explanations about the "first" language of Himare/Himara area are also based on numerous polemics that are often imbued with national issues. Here I could again differentiate between pro-Albanian and pro- Greek interpretations. The supporters of the former one argue that the "first" language of the "autochthonous" inhabitants is the Albanian language, with the Greek language being introduced in the period of trading relations with the Greek-speaking people from neighbouring Islands (Memushaj 2003, Bixhili 2004, Frasheri 2005). Diametrically opposed are pro-Greek explanations, the supporters of which argue that Greek is the "first language" of
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"autochthonous" inhabitants, who primarily dwelled on the coastal plains of Meghalihora. Albanian language was according to this account introduced around 17th or 18th century, when some of the inhabitants of Kurvelesh moved to what is nowadays known as the Himare/Himara area (see Dede 1978, Rusha 2001 and Koci 2006). In order to support their presumptions, many scholars of pro-Albanian as well as pro-Greek orientation turned their attention to questions about the "first civilization" which is believed to have inhabited the southern coast. Thus the question on Illyrians and Epirotes weaves the debates of numerous scholars. Those who are in favour of pro-Albanian interpretations argue that this first civilization were Illyrians, who are reckoned to be the predecessors of later "civilization" and those in favour of pro-Greek interpretations promulgate the idea of Epirote tribes being the predecessors of the Greek "civilization". British historian Winnifrith rejects both explanations in his work Badlands - Borderlands, a History of Northern
Epirus/Southern Albania:
We are left with the vexed question as to what language these Epirote tribes spoke. Greek scholars, followed by the most people in the West, would have them speaking Greek in spite of Thucydides and Strabo. Albanian scholars would have them speaking Illyrian in spite of Strabo's careful distinction. Thanks to Greek colonies on the coast and to Illyrian influence on the north, some Epirotes probably spoke Greek or Illyrian or both. It is not uncommon in the Balkans to find people fluent in two or three languages, especially in Southern Albania [...]. But the bilingual speakers were clearly a rare category, and it is more likely that the distinguishing mark of an Epirote was not
that he spoke Greek and Illyrian but that he spoke neither (Winnifrith 2002: 47-48).
Furthermore, Winnifrith notices that Illyrian and Epirot tribes also continuously shifted places where they dwelled and through which they travelled. Both the historical studies of those languages that date back to the first century and historical geography based on different measures due to different technology (no aerial photography, satellite shots etc.) and different mapping33 systems are grounded on primordial and static nature. Winnifrith gives a neutral opinion again by suggesting that the speech of the ancient people who inhabited Himare/Himara area has been difficult to draw.
As one neutral observer has put it, there is a little evidence for the speech of the ancient Epirotes, [...], but there has been a great deal of chauvinist propaganda, both ancient and modern. Such chauvinism flies in the face of writers like Thucydides, who says that the Epirotes are barbarians, and Strabo who distinguishes Epirotes from both Greeks and Illyrians. Regrettably such chauvinism continues in the history of next 33 For example Winnifrith refers to the English historians Leake and Hammond who wrongly mapped Amantio and Antigoneo, important cities of antiquity (Winnifrith 2002: 33).
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centuries, when the quantity, but not the quality of evidence suddenly increases (Winnifrith 2002: 49). A need to rewrite history appeared in the post communist Albania too. Within this discourse numerous scholars are trying to solve the dilemma of the first language in Dhermi/Drimades and the rest of the villages in the Himare/Himara area. This seems to be particularly evident during important political moments such as local or national elections. For example, before and after local elections in 2002 and national elections in 2005, several works were published, written by local intellectuals and "national" historians, with different aims but similar arguments trying to explain the theory of the "first" language and objective history of Dhermi/Drimades and Himare/Himara area (see local intellectuals of Dhermi/Drimades Bixhili 2004, Jorgji 2006, Gjikopulli and Prifti 2006; of Qeparo Rusha 2002, Sotiri 2001 and 2004, Koci 200634; and "national" historians Memushaj 2003, Frasheri 2005, Nasi, Prifti, Onuzi and Duka 2004).
1.6.2. Language and Education
Besides opposing views, the authors listed above also have some common ones. One of them refers to education. The scholars defending pro-Albanian issues see education as one of the agents that introduced and consolidated the Greek language among the people living in Dhermi/Drimades as well as in Himare/Himara area. The scholars defending pro-Greek issues, however, claim that education only strengthened the Greek language which was "already in place". In spite of these differences in opinions, both sides agree that the first school of Himare/Himara area was initiated by the Bazilian missionary Neofit Rodino, whose lessons in 1627 were held in Greek language. Some years later the school was closed down and reopened again in 1633 - this time not only in Himare/Himara, but also in Dhermi/Drimades and later in Palasa in 1663 (see Sotiri 2004, Jorgji 2006, Gjikopulli and Prifti 2006). From there on, with some pauses during the following years, the Greek lessons intended only for boys were held till 1760. At the beginning these lessons took place in the Church of St. Thanas. In 1850 they were moved to a new school situated close to the village road, which by now became the main coastal road. Scholars do not agree about the dates 34 Let me expose here that though the mentioned authors originate from Himare/Himara area, they differ in opinions. Whilst Dede (1978) and Gjikopulli (2006) stand on the pro-Greek side, Bixhili (2004) mainly supports pro-Albanian side. In contrast to them Sotiri (2001, 2004) and Rusha (2002, stand between both interpretations, followed by Koci (2006) and Jorgji (2006) who introduce a novel idea of local distinctivity.
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when the lessons stopped being held in Greek. The retired village teacher from Dhermi/Drimades, Marko Gjikopulli, suggests that the lessons in the Greek language were held until 1945 while the linguist Natasha Sotiri of Qeparo argues that they lasted until 1921, when Albania under the leadership of Ahmed Zogu strengthened its central administration and prohibited any education in languages other than Albanian (Gjikopulli and Prifti 2006: 268). The discrepancy of both accounts leaves gaps, which are filled up with various politically motivated interpretations, which lead to contestations about the "first language" and the constant struggle of its "preservation". Nevertheless, in the period of totalitarian leadership the Albanian language became the official language of the state. With the exception of the areas populated by the official Greek minority, where teaching was held in Greek and Albanian language, in all other areas of Albania including Dhermi/Drimades and Himare/Himara area lessons were taught only in Albanian language. At present, fifteen years after the end of communism, a need appeared in circles of the local intellectuals to open a Greek school. After many years of efforts this need was realised when a private Greek school was opened in the Himare/Himara municipality in spring of 2006. Today there are 54 pupils in the primary school of Gjika Bixhili in Dhermi/Drimades. Five of them come from the neighbourhood village of Palasa, where the primary school was closed down due to the lack of pupils35. The rest of the children live in Dhermi/Drimades. Among them are seven children whose either one or both parents originate from the village, while other 49 pupils are children of newcomers, originating from other areas of Albania. Due to the small number of pupils the classes are coupled. The first grade is thus coupled with the second, the third with the fourth, etc. In 2005, a system of nine-year schooling was introduced, while before that they had eight years of schooling. There are eight teachers in this school. One of them teaches on the pre-school level, two teachers take care of the first four grades of the primary school and five of teachers teach in the next five grades of the primary school. One teacher lives in Palasa while the others live in Dhermi/Drimades. Four among them declare themselves as horiani, three (female) teachers are married to horiani and one is a newcomer. One of the in-married teachers and all four horiani speak the local Greek dialect with the Athenian accent besides the southern Albanian dialect. This is so because they
[35] Similarly to the primary school in Palasa (413 residents), the school in Pilur (536 residents) was also closed down due to the lack of pupils while the children of Ilias used to visit the primary school of Gjika Bixhili in Dhermi/Drimades. According to Gjikopulli and Prifti, the Himare/Himara municipality conjoins the secondary school "Spiro Gjiknuri" with 95 pupils beside the primary school "Spile" with 270 pupils. The primary school of Vuno (486 residents) has 14 pupils, Qeparo (1591 residents) 45 pupils, and Kudhes (904 residents) 19 pupils (Gjikopulli and Prifti 2006: 185).
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all spent some years in emigration, acquiring the Athenian accent. When talking to each other during the school time they mainly use Albanian, but after the school when they meet on the village streets, in the church or kafeneio they often shift between two languages. During the breaks mainly Albanian language can be heard on the corridors and the courtyard of the school. As they keep company with the rest of the pupils who speak only Albanian, those pupils (five among seven children whose one or both parents originate from Dhermi/Drimades or Palasa) who speak both languages (Greek and Albanian) use the local Greek only on rare occasions. When I was learning Albanian and giving the lessons on English language (to pupils from fifth to eighth grade) I encountered insults and stigmatizations only in one class, aimed at a girl in fifth grade, who recently moved to Dhermi/Drimades together with her mother, who originates from the village. Before that the girl was living in Ioannina, where she completed first four grades of the primary school. As her command of Albanian was not fluent, she was often teased by her schoolmates with
pejorative expressions such as Kaur [36] (non believer) and Greku i derrit (a Greek pig). As she was not accepted by the majority of her schoolmates, she kept company with few pupils of the first and second grade, whose parents originated from Dhermi/Drimades like her mother.
According to my observations as well as conversations with the teachers, two of the bilingual children did not have problems with understanding Albanian language and their level of knowledge of Albanian language was similar to their performance in rest of the subjects like math, history, etc. Three of the bilingual pupils - among whom one attended the first grade, one the second grade and one the fifth grade - had some problems with understanding Albanian, while in other subjects their teachers did not perceive any problems. All five bilingual pupils have spent either months or years in Greece. Except for the pupil in the fifth grade all of them returned to the village some time before entering the primary school.
