O Xeros Potamos -- 'The Dry River'?

This morning when I went to make breakfast at six, I saw that we were out of milk so I set out in the car for the nearest place that would be open, the Market at Mandria Junction.  Crossing the bridge over the river below the dam, I realised that something had changed.  Instead of the usual dark chasm of earth and rock, the space below the span was white and swirling, and even though there was not light enough to see, I knew that the dam had overflowed and that the river was coming down.

A few hours later, I set out under (relatively) clear skies to have a look... Along with, it seemed, the rest of Paphos and his donkey.

First stop was the river side, where I joined an elderly gent who was videoing from his phone.


"O Xeros Potamos?"  I asked him.  "The 'Dry River'?  That's its name, right?" I asked him in Greek.  He snorted.  "That's what they say!"  Then shook his head in wonder... "Πολύ νερό, πολύ νερό..." A lot of water, yes indeedy!

Atop the dam, the populace and the press was out in force.  Even when the hail began.  The Highway Department has blocked ingress from one side of the dam, but a steady stream of cars, icecream vans, fruit sellers, and donut and snack vans kept arriving from the other side, parking, leaving, hooting...  The buying, selling, photographing, laughing, continued unabated.

"Κοίτα! Ξανά χαλάζει! (Look!  Its hailing again!) yelled one man, grinning, and turned his face to the sky.  Lightning flashed, thunder cracked, and hailstones gathered in the folds of my jacket.

By this time my shoes were wet and my jeans soaked to the knee.  I decided that I had had enough and ran for the car.

Asprokremnos Dam

Yesterday, Leo did not have a tennis lesson: as soon as we reached the court the rain started again, so his teacher shrugged, pointed at the sky with its complement of lowering grey clouds, and waved goodbye.

“Can we check out the dam and see if it's overflowing yet?” Leo asked. So to assuage his disappointment (Leo loves tennis – a passion I cannot find it in myself to share) we headed for Asprokremnos on our way home.

It seems like a lot of Paphiots had the same idea: both the ice-cream van (“Mum, who in their right mind would buy an ice cream on a day like today?” Pause. “On second thoughts, I would. Can I have an ice cream?” “Are you in your right mind, Leo?” “No!” “Well, no. Sorry.”) and the loukomades van were there, as well as a number of people who, like us, parked on the dam wall to look over the side and cheer on the water level.

I only had my phone camera, and that was a little wet, so the pictures are a little... lumpy.

The rain continued all last night and was still falling when I went to collect Galena the Cleaner at seven-thirty this morning. I didn't want to come back on the motorway, so we mosey-ed back on the old road, and just before the dam turn-off I said: “Let's go and see if it's full yet.”

This morning there were more people than last night – and the ice cream van was still there! A man from a blue pick-up truck and I found ourselves side-by-side looking at the water, now only half a metre below the spillway lip. “Another day or two?” I said in Greek. “Nah,” he answered. “Later today!” It was on the tip of my tongue to ask him if he wanted to put twenty Euros on the question, but I was too shy. Chances are, we would have had a good laugh over it, but I didn't want to seem too forward.

As I dived back into the car (the sky was chucking down cats and dogs and I didn't have a jacket on), even more people arrived to look at the spectacle. I guess there's nothing much to do around our neck of the woods when it's pouring with rain just before eight on a mid-week morning.

It's Raining!

And the system is working – or seems to be from what I can see...

Best Beloved took a weekend last month and we connected all the tanks together at the bottom, leaving a reserve of about four tons should there be a need for firefighting – not that four tons would make a big difference, but having a reserve also helps with cleaning and leaves room for sediment to settle out. We cut a hole for the outlet to which we can connect a portable electric pump (we looked at a permanent solar pump, but it was not cost effective), and connected a tap.

And then my dear husband climbed a ladder and installed air locks on the top of each tank. And then my dear husband fell off the ladder... Yes, he did, from right at the top of the tank – about 2.3 metres up. And he's a big man, so when he falls it is with a thump. A large black bruise graced his hip for ten days, and he felt distinctly like he needed realignment, but there was no permanent damage.

After that came the difficult part: connecting the guttering to the tanks. We used 63 mm hose – and fortunately we had enough lying around that we did not have to buy it – and created a sloping route for the water to flow from the collection/filter tanks that contain gravel and are positioned under the downspouts, over the outside steps, and into the tanks. The hose is heavy and hard to force into the connecting pieces, and two of the connections were in places where BB could get no leverage at all. Watching him, I was terrified that he would fall again because he had to balance high on the ladder that was in turn balanced on the stairs – and both hands were occupied with forcing the hose into the join.

Ugghh!! We were both glad when it was over. It's butt-ugly (no pun intended), so we will need to do some plantings to disguise, or at least soften the starkness.  But first let's see how it works.

