οι γυναίκες μαζευαν ξυλα



In the days before gas and electric stoves, before home heating -- the women collected wood to burn in the large cement domes that were called fournos.  The mountainside which is now green and overgrown, used to be completely naked.  The trees never had much chance to grow.  I remember seeing many of the older women (probably the age I am now) stooped over with a kind of permanent bend to their body from years of carrying the loads.  The piles of wood lay in the yard.  Early in the morning the mountainside was dotted with little puffs of smoke coming from the fires that were ignited in those hollowed out dome ovens.  The smoke would be everywhere.  Everything from coffee to bread and pies (pitas) were cooked on the charred wood that became the cooking coals.

THE NIFI