1.6.3. Spoken Languages
Most locals use Greek dialect combined with Albanian words in their everyday speech, used on streets, and in kafeneias, local shops and churches. Besides typical words in Dhermian/Drimadean dialect (like okso - outside, psiha - some, ortha - chicken), the local vernacular often includes the Albanian words for numbers, months, seasons, measures, the
[36] For more details about the word kaur, see Chapter Two, Contested Histories; subchapter 2.1. Dividing People and Places.
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names of the official institutions and other words such as bashki - municipality, pashaporti - passport, kufi - state border, partia - political party, krujeplak - village councillor, etc.
The knowledge and use of the local dialect usually correspond to which generation the speaker belongs to. Elder generations born between 1920 and 1940 mainly use the local Greek dialect in their day-to-day conversation. Some of the residents, who were born in the 1920s later attended Greek school and can therefore also read and write in Greek. This is not the case with the generation born between 1945 and 1960, majority of whom moved out of the village in their early youth. Many of those who migrated to other places in Albania created their future life there. After the demise of the communism some of them migrated to Greece, while others stayed in Albania. Those who have lived in Greece for some years and later returned to the village, use Greek language in their daily conversations. They are also well skilled in reading and writing in Greek. The other locals, who stayed in Albania, are relatively bad in their command of local Greek or they cannot speak it at all. A great majority of the last generation, born from 1960 onwards still live in Greece now and only come to visit their parents in summer months. They all speak Greek on day-to-day basis. Because they use Albanian language quite rarely, their knowledge of it is moderate. In contrast to them their children know very little or nothing of Albanian as they were born and socialized in Greece.
1.6.4. Language as the Permit to "Enter"
When I moved to the village, my command of Albanian and Greek languages was very poor. Though I learned each of two languages for a couple of months before leaving to do fieldwork, I had many problems with understanding both dialects. Maria, a student of English and literature helped me with translations in the first couple of weeks, and after she left I began to learn the Albanian language in the village primary school and local Greek with one of the village ladies. She was married to a local, but originating from one of the villages in Gjirokastra, where the Greek minority lives. During the first three months I had lessons of both Albanian and Greek every day, except for the weekends. In about two months my command of the local Greek improved to the stage that I could use it on a basic level. Some months later I was able to understand most of conversations but my speaking capability was still very basic. As the majority of my closest friends were locals, my knowledge of local Greek improved faster than Albanian. I was also more familiar with this language because of its use in scientific discourse (e.g. with the meanings of different words like anthropos,
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gineka, andras, etc.). In the last months of my fieldwork I was quite confident when using local Greek dialect. Several locals took my knowledge of the local language as a proof for their "Greekness". I often felt that my proficiency in Greek - in contrast to Albanian - was a kind of a permit that let me enter their personal lives.
1.7. Religion
1.7.1. Religion in Albania
According to the CIA factbook (2006) it is estimated that Albania is populated by 70% of Muslims, 20% of members of Albanian Orthodox Church and 10% of Roman Catholics. It is noted that percentages are only approximate because they were compiled after the research done in 1989 (https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/al.html). One of the main reasons for the uncertainty in estimation of percentages is related to the atheism promulgated by Enver Hoxha since 1967. In spite of the formation of the Albanian Autocephalous (autonomous) Church in 1922 and its recognition by the Patriarchate in 1937, there have been only a few translations of the religious literature37 (see Winnifrith 2002: 135). There is Albanian translation of the New Testament, used in Greek minority areas and all other areas that had managed to keep the Christianity under the threat of Islamisation in the Ottoman era. In contrast to the areas of officially recognised Greek minority and Himare/Himara area, where the liturgy is held only in Greek language, in other areas populated by the Christian communities the liturgy is held partly in Albanian and partly in Greek.
In 1967 the totalitarian leader Enver Hoxha, inspired by China's Cultural Revolution, declared Albania as an atheist country. Hoxha strictly forbade any kind of religious practices, and closed down or destroyed numerous churches and mosques. Again in contrast to many other areas throughout Albania, the churches of Dhermi/Drimades as well as of other places in Himare/Himara area were preserved, especially those that date back to 12th or 13th Century. Some of them like Panayia Pano, Panayia Kato and Ag. Stephanos were even protected as national heritage. The church doors, however, remained closed and sealed at that time, and no one of the locals dared to enter. Many local priests were put under special survey as they
[37] The only translations of the religious literature were done between 1910 and 1940 (Jacques 1995: 313-315).
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were not allowed to perform any of the religious practices. Locals told me that important religious feasts such as Easter or Christmas were nevertheless secretly celebrated.
During my fieldwork I attended church service almost every Sunday. Numerous villagers have accepted my presence in a positive way. According to some peoples' opinion my weekly attendance of the church service proved me as being kali kopela (good or good hearted girl). Along with the language, sharing of the religious practices provided me with another "permit" for entering the daily lives of the local people. The question of my religion or better "if I am a Christian" was one of the constants, which accompanied me throughout my fieldwork. My answer that I grew up in the catholic tradition was accepted approvable by most of the locals, who added that both traditions, Orthodox and Catholic, are of the same origin. Regardless of their approval, there was a period, especially during the first months of my stay in the village, when many local ladies paid permanent attention to my acts and behaviour in the church. In particular, they smirked about my way of crossing, which was typical for Catholics and thus different from their own.
1.7.2. Churches of Dhermi/Drimades
When the villagers describe their village they often expose the large numbers of small churches and chapels that are scattered all over the village. There are more than 30 of them, the most historically important being the three churches dating back to 12th and 13th century: Panayia Pano (St. Mary uphill) is located on the hill overlooking the central hamlet, Panayia Kato (St. Mary downhill) and Ag. Stephanos (St. Stephan) are situated by the coast. Whilst these small churches are mainly in use on their name-day party, the churches of Ag. Haralamb and Ag. Spiridonas are in the regular use almost every Sunday and on the feast days. Besides the churches the monasteries also enjoy important status in the village. One of them Ag. Thodoros (St. Thodorus) is situated on the coastal crag at the end of the village and the other one, Stavridi (Cross), is located in the mountain valley. On a mountain pass in Thunderbolt the Mountains is located a small church Ag. Pandaimonio (St. Pandemonium).
In every neighbourhood (ghitonia) of the central hamlet of Dhermi/Drimades there is a small church that was built by its inhabitants. People in neighbourhoods belong to a cluster of patrilines. They hold masses in these churches, usually on name-days of saints after whom the specific church or one of the members of the patriline is named. Massive emigration has
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caused many neighbourhoods in the central hamlet Qendra/Kendros, such as, for example, the neighbourhood of Vretej, as well as the neighbourhood Pangalades in the nearby hamlet Gjilek/Gjilekates, to be left to the ravages of time. Despite this, the small churches are partly preserved in comparison to their surroundings within these neighbourhoods, which are overgrown with weed. This is so because a few village ladies and one female teenager [38] take care of the churches. Usually they clean them a day before or on the same day of their patron saint's name feast.
There are two Christian Orthodox priests in the village at the present, both of whom originate from Dhermi/Drimades. Due to the lack of priests in other villages of Himare/Himara area, the priests of Dhermi/Drimades perform their religious service also in the neighbouring village Palasa and in other places of Himare/Himara municipality. In contrast to Palasa and other places, the church service in Dhermi/Drimades is performed regularly every Sunday and on all feast days. Usually it is held in one of the churches of Ag. Haralamb or Ag. Spiridonas.
Part of the ceremony is sung in old Greek, followed by the interpretation in the local Greek dialect.
Usually the Sunday liturgy lasts for an hour and a half and it often merges into whispering of the women sitting at the back of the church where their place is according to the rules of church's spatial organisation. Besides the back women also have a place on the left side of the church, looking towards the iconostasis or the wall of icons. In contrast to women the men are situated on the right side of the church looking toward iconostasis. The latter links the nave, the holy place, with the sanctuary, the sacred place. While in the nave is the place for the people, the sanctuary is the place for the "holy of holies". The priest who stands in front of the iconostasis connects the people with God or Theos. A few children, teenagers and a couple of middle aged women sit on the balcony at the back of the church, from where they observe and comment upon the happening bellow them or calm down restless children who are running up and down the stairs at the back of the church. The service is usually visited by 100 to 150 people, among whom the women are in majority (from 80 to 100 women and from 20 to 50 men). In the period of feasts the number of people raises to about 160 to 180. Almost all the visitors are from Dhermi/Drimades.
[38] A month after my departure (December 2005) from Dhermi/Drimades she married a local emigrant and moved to Greece.
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1.7.3. Religion and Everyday Practices
Forty-five years of living under the communism has influenced the religious knowledge and practices of people throughout Albania. Because of the absence of religious education over the period of several decades, numerous locals of Dhermi/Drimades are not really acquainted with the content of the Bible. With the exception of the main prayers and some religious songs they are also not familiar with quite some of the prayers. More than through prayers and their knowledge of the Bible, however, the villagers' affiliation to Orthodox Christianity may be observed in their religious practices. The latter embrace both the practices performed in the church and those performed outside. The practices inside the church include crossing, kissing and bowing to the icons, lighting candles, ways of walking in the church, offerings of kollyva (a large plate of cooked wheat, sweetened and mixed with resins and sometimes walnuts) during memorial and name-days' services of their deceased relatives, and offerings of prosphora (the bread) during the name-days' services of the living relatives. The practices which take place outside of the church, in prophane places, include fasting and feasting and, of course, different social activities. Despite of the imposition of strict atheism in the period of communism many of these practices, especially those pertaining to the prophane places, were hiddenly preserved over generations. Nowadays, following social (massive migrations) and political changes (democracy, religious freedom), liberalisation of the media (broadcasting of Greek and Italian TV channels), numerous religious practices in the village have been redefined and reconstructed. On Sunday mornings one can often hear the Psalms singing from some of the village houses, where their owners are listening and/or watching live transmissions of Sunday Liturgies from the Mega Television Channel in Greece. Besides Mega, several other Greek Channels (such as Alpha, ERT 1 and ERT 2 - Elliniki Radiofonia Tileorassi, offer various TV series and soap-operas which religious ceremonies such as church wedding, baptisms, nameday feast, etc [39]. While watching the TV the villagers are able to see, compare, and reflect upon the religious life generally. Besides, there are numerous local emigrants who visit the village during the summer months. They continuously compare what they believe is a "proper" religious behaviour in Greece with an "inadequate" religious behaviour in the
[39] Nowadays, watching TV became part of the villagers' habitual practices as except for the hours of electricity cuts, television is kept on almost all the time.