Rain has fallen steadily since Saturday afternoon, and the gutters have been doing their job. Standing beside the big tank, I can hear the satisfying drumming of water falling steadily inside, but the tanks have not yet filled to the reserve level, as when I open the tap at the end of tank four, nothing comes out.

The Smell of the Wattle

We had our first rains last night -- the first of seven -- no, eight -- months. They were not torrential, they did not scour away my earthworks. But they dampened the ground and they settled the dust, and oh, their fragrance!

Now we are praying for a respite, for clear skies and a dry tomorrow. For tomorrow is The Party. In honour of Hallowe'en. And if everyone who's invited comes, more than one hundred souls will be feasting here tomorrow. School friends of Best Beloved from Nicosia and their families, friends of Alex and Sophia, of Zenon and Leo. Cypriots, English, mixed marriages... 'The whole' (as Kazanzakis's Zorba) would say, 'catastrophe!'

The first rains always remind me of this poem by Kipling.

 Lichtenberg

       (New South Wales Contingent)


Smells are surer than sounds or sights
To make your heart-strings crack--
They start those awful voices o' nights
That whisper,  " Old man, come back! "
That must be why the big things pass
And the little things remain,
Like the smell of the wattle by Lichtenberg,
 Riding in, in the rain.


 There was some silly fire on the flank
    And the small wet drizzling down--
 There were the sold-out shops and the bank
    And the wet, wide-open town;
  And we were doing escort-duty
    To somebody's baggage-train,
  And I smelt wattle by Lichtenberg--
     Riding in, in the rain.


  It was all Australia to me--
     All I had found or missed:
   Every face I was crazy to see,
    And every woman I'd kissed:
  All that I should n't ha' done, God knows!
     (As He knows I'll do it again),
  That smell of the wattle round Lichtenberg,
     Riding in, in the rain!


  And I saw Sydney the same as ever,
     The picnics and brass-bands;
   And my little homestead on Hunter River
     And my new vines joining hands.
   It all came over me in one act
      Quick as a shot through the brain--
    With the smell of the wattle round Lichtenberg,
       Riding in, in the rain.


     I have forgotten a hundred fights,
       But one I shall not forget--
     With the raindrops bunging up my sights
      And my eyes bunged up with wet;
     And through the crack and the stink of the cordite
        (Ah Christ!   My country again!)
     The smell of the wattle by Lichtenberg,
        Riding in, in the rain!

Thursday

I woke up yesterday (Thursday) morning realising that I am flying to England on Tuesday, Monday is a holiday, and my passport has expired. So I got Leo off to school – the Big Ones have half-term this weekend and Zenon was not feeling well – and called Sil (my Sister In Law) at work at eight. “No problem!” She works in the District Office, and if anyone could help me, she could. “Come in when you can!” Oh, it's good to have family in the right places!

My friend Angela needed me to help her move some boxes to her new apartment today, and I had agreed to be there by nine, so at 8.30 I left the house and drove the Land Rover townward, toward a black and roiling sky that was developing a bilious green tinge. Zenon stayed in front of the t.v., and the Big Ones had not yet surfaced. No one else was heading into town. The road was eerily empty – except for the occasional oncoming driver, invariably with headlights on.

At Angela's we loaded the van but decided to leave the trip until later – unloading cardboard boxes and schlepping them up an outside staircase in a downpour is no one's idea of fun. I got to Evzonas Photography for passport photos just as the first drops fell, and fifteen minutes later when I walked out again, the rain was still holding off, though the sky was very dark overhead and lightning flashed ominously. I called Zenon to tell him that there would be a storm, that it would be bad, and that he might lose electricity. “If you get scared,” I told him. “Wake the Big Ones. And if you really need help, Papoose and Yiayia are at home.” He wasn't bothered. Harry Potter has to deal with lightning, too.

I raced across town to the District Office, and of course couldn't find parking within 500 metres.

Sil works in the Old District Office – as opposed to the New Monstrosity next to the Courts. Her building dates from the Colonial Era – massive stone plastered white, with dark green wooden shutters, high ceilings, and graceful pointed Cypriot arches. I found her in a cubicle “Hey, you've been promoted! Got an office to yourself...” the last time I'd been in she was sitting behind a long desk with several colleagues. “Don't let it fool you, it's the same old stuff!” said she, handing me forms for a new passport and an i.d card. I started to fill them out, alternating between the Greek and the Turkish to figure out what information to put in which boxes. Then she took them from me and filled them in speedy Greek. Thank goodness! I can write Greek, but my letters look like a second grader's, and I get confused with the two O's and the five E's, so my writing tends to be a lengthy process.

She grabbed an umbrella. “Ela! Come on!” and off we went, through the labyrinth of corridors and courtyards, dodging the splashing down spouts, and into the cashier's room.

