An Athenian Diary

6

Coffee with the Maids

I peek my head into the kitchen of Loring Hall. There's a big table in the middle surrounded by cane-seat chairs. The high ceiling sports a big fan that I've never seen operating. Clear bright light, reflected off buildings and ultimately the pure marble of Mt.Lykavittos pours in through the windows. It's a little past 8.30 and the maids who clean Loring Hall (and our house) are gathering for their morning coffee break. Dimitra Barbou, the Loring Hall manager, is there too. I've come for coffee with the maids, gossip, conversation, and Greek.

The second they spot me shouts of "Kathiste!" and "Ti kanete?" ("Sit down!" "How are you?") sound out, somebody jumps up to get me coffee, and I plop down in an empty chair. There's coffee always hot on the burner behind me, and a variety of foods -- sometimes simple bread, sometimes cakes and sweets when there's something to celebrate -- like the day Sonia moved into her new house.

The numbers vary from day to day, but there are some regualrs whom I've gotten to know. Dimitra's the boss, of course. She spent years in the hotel business, but finally gave it up out of disgust with the long hours and the need to be endlessly polite to infuriating or moronic (or both) customers. What she likes best about managing Loring, she told me, is that she can go home every day at the end of the day and spend the evening with her husband and know that she won't be called in to work. I can appreciate that advantage to any job! She speaks excellent English, and translates sometimes for me when I don't get it. She tells funny stories about her childhood in northern Greece, like the time it snowed up to the sills of the windows so that you could literally climb out the windows onto the snow, or the time she was sent one summer to visit a distant aunt, whose Greek was so different from Dimitra's that she couldn't understand a word.

Elli's thin and young (two advantages) and the maid most directly involved with us, because she cleans our house. She's funny and fast-talking, and shares my tastes in music; a lot of what I know about current popular singers comes directly out of Elli's collection, which she has lent with generosity. She's got the young's taste for new gadgets; the other day she arrived with a new cell phone that receives radio stations and (I'm pretty sure) searches the Internet. Right now she's on a trip with friends to Switzerland, going overland through Italy by car. I'll be interested to hear her experiences -- she adamantly declared before leaving the the trip was not about museums but shopping! But Elli's had some health problems lately, too -- she can't make a good fist, and has been having joint pains. The doctors seem to have eliminated arthritis, but she's on a bevy of pills. One hopes they work -- she's too young not to be able to hold a job, she's not married and hasn't had kids -- her life's ahead of her.

The most sympatico of the group for me, though, is Voula. She's about our age; she's been working at Loring for 15 years, having started when she decided her family needed some additional income; a friend who was a maid at the Gennadion put her on to an opening here, and here she is. She's smart and funny and ironic, with a wicked sense of humor and a playful way. I admire the joy she finds in every aspect of her life; she loves working at Loring because of the good relations with her coworkers and because she really finds the students interesting -- even though most of them never learn any Greek to speak of. The best parts of my coffee times are when we get into a conversation. She comes from Ioannina, the main town of Epeiros in northwestern Greece, near the Albanian border. When she ended school at 16 her family didn't have the money for her to continue her education, so she headed for Athens to make a life; soon she was in love, married, and a mom. (I've met her daughter Vickie, a bit shy but nice as can be, who works in a bank in Athens). Her delight in life has carried her through it all with aplomb; she'll be a great grandmother when the time comes. Meanwhile, she's taught me to make Greek coffee and to read the grounds (watch out when I get home!), and she's given the kids two stuffed bears that used to belong to Vickie. She saved our freezing rears today by showing us how to turn the heat on (my fault we didn't know earlier, but hey, this isn't a confessional). I'll miss her a lot, like Dorothy missed the scarecrow, when I return from Oz.

And the Greek? Well, sometimes it's discouraging and sometimes it's not. I have a horrible time following their conversations when they are talking among themselves, but in a very frustrating way -- I often understand lots of individual words but can't put it together. I keep hooing I will have a breakthrough on these lines, but there are days when I think it will never happen. On the other hand, my one-on-one conversations (like those with Voula) are typically far more successful -- I'll understand almost everything, or enough at least to ask a reasonable question to get the rsest of it (like today, learning to make coffee). I'm getting a lot less practice these days; my classes are over for now (I'll probably take another one starting January) and I spend most of my days holed up in my office frantically writing. I have been meeting irregularly with a student here for conversations, which helps, but these meetings don't occur often enough, and because I'm not paying her I feel a little shy about asking questions about grammar and syntax. The maids don't care -- they'll answer anything. And it's fun -- entree into another world that I wouldn't otherwise know anything about, of ordinary people who talk about children, money, friends. Hmm... I could use some coffee!

November 8, 2003

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