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village. They try to instruct their relatives about how to become "a good Christian" (Kalos Hristianos). Thus, for example, at one of the Sunday liturgies during the summer season Katerina, who lives in Greece together with her husband already for 12 years, told her cousin Eleni and me about the "proper" behaviour in church by criticizing the elderly women who were chatting during the liturgy: "In Greece everyone is quiet in the church. Nobody is chatting. Not like here, where the women's chatting is louder than the priest's preaching",..., "Pssssst...", she tried to quiet down their whispering, but without any success.
The villages of Dhermi/Drimades follow the calendar of the Christian Ortodox Church, together with important religious feasts such as Easter (Pascha), Assumption festivity or Small Easter (Mikri Pascha) and Christmas (Hristughenia) the name-days of Saints and Apostles are also celebrated. Almost every second or third day in the week the name-day of one of the Saints or Apostles a celebrated. Some of the villagers carry same names. Especially in the winter when the village is relatively deserted, widows and elderly couples celebrate the name-days of their husbands, sons and grandsons. According to the village custom the women's name-days are seldom celebrated. A day before the feast an elderly woman or a widow cleans her house and sweeps the courtyard. If she celebrates the name-day of an already deceased relative, she cooks kollyva in the evening hours. But when the relative is still alive, she bakes prosfora. On the very next day in the early morning hours (around 6.30 am) she takes prosfora or kollyva to the church, where it is handed over to one of the assistants in the church. In the final part of the Liturgy the memorial food kollyva and the holly bread prosfora are blessed and distributed among the visitors. When the liturgy is over the woman who celebrates the name-day of her relative usually invites her friends to her house for a coffee and a chat [40].
Religious practices influence daily activities of women and partly also of men. On the days of religious feasts such as Pascha, Mikri Pascha and Hristughenia, on Sundays and the namedays of important Saints (for example Ag. Thoma, celebrated a week after Pascha) the village women avoid working on the garden, around or in her house, and on olive plantations. The exception is the summer season when some village women help their husbands and/or sons who run their small tourism businesses on the coast. Their work becomes a subject matter of the women's gossip in which the passionately reject this kind of behaviour.
[40] Besides the liturgies such visits represents the core of women's sociability in the village. While drinking coffee and having a snack of ghliko, kadaif, cookie or candy, they are chatting about the village matters.
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Several elderly women respect the fasting before important religious feasts. Fasting includes abstention from alcohol and particular food such as meat, oil, dairy products and eggs. Abstention from meat is observed at least once per week, most frequently on Fridays, while the general fasting is most frequently practiced in a week before Easter and Christmas. It could be said that except for the priests, who are supposed to follow this kind of behaviour, the men more rarely abstain from eating meat and dairy products than t he women.
Religion also influences the way of dressing. Before they attend the church liturgy the village women take care of their own and their husbands' outfit, which has to be clean and neat. According to the mourning habits the majority of elderly women are dressed in black following the death of one of their closest relatives: husband, son, daughter, parents, siblings or in-laws. Their black outfit includes wearing black stockings throughout the year and a black headscarf pulled well forward over her hair.
In Dhermian/Drimadean day-to-day conversation God (Theos) and St. Mary (Panayia) are often used in the words [41]. They regularly appear as formulaic expressions: when somebody expresses hopes and desires for the future, he says: "Glory to God" (Doksa tou Theu) or "If God wills it" ("Ean thelei o Theos") or "First God" (Prot' Theos). Women appeal to the Virgin Mary whenever some shocking news reach the village or when expressing a surprise over a particular event or an individual.
1.7.4. Religion and Gender
Religion plays an important part in construction and reconstruction of gender roles. Juliet du Boulay (1968) notes that, religion is indispensable in understanding the gender roles in Greece, while Dubich (1983, 1989) and Hirschon (1983, 1989) write about the abundancy of religious duties which women have to fulfil. Duties consist of lighting the lamps in front of family icons, praying for children and "close" relatives, taking care of churches and graves. Dubisch and Hirschon suggest that in performing such duties women connect their families with the spiritual world (see also Dubisch 1991: 41).
[41] For a similar situation in Ambeli in North Euboea see du Boulay (1991: 47-57).
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Just like on the Island of Tinos Aegean (Dubisch 1991: 42) in Dhermi/Drimades too the men control and perform the key rituals such as the liturgy, baptism and marriage. Thus all those who perform their part in the church are men. From the priests to the economist who besides his assistance to the priest collects money for candles, the Psalm singers and the priest's assistant who collects and cuts prosfora or kollyva. While male activities are performed in front of the audience (i.e. church visitors) female activities usually stay behind.
1.7.5. Religion and Locality
Similarly to language religion is also important constitutive agent of local people's "Greekness". Common to other people originating from the Himare/Himara area the locals of Dhermi/Drimades declare themselves as hristiani, the followers of Christian Orthodox Church. Along with the rise of migrations of people originating from central and northern Albania that began after 1990, the religious picture of Dhermi/Drimades has also changed. In contrast to the local inhabitants, most of those who moved to Dhermi/Drimades perceive themselves as being Muslims while some declare to be atheists. Those who declare themselves as Muslims only rarely participate in the religious feasts and many of them have never been in a mosque. Because of the generalised contempt of the locals, who often refer to them with pejorative connotations such as Turkos or Musliman, it seems that their Islamic religion remains somehow concealed. Numerous people who denominate themselves as Muslims have realised that their religious faith is "closing their doors to Greece and elsewhere". Therefore, some recent settlers, who had Islamic names, took up Christian names in order to raise their chances of migrating to Greece or Italy. They did this also because they wanted to be accepted by the locals of Dhermi/Drimades. Many of those who got Christianised take part in the church services on important religious feasts. The local opinion about the converts' behaviour varies: some of them find their new Christian practices positive, while others see in their conversion to Christianity only a confirmation that "the Muslims are people without besa [42] and pride".
[42] Martin Berishaj defines besa in his work The Hidden Word of Besa, where he discusses the Kanun of Leke Dukagjini, as an "ethical moral category, the basic value of the Albanian common law. Besa used to function as a mediator of social relations in the Albanian traditional society" (Berishaj 2004: 15). Berisha relates it to keeping of one's promise, dignity and pride, and keeping of faith in the extended family. According to my conversations with the locals besa was a synonym for pride and faith.
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1.8. Population: Shifting Numbers
Upon the Albanian INSTAT population registration 2004, the village of Dhermi/Drimades has 1791 residents among whom 717 officially reside in the central hamlet and Gjilek/Gjilekates, and 1074 in the hamlet of Kondraca. In the population registration of Himare/Himara area there is a discrepancy between the number of residents who are registered and the number of inhabitants who actually live in the village. According to the local people's and municipality's estimations there are about 300 people who live in the central hamlet and the hamlet of Gjilek/Gjilekates and about 600 people who live in the hamlet of Kondraca.
There are several reasons for difference between those who inhabit Dhermi/Drimades and those who are registered there. One of them refers to the local returnees who originate from Dhermi/Drimades and are not registered in the village. During the communism they moved to some other place in Albania and after its fall the migrated to Greece. When they retired they returned to their natal village Dhermi/Drimades. Although they nowadays live here they continue to be registered in the place where they moved to during the communism [43]. Another reason for discrepancy between inhabitants and residents is that many of those residents who during the communism lived in the village and worked in the village cooperative, moved to Greece after the fall of the communism. Although they are registered in Dhermi/Drimades they have never returned to the village since then. Additional reason is administrative as many of those who are already dead are still registered as if being alive. Their death was never reported and recorded. Yet another reason for the discrepancy between the number of residents and the number of inhabitants' lies in those who live in the village only seasonally and are not registered in the census. Some of them are locals who spend their winters in Greece while in summer they settle in the village where they run local bars and restaurants or rent out rooms and small apartments on the coast. The other seasonal inhabitants are the people originating from other areas of Albania who work in the villages of Himare/Himara area as constructors or physical workers.
[43] According to the population census I conducted in Dhermi/Drimades among 89 couples (usually a couple that is more than 50 years old) 75 couples applied for relocation in the period of communism and migrated to Greece after its collapse (see Appendix).
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The officials working in the Himare/Himara Municipality are aware of such discrepancy between the number of residents and "actual" inhabitants and as one of the officials noted they are tying to improve the situation which is becoming an important issue for them:
There are two main reasons that I found out. The first one is that some people like Aspasia, for example, hm [...] sister of Aghatula, you know her [...] she has her papers in Tirana. Before 1990 it was something special to live in Tirana. It was very difficult to get the papers to move to Tirana. People living there were considered like people living in the castle. Like the higher rank of the society. So they have this nostalgia, probably [...]. Because she had everything in Tirana. Because of the nostalgia of being somebody important, of being somebody living in Tirana, in the big city rather than in the village like Dhermi, they are living their papers there. The second reason is that I am trying to get the papers of my uncle [...]. Foto. My uncle who died. Now his wife and kid asked me to arrange this and for approximately three or four months I am trying to bring the papers here from the municipality in Vlore. And it is as if nobody worked in Vlore. I went there twice and until now nothing has changed. So this is another thing why people do not bring their papers to Himara municipality. First thing is hmm [...] how you say [...] the mentality or the nostalgia of living in big cities at that time and the second is the birocracy. There are other reasons as well but I noticed these two main reasons [...]. I asked him if he thought that he could improve the situation. The official answered:
I will tell you [...]. Before, in order to get your papers in Himara, you had to pay 1000 Lek44 to the government and 3000 Lek to the Bashkia (municipality). Now you have to pay half because you still have to pay to the government. So in this way we help people to bring their papers to Himara. But still it is not right. Before we were cca. 10.000 and now we are 11.322. There is cca. 1.000 more people in two years. 10%, this is not bad! And most of these people that used to live in Dhermi (during communism) live nowadays in Greece. They are not interested in Dhermi. While those who used to live in other areas and now live in Dhermi are much, much more interested, like my father Andrea, Spiros, Jorghos [...] most of the people [...]. Most of the people who lived in Dhermi until 1990 are less interested in Dhermi than those who lived outside the village. Those people who used to live here do not care. They are not interested. They do not live and vote in Dhermi.
I asked: But how you are going to deal with them as they are still somehow important for you, at least in the times of elections? I think it has to do with the mentality and their education. Because most of them used to work on the farm (in cooperative). They are not aware of anything. As they cannot think that they can change things they have expectations only from themselves. In the words of the official the Himare/Himara municipality is trying to reduce the discrepancy between the numbers of those registered and those that actually inhabit the place by lessening the costs of registration from the side of municipality. The situation, however, improved only slightly. One of the reasons is a long process of registration at the Municipality of Vlore. Another reason lies in the people themselves. The official assumes two motives for the people's indifference. One of them might be nostalgia or yearning for the times of 44 1000 Lek is 8.19 Euro according to the exchange rate from August 11, 2007.
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communism when they lived in places that provided them with a higher social status and a privilege of being a citizen. In the period of communism this privilege was very much conditional on economical well-being as there was significant difference in living between rural and urban areas. In the rural areas people had no other possibility but to work in agricultural cooperatives. There was also a shortage of goods. Many people complained that often they could not even get bread. In the city, especially in Tirana, the opportunities were greater, although there too the availability of goods was to some extent restricted. Another motive for people's indifference is that they are not interested in "community" matters but keep their extensive involvement in those related to their families. This should be the consequence of their poor education and their history of working in the cooperative. People do not believe that they can change things simply by reregistrating themselves at the place where they nowadays live and by participating at local elections. In the words of the official: the "uneducated farmers" are unfit for political engagement.
One of the reasons why the municipality of Himare/Himara is trying to encourage reregistration of local people who nowadays live in one of the villages of Himare/Himara municipality but who in the period of communism lived in other places of Albania is to improve the number of people living in this area and enlarge the number of the potential voters who are important especially at local elections. As it can be noticed from population graphs given in the appendix (see Appendix 4) the overall number of people increased only slightly after 1990 mainly because of the incoming population originating from other areas of Albania. Local people often express their feelings of abandonment as most of the youth migrated to Greece. Besides, they are anxious about the newcomers and they express fear that they are going to "die out". Some of their fears are connected to the landownership that might come into the hands of the newcomers. The increasing number of the newcomers is also worrying from the political point of view as they are not going to support the local politicians and the Human Rights Party45, which is supporting the Greek minority in Albania.
Different kinds of official counting in Dhermi/Drimades, which include some people and not others, suggest how different statistical perspectives shape what the particular people and places are believed to be. For example, from the state's perspective the number of residents shapes an image of depopulation in Himare/Himara area. From the perspective of the local 45 In 2002 the candidate Vasilis Bollanos of the Union of the Human Rights Party won the local elections in Himare/Himara (KEAD).
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municipality this number reflects the discrepancy between the number of residents and the number of inhabitants and shows the gaps filled with the municipal effort to encourage the reregistration of the inhabitants by lessening the costs of re-registration. In terms of Sarah Green this shows how the statistical accounts are the "outcome of negotiations, where one version of how things seem wins out another version" [46] (Green 2005: 161). Green points out that "how things are made to seem through statistical accounts can have a direct effect on how things are made to be" (Green 2005: 161).
Various ways of counting also shape the numbers of members of the Greek minority in Albania, which again include some people and places and not others. The Albanian law on minorities acknowledges the rights of Greek minority to those people who live in the areas which are recognised as minority zones according to the "latest" census of the Population and Housing Census of the Statistic Department from 1989 (later renamed as the Institute of Statistics INSTAT in 1993). The minority zones a that time conjoined 40 villages of the district of Gjirokaster, 35 villages of Sarande district, 16 villages of Delvine district and 3 villages of Permet district (see Minorities: The Present and the Future 2003: 11-12 and Demographic Atlas of Albania 2003: 99). As the census was done in the period of communism (four years after the death of the communist leader Enver Hoxha and during the presidency of Ramiz Alia, 1985-1992), it included only the numbers on the officially acknowledged Greek minority at that time. In 2001 the population census was repeated, but questions on the nationality and religion were not included (see First report submitted by the Republic of Albania, under article 25, paragraph 1, of the Council of Europe, 2001). There are large discrepancies between minority population numbers estimated by the Albanian statistics and the Greek organisations (Kondis and Manda 1994: 16-18, Bos and UNPO Mission 1994:
1-2, Pettifier 2001: 5-6, Minorities: The Present and the Future 2003: 12, partly also Green, 2005: 170, de Rapper & Sintes, 2006: 37). For example, while the general census of 1989 counted 58.758 inhabitants living in minority zones, the Greek organisation Omonia counted about 150.000 to 200.000 minority members (Minorities: The Present and the Future 2003: 12, see also the CIA Factbook https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-worldfactbook/ geos/al.html, last viewed September 3, 2007). The reason for such differences is that
[46] At this point Green adds that "there will always be other versions available, so whatever reality the accounts currently show is inherently contested and could be overturned tomorrow" (ibid.). She continues that statistics is often embedded by "nonstatistical elements" that once again constitute these accounts "as always already embroiled with other things" (Green 2005: 162).
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the Albanian statistics took into account only the inhabitants of Greek "nationality" living in 99 villages which were part of the defined "minority zones" , while the Greek figures include all people who declared their religious affiliation as Christian Orthodox (Pettifier 2001: 5-6, de Rapper & Sintes 2006: 37).
1.9. Family, Lineages and Clans
In this chapter I will address the village kinship organisation, which I do not define as fixed and stable but as continuously changing with regards to socio-cultural, historical, political, and economic context. But in spite of that, numerous local people presented their kinship as if being fixed and strictly determined while in their daily practices they often shifted and managed it in the ways they found appropriate and/or useful.
My field data are based on the population census, which I conducted in 86 households of the central hamlet in Dhermi/Drimades, 5 in Gjilek/Gjilekates, 9 in Kondraqa and 29 in Palasa. According to the genealogical memory most of the local people can trace their descent back to the third, rarely to the fourth generation of ancestors. They provided me with insight into the local representations of their marriage and hereditary systems. With at least one of the members of each household I held a longer conversation about: the lives of their family members, their travel and movements, their problems and hopes. With some of the people, particularly those whom I befriended, discussions were repeated, on many occasions evolving from spontaneous chats. In contrast to what people said about themselves, most of what they really did was revealed to me during twelve months of my sojourn in the village. Being part of their everyday life, people's multiple activities and their deeper meanings often seemed to me as being hidden behind the curtains of their daily routine. But yet again, whenever I left the village for at least some days, when I went either to the neighbouring village of Palasa or to the nearest city of Vlore, where I was conducting a smaller part of my research, I became quite aware of differences as well as similarities in the rhythms of daily life in these places compared to those in Dhermi/Drimades.
While the literature on kinship structures in Greece is extensive (e.g. Campbell, 1964, Peristiany 1965, du Boulay 1974, Herzfeld 1985, Iossifides 1991, Just 1991et.al.) this is not the case with the studies of kinship in southern Albania. In their works, many classic (e.g. 83 Durham 1909, Hasluck 1954, Whitaker 1976 and 1981), as well as contemporary scholars (e.g. Sotiri 2001, Rusha 2001, de Waal 2005) either only describe or briefly mention the kinship in Albania. While Durham, Hasluck and Whitaker mainly talk about kinship in northern Albania, other scholars listed above do not put any particular attention to its analysis and/or comparison between the regions. One of the main reasons for this is the view that 45 years of communism with its methods of collectivisation of the land, enhancement of controlled movements in the areas inhabited by the Greek-speaking population, suppression of religion, planned industrialisation, and with the communist ideas of unity and equality of Albanian citizens, caused numerous terms of kinship terminology (such as ikoyenia/familje, soi/fis, ceta/varka) either changed gradually dissapered.
1.9.1. Ikoyenia or Familje
In my discussion about the kinship structure in Dhermi/Drimades I mainly refer to ethnographical studies of the neighbouring regions with which, according to both historiography and people's personal accounts, the inhabitants of Dhermi/Drimades used to have contacts. I refer to studies from Northern Epirus (Campbell 1964, Iossifides 1991), Crete (Herzfeld 1985), Inner Mani (Seremetakis 1991) as well as to some other parts of Greece (Just 1991). Dhermian/Drimadean kinship classification in theory corresponds to that of Inner Mani, where the inhabitants maintain bilateral kinship classification with a strong patrilineal bias. The matriline is regarded as a weaker bond.
Following from my conversations with several local people, the basic unit of Dhermian/Drimadean social organisation is the family ikoyenia/familje. The question "piounou eisai;/e/i kujt je ti?" (whose are you) is one of the questions that the villagers frequently ask the "stranger" for whom they anticipate that are coming from the village (for a similar account in southern village of Epirus see Iossifides 1991: 137; and for Rrenshen in northern Albania see de Waal 2005: 99). This kind of a question is posed in order to identify somebody with the particular ikoyenia/familje and its pertaining social, economic and political position in the village with which the person's identification seems to be closely connected.
The etymological meaning of ikoyenia derives from the word ikos, meaning a house or household, and yenia, meaning birth, generation or lineage (see Iossifides 1991: 137). Theoretically, in Dhermi/Drimades the meaning of ikoyenia/familje conjoins the house or
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household (ikos or spiti) with the name of the father's lineage (yenia). Particulary in the past but also nowadays, the child is considered to belong to his father's ikoyenia/familje. Ideally, the latter is embraced a married couple, their children, husband's parents and his unmarried siblings. They live under the same roof, share meals prepared by the women, goods and money brought and earned by the working members of the spiti (house or household). Nowadays, due to the massive migrations ikoyenia/familje usually conjoins only the elderly couple living under the same roof. Two of them share meals prepared by her and money which they both acquire from pensions and remittances.
They receive the latter from their children who live in emigration. The child who sends them money is usually their son who is going to inherit their house. He visits his parents at least once per year or once in two years (depending on his and his wife's vacation possibilities) and takes care of them. When they get sick, they come to Greece to see their doctor and they live together with their son, daughter in-law and grandchildren for that time. There are some cases when an elderly couple is taken care of by more sons or sometimes by a son and a daughter of whom one or both live in emigration. In these cases all of them are potential heirs. Whereas one meant is going to
inherit the house the other will inherit a plot of land. Sometimes the children will share the house. When an elderly couple does not have male heirs but only female ones, one of the daughters and her husband usually take care of her parents and inherit the house when they dies. In the above mentioned cases the elderly couple often, though not necessarily, considers their children who are taking care of them and are going to inherit the house as being part of their ikoyenia/familje. They recognise that their children can live a more prosperous life in emigration.
As Just (1991: 124) suggests, the meaning of family is context-sensitive and "sloppy". In its
narrower sense in Dhermi/Drimades ikoyenia/familje implicitly refers to the members of household who coinhabit the house (spiti). As it has already been said ikoyenia/familje nowadays also refers to the members who once shared the same household, but have, because of better economic opportunities left. They nevertheless still financially take care of each other. The meaning of family "always escapes the boundaries of the household" (ibid.). Dhermian/Drimadean man would never consider his parents or brothers and sisters to be outside his family only because they do not reside together. In practice the term ikoyenia/familje often includes one's bilateral and affinal kin, down to the second or third cousin. In order to illustrate the shifting meanings of ikoyenia/familje, let me give some examples.
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Ksenofon, born in 1955 has been living in his natal village of Dhermi/Drimades for all of his life. When he was 29 years old, he married a 10-years younger Krisanthis born in Palasa. After they were married, Krisanthis moved to the spiti of Ksenofon's father where she lived together with her husband (andras) and her in-laws (petherika). Ksenofon's elder brother (adelfos) lived with his wife and children in Vlore while his sister (adelfi) lived in the neighbouring hamlet together with her husband and petherika. In 1985 Krisanthis delivered their first son and three years later their daughter Eleni. Soon after Eleni's birth Ksenofon's father (pateras) died. In 1991 Ksenofon's brother and sister migrated to Greece together with their spouses and children. Ksenofon, his mother (mitera/mana), wife (ghineka) and children (pedia) stayed in the village. In 1998 they moved to a new house, which was built next to the old one where Ksenofon's mother still lives nowadays. The houses share the same courtyard. Though they live separately, Krisanthis and Eleni take care of Ksenofon's mother, who is ill and needs assistance. Besides that, Krisanthis and Eleni took care of Krisanthis' parents (zgonis) and Eleni's grandparents (grandfather papus and grandmother yaya) who live in Palasa on their own. In the autumn of 2005, when Krisanthis' father got sick, her brother, his wife and the child returned to Palasa in order to take care of both of their parents (see Figure 3). After Krisanthis' father will die, her brother is going to inherit his house. In January 2006
Eleni married a co-villager and moved to his spiti in Greece, where she now lives together with her husband and petherika. Their marriage was arranged between Ksenofon and the groom's (ghambros) father. Since Eleni moved to Greece, she calls her parents on the phone at least once per week. In summer season she visits them together with her husband, whose parents have a house in Dhermi/Drimades. Ksenofon's son is still single and lives on his own in the guesthouse, which Ksenofon built on the coast in 1997. Although he lives on his own, he still eats meals together with his father, mother and grandmother. Ksenofon expects him to marry in the nearest future and take care of him and Krisanthis just as they are taking care of Ksenofon's mother now.
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Figure 3: Family. The underlined words are the referent names of Ksenofon. The words in italics are the referent names of Eleni. Ksenofon's uncle, thios Vasilis (Ksenofon's FB), born in 1928 in Dhermi/Drimades and Vasilis' wife Urania, born in 1932 also in Dhermi/Drimades are living now in a new house on their own. They built it together with their son Vangjelis who is married and lives in emigration in Greece. Besides Vangjelis, they have two daughters who are married and live in Greece too. Vasilis and Urania moved to Dhermi/Drimades in 2002 when they started to build a house. Before that they lived in Greece where they moved together with their son yos, daughter in-law nifi (literally bride) and grandchildren (eghonia) in 1992. After 10 years of living in the same apartment (spiti) in Athens together with Vangjelis, his wife and children, Vasilis and Urania decided to return to Albania, while others stayed in Greece. Vangjelis and his wife are not planning to return to Albania at least until their children grow up. Vasilis and Urania know that and approve their decision, as they are aware that life in a desolated village cannot offer their son, daughter in-law and grandchildren good prospects for the future. They talk to Vangjelis, his wife and children on the phone at least twice per week. They often talk to their daughters and their children too. Whenever Vasilis and Urania get sick, they hire a taxi that drives on the route between Himare/Himara villages and Athens at least twice per week and go to stay with their son in Athens, where they see their doctor. During their stay in Greece, Vangjeli and his wife are taking care of them. Though Vasilis in general consideres Vangjelis, his wife and children as one ikoyenia/familje, with whom he shares the ownership of the house and from whom he occasionally receives the money to do additional work on the house, he also sees them as an independent family with different values and aspirations than he had when he was younger. In reply to my question if he expects his son to return, after he and his wife will not be able to take care of themselves anymore, Vasilis said that Vangjelis is
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the owner of his house and he will do whatever he will think to be appropriate for him, his wife and children. Whenever Vasilis and Urania's daughters come to Albania, they visit their parents. Before their daughters got married, Vasilis and Urania considered them as part of ikoyenia/familje , but now they are considered as belonging to their husband's ikoyenia/familje (see Figure 4), together with their children. In theory the children of Vangjelis and children of Vangjeli's sisters are not allowed to marry as they are considered to be first cousins and one ikoyenia/familje. In practice this rule extends down to the second, rarely to the third cousin, which means that it includes the children of Vangjelis and his sister's children.
Figure 4: Shifting families. The underlined words are the referent names of Vasilis. The words in italics are the referent names of i nifi.
The given examples illustrate how the meaning of ikoyenia/familje can shift. Vasilis on the one hand considers his son Vangjelis, his daughter in-law and grandchildren, who are living in Greece for several years as independent ikoyenia/familje. On the other hand, when he discusses the property and heritage of the house he built together with Vangjelis, he defines them as being part of his ikoyenia/familje. According to Vasilis statements, belonging to same ikoyenia/familje is on the one hand defined by locations of one's residence and by shared property on the other.
In contrast to his uncle, Ksenofon lives in the village for all of his life. Together with his wife they live in a new house, located next to his old house, where his mother (mitera/mana) lives alone. Ksenofon's son lives in the guest house on the coastal part of the village. Although
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they live in separate locations in the village, they share common meals prepared by Ksenofon's wife (ghineka or sizighos, spouse) and money earned by Ksenofon, his son and wife. Thus Ksenofon considers them as same ikoyenia/familje. Not a long time ago Ksenofon's daughter (kori) Eleni was considered to be a part of his ikoyenia/familja too. As Eleni now holds her husband's (andras or sizighos) second name and lives in his household together with her in-laws in Greece, Ksenofon does not consider her to belong to his ikoyenia/familje anymore. Eleni is now related to them more in terms of obligation (feeling that she has to do it), as she is keeping regular contacts with them by the phone and during the occasional visits. In a similar manner her mother, Krisanthis, who holds the second name of Ksenofon's ikoyenia/familje is in terms of obligation related to her parents (zgonis) and brother who lives in Himara. In the period when her brother was in Greece, Krisanthis took care of her parents, with Eleni often helping her. When Krisanthis' father or Eleni's grandfather got sick, Krisanthis' brother returned to his natal village. Krisanthis' brother, his wife or (Krisanthi's nifi), and child (Krisanthis' nephew anipsios) are affinal kin to Krisanthis' husband and thus they are in particular contexts (such as a possibility of unwanted marriage, for example) considered to belong to extended ikoyenia/familje. Krisanthis' daughter is thus not supposed to marry her first cousin (proto eksadelfos). In a similar way Krisanthis' and Ksenofon's daughter and son cannot marry children of Ksenofon's brother.
1.9.2. Soi or Fis
Whenever people of Dhermi/Drimades discuss about clusters of ikoyenia/familje which share the same second name, they use the term soi/fis. Although the mentioned terms are used interchangeably and have the same meaning, they are defined differently in the studies of other authors. In classic article on Greek kinship Campbell (1963 and cf. 1964: 36-58), who worked among Sarakatsani in Greece, defines soi as bilateral kindred. In In a similar manner is soi defined by du Boulay (1974: 144fn.) in Ambeli. In Glendi of Crete Herzfeld (1985) notes that soi is used synonymously to patrigroup, while in Spatohori soi is defined agnatically and conjoins two or more people who share common surname but do not know precisely the nature of their relationship (Just 1991: 121).
While the meaning of soi is often related to patriline or patrigroup, fis is defined as a clan. In Mirdita of Northern Albania de Waal (2005: 158, 210) defines fis as a clan that conjoins the cluster of brotherhoods (vllazni) who share the same name. The local scholar Spiro Rusha
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(2001: 119) of Qeparo, mentions fis as a cluster of brotherhoods (vellazerise) while the linguist Natasha Sotiri (2001: 5) notes that in their day-to-day conversation people often refer to brotherhood vellazeri or neighbourhood mehalle, its meanings corresponding to that of fis. According to my conversations with the local people of Dhermi/Drimades, soi/fis consist of patrilineal descendants who share the common ancestor, surname, the "same blood" or ena ema [47], and some plots of land such as forests and pastures. The meaning of soi/fis can be initially compared to yenia of Inner Mani, which includes "all patrilineal descendants of an apical ancestor as well as other blood and fictive kin assimilated into the line of descent" (Seremetakis 1991: 25).
According to my census data, the central hamlet Dhermi/Drimades nowadays conjoins 39 soia (pl.) or fise (pl.). The largest soi/fis includes eight ikoyenia/familje [48]. Because of migrations many soia/fise cannot be exactly traced in the village anymore. The village hierarchy only partly corresponds to the number of families that comprise particular soia/fise. Its social capital is more related to the village hierarchy than its size.
Especially in the past different soia/fise were situated in the same neighbourhood. Thus even nowadays many neighbourhoods of the central hamlet Dhermi/Drimades as well as Gjilek/Gjilekates conjoin houses belonging to at least three soia/fise (neighbourhood Ag. Strongli or Zhupa/Zhupej conjoins the houses of Zhupa, Kuculli and Dimitri soia/fise; neighbourhood Vreto/Vretej embrances Vreto, Treko, Kumi, Leka, Ramo, Tavaj, Gjikopulli, Gjoni, Stramarko, Caci and Boi soia/fise). When the majority of houses of a particular neighbourhood belong to one soi/fis the name of the neighbourhood can bear one, two or even three names: the name of the church (Ag. Strongli) and a particular soi/fis (Zhupa/Zhupej) that is prevailing; the name of the church (Ag. Dimitris) and its topographical characteristic (Qendra centre); topographical characteristics alone (Rruga Tashtme, nowadays road, or Katomerat, downhill, or Shanes, particular grass)
[47] The "same blood" is explained as analogous to the blood flowing in the veins of all male members and their children of particular patriline. The opinions about the role of the female blood are not united. When questioning about the meaning of the blood and its relatedness to a male or a female kin group one of the locals gave an interesting answer. He explained that the man is the one who gives to his son "genes" and blood while the woman gives him only the blood. Furthermore, he offered a comparison between a man and a woman whereby the former is the creator and the latter only a carrier
[48] One soi/fis of the central hamlet Dhermi/Drimades conjoins 8 ikoyenia/familje, one soi/fis has 4 ikoyenia/familje, 4 soia/fise have 3 ikoyenia/familje, 5 soia/fise have 5 ikoyenia/familje and 6 soia/fise have 2 ikoyenia/familje.
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Figure 5. Part of a sketch-map of Zhupa/Zhupej or Ag. Strongli in Dhermi/Drimades as it was in 2005. Numbers indicate soi/fis. Key: 1. Zhupa; 2. Kuculli; 3. Dimitri. In the past few years many new houses were built in Dhermi/Drimades with the help of remittances. Most of them were built by elderly couples (born between 1920 and 1940), who had for some years lived in emigration in Greece and partly also by the emigrants (born after 1945) who continue to live in Greece. They were put up mainly in the neighbourhoods situated in the outskirts of the village and left uninhabited. For example, the neighbourhood Allonja in the central hamlet, which used to be uninhabited, nowadays conjoins many new houses, built by elderly returnees. Similar are Asfaqija and Rruga Tashtme/Katomerat/Shanes, where used to be fields before a few houses were built in the seventies. Nowadays they conjoin several new houses (Asfaqija 15 houses and Rruga Tashtme/Katomerat/Shanes 8 houses). Differing from the old neighbourhoods of the central hamlet (Ag. Dimitri, Zhupades/Zhupej or Ag. Strongli, Gerzina, Vretades/Vretej), where the houses of particular soi/fis are located next to each other, the houses in the new neighbourhoods (Asfaqija, Rruga Tatshme/Katomerat/Shanes and Allonja) are spread around and do not follow the soi/fis pattern of old times.
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Figure 6. Part of a sketch-map of Asfaqija e Siperme in Dhermi/Drimades in 2005, sketched by Marko Gjikopulli. Numbers indicate houses whose owners belong to a particular soi/fis. Key. 1. Beli; 2. Kumi; 3. Dhrako; 4. Bixhili; 4. Stramarko; 5. Iliadhi; 6. Ramo; 7. Jorgji; 8. Vreto; 9. Dhima; 10. Gjoni; 11. Culla; 12. Ruci.
1.9.3. Ceta or Varka
In Dhermi/Drimades soi/fis is a part of a larger "conglomerate" called ceta or varka, which tends to be locally dispersed. Literally ceta means a military troop, while varka means a boat. When asking about the local meanings of these terms, some villagers offered an explanation related to Albanian language, saying that varka should be actually pronounced as barka which means the same as its Greek counterpart. Other villagers noted that varka refers to barku, the belly. Considering all local explanations together it is most probable that the meaning of ceta/varka corresponds to that of a clan [49], bearing the name of a common ancestor, to which many of the locals cannot trace direct connections anymore. Many villagers noted that ceta/varka tends to be exogamous.
[49] In my thesis the meaning of a clan coincides with the lineage theory which defines it as a descent group that is linked to a common apical ancestor though its members do not know their precise links to the ancestor (see Seymour-Smith 1986: 38).
Martin Berishaj in his work The Hidden Power of Besa, uses the term tribe instead of the term clan (Berishaj 2004: 23). The former is defined according to the Skenderbeg's Kanun that is valid mainly in the North of Albania (cf. Elsie 2001, de Waal 2005, Vickers 2001). In southern Albania, especially in the area of Laberia, it is valid the Kanun of Laberia (Elezi 2006) and the Kanun of Papa Zhuli (Backer 2003). Whilst Elezi notes that in Himare/Himara area prevails the Kanun of Laberia, Jorgji writes that in Himare/Himara rules the Kanun of Papa Zhuli (http://www.himara.eu/dhermi/guide-al.html). In contrast to Kanun of Laberia that issued recently (in 2006) there is no writen account on the Kanun of Papa Zhuli. As there iks a generale absence of the comparative literature, I will mainly use local terms and explanations of them as they appear in local discourse and practice.
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On several occasions the local people could not even recall the name of their ceta/varka. Among 86 ikoyenia/familje of the central hamlet, by which I spoke with at least one member, representatives of 40 ikoyenia/familje could recall the name of their ceta/varka, representatives of 41 ikoyenia/familje could recall only the names of soi/fis grouped in their ceta/varka, while they could not recall its name. Only representatives of 5 ikoyenia/familje have never heard for the term. While asking about the names of ceta/varka 7 names were mentioned, namely: Muculkates, Koknates or Kokdedates or Thodorkoknates, Buates, Draknates, Alades and Gjiknates. When people tried to classify their soi/fis in a particular ceta/varka, they were often not united in their opinions. They could not agree which soi/fis belongs to a particular ceta/varka. Therefore it seems that this kind of social group does not represent an important part of the village organisation anymore. The claim about the exogamy of ceta/varka seems to be a rhetorical one, because numerous villagers cannot recall the name of ceta/varka or the names of soia/fise, which compose it. Considering that, the exogamy is probably hardly being performed at all in the village practice.
In other villages of Himare/Himara area like Palasa and Qeparo, the term ceta does not even appear in local discourse. When asked about ceta/varka, the majority of people from Palasa never heard about it, while only four of them (4 villagers of 51) recalled the name of ceta/varka of their own soi/fis. Slightly different situation was in Qeparo, where the villagers used the term mehalla (the word derives from a Turkish word, which means a neighbourhood) instead of ceta/varka. According to their explanations, the meaning of mehalla is similar to that of ceta/varka. Some of the villagers from Qeparo explained that mehalla was formed in times when Ottomans tried to conquer the villages of Himare/Himara area for several times. It is said that different soia/fise that lived in vicinity joined together and formed mehalla.
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Figure 7. Ceta/varka Muculkates The size of the circle indicates the number of soia/fise and the length of ceta/varka. The names listed within the circle indicate particular soi/fis. The numbers in the brackets standing next to the names of soi/fis indicate the order of precedence according to which the individual listed the names of soia/fise.
The Figure 7. illustrates the names of particular soi/fis that belong to ceta/varka Muculkates according to local people's testimonies (T. Jorgji, F. Zaho, P. Dhima, L. Shkurti and Z. Beli).
I spoke with the people listed above between the years 2004 and 2005. They listed different numbers and partly also different names of soia/fise. Only two names, Muco and Beli, were recalled by all of them. This illustrates that villagers are not united in their knowledge about which soia/fise form parts of particular ceta/varka. The numbers in brackets indicate the order of precedence of particular soia/fise. Among the first names the villagers recalled were the names of their own soia/fise, or the one carrying the prefix of the Muculkates ceta/varka, or the one called Beli soia/fise. T. Jorgji, who listed 6 soia/fise and L. Shkurti, who counted 4 of them, firstly recalled Muco soia/fise, secondly their own one and thirdly Beli soia/fise. F. Zaho recounted 7 soia/fise too. The first one was his own, the second Muco and the third Beli soia/fise. P. Dhima, who recalled 5 soia/fise, also listed his own soia/fise first, followed by Beli, Shkurti and Muco. Finally Z. Beli recalled 3 soia/fise with the first one being her own, the second Muco and the last Gjoka.
The given cases illustrate how villagers have forgotten which particular of soia/fise form constitute a particular ceta/varka. It seems that during 45 years of communism, which promoted homogenization of all the citizens of Albania, some kinship and social terms no
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longer played a significant part in the social, political and economic life of the villagers.
Terms such as ceta/varka were seldom used in their day-to-day talk. The numbers and names of soia/fise that form Muculkates ceta/varka differ according to the individual asked. Each one lists different numbers and names of soia/fise. Moreover, the Figure 7. also shows that besides their own soi/fis the villagers were able to recall the name of soi/fis which constitutes a part of the ceta/varka name (e.g. Muco - Mucolkates).
1.9.4. Marrying Within the Village
In the past, especially before the period of communism, the marriage in Dhermi/Drimades tended to be endogamous, with the incest prohibition extending to the second or third cousin of bilateral kinship. When asked about the issue of endogamy within the village, people say: Paputsia apo ton topo sou kai as enai balomenos [50], "shoes from your own place, even though they are patched". The meaning of this saying denotes that it is better to marry a woman who originates "from the groom's place" (apo ton topo) even if she is not a virgin. Marrying a virgin was once a highly preferred choice for each groom's parents. The locals described that after the first night that the newlyweds spent together, the groom's mother would check the bride's bed sheets in order to see if there was any blood on them which would prove her virginity. The young couples often put the blood of a chicken or some other animal in order to avoid the shame and provide the necessary proof. The saying denotes that it is more important than virginity that the bride and the groom originate from the village and Himare/Himara area, and are both of Christian Orthodox faith.
In communism, when the collectivisation of private property and the foundation of agricultural cooperatives in 1957 took place, numerous locals did not see any future in staying in the village and working for the cooperative. A good number of them enrolled in a technical school in Vlore and got educated for mechanics, while others went on to study on the Universities of Tirana or Shkodra, as this was almost the only opportunity for migrating into urban cities. Because of these movements within the country, the number of intra-village marriages declined.
[50] Also a panhellenic saying (see Herzfeld 2005: 232n)
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Nowadays, with the growing number of village's youth emigrating to Greece and with landtenure issues becoming important, the number of intra-village marriages is on a rise again. Many of these marriages take place in Greece, where young couples continue to live after the wedding. The majority of them do not consider a permanent return to their natal village, because they do not see any future for their children there. The main reasons for this are the lack of jobs, bad education, undeveloped infrastructure, daily water and electricity cuts, etc.
Theoretically, after the marriage the woman joins her husband's household and adopts the second name (surname) of his patriline. I noticed also some cases when after marriage the man moved to the house or the land of his wife's father (in 5 of 86 ikoyenia/familje). If the woman originates from Dhermi/Drimades and marries within the village, the villagers in their day-to-day conversation often refer to her by her maiden name or the surname of her patrigroup. Despite that she adopts the surname of her affinal group, she is never considered as fully belonging to the affines. Household members of her affines refer to her as nifi, the bride, for all her life, even after she delivers children. She is believed to come from ali plevra, the other side, to originate from other ikoyenia/familje. As I suggested in the subchapter on religion, her position is liminal and ambiguous, always divided between her affinal and paternal group. Particularly in the past, she had to be subordinated to her husband, his male agnates, and her mother-in-law (i pethera) and other female affines (kuniadha). In the past nifi did not bring a big dowry or prika to her husband's household. Her prika often consisted of a wooden chest or kashela, in which she usually put some new clothes and some items for her new bedroom (table cloths, bedclothes, curtains and sometimes a rug). I heard only about rare occasions when woman brought some land to her affinal group.
1.9.5. Inheritance
Tote/Perpara [51]
Most of marriages within the village are decided upon pre-marriage agreements between the male members of two soia/fise. These decisions are based on the need to keep the ownership of the land within the village and to preserve the Christianity of the area. Whilst the house and the agricultural land used to be inherited by the partible inheritance (in the cases of one male
[51] In those times.
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heir he inherited everything whilst in cases of two or more heir one of them got the house and the others were given parts of the land), the pasture land and small forests were inherited by the impartible principle (all the men of one soi/fis inherited a part of the land together). It is said that in the period before the communism a woman could not inherit the land, even when a man did not have any male heirs. In these cases the land went either to the church or to the deceased proprietor's brother and his sons. Regardless of this "rule" there were some cases when the bride "brought" the land to her husband's family. This was the case when her father did not have any male heirs and when her husband's parents either had many male heirs or did not have a lot of property.
According to the law
Nowadays the locals of Dhermi/Drimades and other villages of Himare/Himara area strive for decollectivisation of the land and other immovable property to be possesed according to the local consensus. After the acceptance of the Law on land in 1991 (Law No. 7501 on Land, 19 July 1991, see Appendix 5) it was decided that the land, which in the period of communism used to be national property and managed by the cooperatives, should be divided equally between the members of the cooperative. Thus every member who once worked for the cooperative should own a proportionate piece of the land. Its size should be conditioned by the size of the whole area where cooperative operated. In contrast to many other postcommunist countries (Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Slovenia, Czech Republic, Slovak Republic52) the decollectivisation in Albania was not resolved in terms of giving back the land to the previous owners. Five hundred years of domination of the Ottomans in most of the areas of Albania established the system of ciftlik or feudalism53. During the Ottoman domination some areas of Northern Mirdita and southern Albania (Himare/Himara, Saranda, Delvina, Gjirokastra and partly Korca) managed to keep their autonomy in local administration and religion in exchange for paying taxes. Therefore the land of Himare/Himara area remained in the hands of local population. In 1945, following the process of collectivisation and foundation of cooperatives, their land was taken away by the communist government. Between 1960 and 1970, in the period of in-country movements from
[52] See Hagedorn (2002: 7-8).
[53] At the beginning of the 19th century the system of landownership used was the ciftlik or feudal land tenure system that was introduced by the Ottoman Empire. Within this system the majority of population was peasantlike. They were working either for private landlords or state and religious institutions who owned most of the land (Cungu and Swinnen 1999: 1).
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rural to urban areas many of the local youth - in order to find a better future - moved out of the village. After 1990 several locals, both those who during the communism worked in the village cooperative and those who moved to the urban cities, migrated to Greece. Most of those who stayed behind and worked in the village cooperative have never returned to Dhermi/Drimades.
The village of Qeparo is the only village in Himare/Himara area where the Law on land 7501 was implemented. In other villages of Himare/Himara area the law was implemented "in a creative manner" by returning the land to its previous proprietors (Cakalli, Papa, Dhima, Milo and Jorgji 2006: 217-36). This led to several conflicts within the families, soia/fise and the village community. A group of local intellectuals (Cakalli, Papa, Dhima, Milo and Jorgji 2006) comments that the law 7501 on the property in Albania leads to paradoxes [54]. According to the law the land should be given to the members who used to work in a cooperative. If the land was not given back (because it used for a public good) than it should be compensated by some other land of similar value than the previous one [55]. In practice, however, this case evolved several deviations. If a member of the cooperative, for example, used to own three kinds of properties before collectivisation - e.g. a house, agricultural land and pasture land - the law prescribed that he was given back only the house or the house and the pasture land whilst the agricultural land was given for the compensation to some other member of the cooperative (Cakalli, Papa, et.al. 2006: 229-230). As an answer to the growing problems considering the decollectivisation the government accepted the Law on restitution and compensation of the property (Law no. 9235) resulting in severe opposing views. The local intellectuals provide three explanations to illustrate that the Law no. 9235 is not suitable. They explain that the law did not take into consideration: that Himare/Himara was subjected to in and out-country movements throughout the centuries; that the members who entered cooperatives in 1957 tripled because of the pro-natalist policy in communism (see de Waal 1996: 171); and that the classification of the land (e.g. agricultural, pasture and coastal land or "free land") legally changed its meaning (see Cakalli, Papa, et.al. 2006: 217-36).
Because of incompetence of this law the Association of Himara Community together with the local intellectuals and Himare/Himara municipality decided to abrogate the Law on land (no.
[54] Similar anomalies and their consequences are noted by de Waal who conducted research on land ownership in Mirdita of Northern Albania (de Waal 1996: 169-192).
[55] The compensation of the previous land proprietors can be financial or be done in nature. In case it is done in nature the previous land proprietor is compensated with the land of the equal value.
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7501), amend the Law on restitution and compensation of property (no. 9235) and implement the consensus created by the population of Himare/Himara area.
Kosta and Andrea: A Case Study The late Kosta who was born in 1885 married within the village of Dhermi/Drimades. His wife Maria (born 1890) who after the wedding moved to his house had only one sister Sofia (born 1875) and no brothers. Kosta and Maria had three children, two sons, Lambro (born 1909) and Mihailis (born 1911), and one daughter Eftihia (born1913). Maria got seriously sick and Kosta spent a lot of money for her doctor. Kosta was forced to sell his house to a
local man and they moved to Maria's father's house. Since 1920 they lived there together with Maria's sister Sofia whose husband died in 1915. Then she also moved back to her father's house.
Eight years after Maria's and Kosta's re-settlement Maria died. Kosta's first son Lambro married a local girl Katerina (born 1943) who moved to Kosta's house which was from then on signed to Lambro and his future heirs. Lambro and his wife took care of Sofia and Kosta until their death. Kosta's second son Mihailis also married a local woman and built a house of his own on the land that he inherited from Kosta which used to belong to Kosta's father.
According to the local tradition Kosta's only daughter Eftihia did not inherit anything and after her wedding she moved to the house of her husband and her in-laws. Besides Maria's father's house which was left to Lambro and the land that was given to Mihailis, their father Kosta also owned 800 square metres of arable land, located in vicinity of the house of his wife and 2000 square metres of non-arable land by the coast. The arable land was assigned to Lambro whilst the land on the coast remained a common propriety of both Lambro and Mihailis. By the end of the Second World War and at the beginning of communism Lambro's and Mihaili's land became a part of the national property which later in 1956 became managed by the agricultural cooperative. Both Lambro and Mihailis and their wives became members of the cooperative and worked there until their death. Lambro died in 1970. Thirteen years later his brother Mihailis was also dead.
Lambro had eight children, five sons and three daughters. In the 1960s Lambro's sons went to study to Tirana. After completing their studies they began to work in different places in
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Albania. One stayed in Tirana, two went to Permet, one to Tepelena and another one to Saranda. Although they lived away from their natal village three of them married the women from Dhermi/Drimades. Two sons married the women originating from other villages with Greek minority: Kosta, who held his grandfather's name, lived in Tepelena and married a woman from one of the villages of Gjirokastra and Janis who lived in Saranda married a woman from there. Lambro's three daughters married in the village and later, except for the eldest one, moved to Tirana.
Mihailis had four sons and one daughter. One of the sons died when he was twenty. The others followed the sons of his brother Lambro and went to study: the eldest went to Tirana and the other two to Vlore. The daughter who was the youngest child stayed behind until she married one of the locals who studied in Tirana. After he applied for a job she moved to the capital. Mihailis' son who studied in Tirana got a job and also married a village girl. After their wedding she followed him to Tirana. The other two sons stayed in Vlore where they married the girls of Muslim religion.
Figure 8. Kinship chart of Kosta and Andrea
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After the demise of communism all children (male and female) of the late Lambro and Mihailis moved to Athens where they worked as physical workers. Within some years Mihailis' children gradually returned to Albania. One of them, Andrea, moved to Dhermi/Drimades. The other two brothers and a sister settled in Tirana. In 2000 Andrea and his wife settled in Andrea's father's house which they share together with Andrea's brothers whenever they come to the village to spend their holidays. Following the agreement they divided their father's house in two parts. One part belongs to Andrea and his two sons who are still single. In winter they live in Greece, and in summer they live in Dhermi/Drimades.
The other part of the house belongs to Andrea's elder brother. The third brother agreed that he has the right to use all the houses whenever he comes to the village. In 2001 Andrea and his two sons decided to build a bar on the land that Andrea's father once owned together with his brother Lambro. Although the coastal land was not part of the decollectivisation process Andrea nevertheless built a bar there.
In 2003, Andrea's cousin Kosta, the son of Lambro, returned to the village. He came together with his wife Ariadne. Later on their only son Archilea (besides Archilea they have two daughters who both live in emigration) joined them. They settled in Maria's house which upon the agreement between five brothers belongs to Kosta's elder brother Janis. As Janis continues to live in Greece he allowed Kosta and his son Archilea to use the old house until they build a new one on the arable land (800 square metres) that used to belong to their father. Whilst one of the brothers died in Greece the other renounced the property as he had together with his children migrated to the United States. When Kosta returned to the village he claimed back half of the 2000 square metres of the coastal land where his cousin built a bar. Similarly to Andrea, Kosta and Archilea too had aspirations to build a bar on the coast and earn some money from tourism. Andrea was therefore forced to pull down his bar. Soon after that he built a small hotel on the half of the land that he owns together with Kosta. This was the reason for dispute between Kosta and Andrea in the first year (2003) of Kosta's return. During later years (in 2005) they became friends again, because of the political events and processes of decollectivisation and compensation of the property. They realised that it is better to settle a dispute within their own soi/fis than to leave it to the government and lose everything.
Kosta and Andrea decided to call their brothers and discuss the compensation which could be paid to their brothers after they earned enough with their business on the coast. In 2005 they
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both arranged the documents on land ownership at the Municipality of Himare/Himara. Until now their case is settled but they are both aware that the future is uncertain. They know that they can be left without property on the coast either because the government is going to use it for compensation or because one of their brothers' heirs will claim the property back.
1.10. Summary
This chapter led us through various kinds of shifting of people and places, their names, selfdeclarations, languages, religions, population numbers, social relations, lineages and heritage systems. All of them relate to a "single" place - the village of Dhermi/Drimades. Different perspectives on and representations of the village are continuously formed and lived in the junction of social, political and historical events. The latter constitute meanings of places that appear sometimes as opposing and contested, sometimes as related and sometimes as blurred. As many scholars (Lefebvre 1974, de Certeau 1984, Ingold 1993 and 2000, Gupta and Ferguson 2001, Green 2005) who studied unstable construction of space and/or place suggested, people and places are always constituted in a dynamic interrelation with other people and places. Or in terms of Green: "People are never alone with their places anywhere in the world; they never constitute places as places on their own" (Green 2005: 90, italics original). Throughout the history of spatial studies it has been shown that places are not characterized by their homogeneity but by a set of relations with various people and places.
This chapter provides an insight of how the village of Dhermi/Drimades is represented through various perspectives - official, local and even anthropological - that shape stories about the village and its people. These stories are formed around different perspectives through which the meanings of Dhermi/Drimades are continuously reconstructed and rearranged.
The chapter begins with the story of Himare/Himara area, which has continually changed in size throughout the centuries. For example, from 15th to 18th century it conjoined 50 villages, in the middle of 18th century 16 villages and in the 19th century only 8 villages. Besides the number of places, their names and population changed too. In the story about geomorphology we learn about the village's placement between the coastal plain and the mountain range and
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about relatively high level of land degradation in the area. The latter has together with the historical, social and political events indicated continuous movements of people and places. The story of land degradation is followed by with the story of shifting names which nowadays have their meanings imbued with different national and local interests: pro-Greek, pro- Albanian and pro-local. In their various attempts to define the "first" name of the village, the national and local historiographers and the village inhabitants promulgate the idea of their place as if it "originally" belongs either to Greece or to Albania. Both explanations actually represent their ideas about the nation state as being something "natural" and "authentic" and not as something ascribed.
Along with the various kinds of naming, the self declarations of the village inhabitants whose one or both parents originate from Dhermi/Drimades or Himare/Himara area are negotiated too. Different conceptualizations about who is local (horianos or "of the place"), who belongs to the place and who does not, are constituted through the processes of exclusion, othering, and generating the differences. The latter are grounded in people's relations and represent a part of the process of continuous reconfiguration of power relations. Thus, for example, the distinctions between Luka, Urania and Spiros are constructed upon their contacts with each other and are continuously reconfigured and negotiated. Differences and othering are on the one hand emphasized and generated in people's self-representations. On the other hand they are "set aside" in the course of a continuous process. For example, from the perspective of local people's representations and construction of differences Behar and Ana are considered as "newcomers" while from the perspective of everyday practice they are part of the village life.
The story of language denotes that throughout the millennia of people's movements and different rulings of the area (Iliryan and Epirot tribes, ancient Greeks, Romans, Byzantine, Ottoman, the kingdom of Zog, the Republic of Albania), different languages were said to be spoken (mainly Albanian and Greek) at different levels - when trading overseas, in school and church, at home, etc. According to English historian Winnifrith, it is hard to provide valid evidence for the first language of Dhermi/Drimades and its area (2002: 47-48). But in spite of that, the national and local historians, politicians and village inhabitants are trying to determine the "first" language of the people living in Dhermi/Drimades and define their place and their belonging.
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Like the language, religious practice with small churches and chapels defines the village place too. More than thirty small churches and chapels that are scattered around the village place show the traces of the village past and people's religion. The latter is nowadays with the flow of social changes (emigration of young generation and immigration of Muslim families coming from different places throughout Albania) and political (from communism to democracy) becoming an important part of the processes of identity formation. Different representations of the population number in Dhermi/Drimades as well as different kinds of counting of the minority members give an insight in how some representations of people and places are politically constituted and how they shape the ways things are. Besides the people's categorizations where some people and places stay undefined or "erased", the variety of accounts on population numbers illustrate how the representations of people and places are constantly negotiated.
The last account about family, lineages and clans illustrates the differences and relations between what people say and what they do. In the course of social, political, economic and historical events, different comings and goings to and fro influenced local forgetting, reconstructing and negotiating of genealogies. The example of Kosta and Andrea illustrates how in a given political and economic situation (attempts for compensating the outsiders with the coastal land) people who either live or are continually returning to Dhermi/Drimades create their space within which they define their property and belonging. While the given chapter illustrates how unstable, shifting, but interwoven perspectives constitute place of Dhermi/Drimades, the following chapter emplaces them in the historical context. In such a way it reveals to us something more about the "where" of this place.
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