There ensued a lengthy conversation about the rain – no one's complaining, despite the massive inconvenience that twelve days of wet weather causes in a fundamentally arid land. We're all so pleased to see the water, that I've yet to hear any gripes, except about the road works. But that's another story. Then there was a long debate as to whether my Greek surname on my new documents should be spelled with a C in English to match the rest of the family's, or a K to conform to the EU rules about phonetic spelling in Greek. I would have chosen a C (my current passport spells it with a K) like Best Beloved's, but our air tickets had already been issued and the spelling was with a K. “You can change again in ten years time when you apply for a new passport!” Sil said. “For now, you'll have to be the only one of us to use a K.”

Then off to another office where the Lady in Charge told us that the documents would be ready on Tuesday. “But she travels on Tuesday and Monday's a holiday. Why not do them today?” Sil asked. We left with a muttered promise of tomorrow before lunch, and fortunately met a friend of Sil's who works in the same office on the way out. “By this afternoon, and you can take them with you after work,” he promised. Sil said she'd deliver them this evening when she goes home. Phew!

She splashed off to another office, and I headed through the gathering rain to the Land Rover. I had just reached it when the hail began.

The hill down to the post office was, literally, a river. Then I had to thread my way through the canyons of the Kato Paphos road works, at time sinking past the hubcaps in muddy water, profoundly glad that I was not in the white Toyota. How the Boy Racers manage with their low-clearance sportsters and expensive body-kits, I have no idea.

Yerouskippou, the last village before Paphos proper when you're coming from Limassol, has been enduring road works as it's central artery and village square are being renovated for well over a year. A couple of hundred metres are done at a time, necessitating long detours through narrow residential streets to left and right, and massive inconvenience to shopkeepers and residents within the stricken zone. The final stretch is undergoing treatment at the moment, and the roads that have been chosen to host the diversion are suffering badly from the rain and the heavy lorries. Only one lane is passable at a time, sometimes only on the footpath. Each time the trenches are filled in with sand, torrential rain scours them again, and the gutters are full of fist-sized rocks that have washed down from the banks and hillsides.

Inevitably people try and circumvent the detours and cut the wrong way down the one way stretches causing back ups, horn blowing, and raised and gesticulating fingers. This is where I like the Land Rover. It's bigger than almost anything else on the road – except the two Hummers in town – and when impatient young bucks rev their souped-up engines and try to intimidate me, I can occupy my rightful place on the road, smile serenely, and wait while they reverse. We did that twice on the way home.

As I was writing this yesterday evening, I heard a knocking on the window behind, and saw Sil, backlit by the glare of her headlights. “All done!” she said. “Have a good trip.” She dodged through the still-falling rain drops back to her car and I turned to Best Beloved. “Sunny in London, is it?”

Run, Rivers, Run!

Some of the rivers are flowing! For those of you (lucky sods) who live in temperate climates where rain actually falls between May and October, the notion of rivers actually flowing may seem a no-brainer. I feel a need to celebrate.

When we drove to school yesterday, Sophia craned her neck over the bridge after Achelia: “Holy Shakira, Mum! There's water down there!” I had seen some muddy puddles for the last few days, but yesterday, I saw more than puddles: water was actually flowing, running, making a rushing noise, cutting channels through the weeds, building up behind the low weir just downstream and crashing over it!

Does it do that every winter? Perhaps, though I don't seem to remember nearly so much last year.

After finishing the school run this morning I decided to go and look at the dam. The last time I saw it was August, and the lack of water was so scary that I haven't been back. I feel about the water crisis the way I feel about the economy and the Wars: I will do what I can do in my small way, within my circle, to keep the family going and help whom I can, but I refuse to look at the big picture and get all freaked out and depressed about it.

Best Beloved has been to the dam a few times – he walks with his father at the weekend – and is always telling me that I worry too much. “This is Cyprus, Manamou. It's dry for five years and the foreigners whinge, then the rains come and everything's fine again...” He's deaf to my insisting that there is more pressure on slender resources now, compared to when he was young: “It's a political problem, not a resource problem. When water is priced to reflect its scarcity, people won't squander it, and as long as the government is drilling boreholes and diverting our village's water for the HaPotami golf course, I refuse go short.”

Instead of taking the turn for our village, I took the earlier turn-off, and drove up to the top of the Asprokremnos Dam. I was not the only one. In the five minutes that I was there, two other cars arrived, their occupants getting out to lean their elbows on the concrete wall and gaze out over the water. Not good... yet. But I see the level creeping slowly upward through the striations on the rock that have marked previous levels toward the abandoned Turkish-Cypriot village of Finikas.

But the ghosts of citrus groves haunt the edges of the dam. They have been without irrigation water for two summers now, and where once mandarins, mandoras, lemons, and grapefruits shone between glossy greenery, grey, leafless limbs and twigs branch from withered trunks. All dead.

Six or seven years ago the dam overflowed. Such largesse is unimaginable today and the level at the moment is still about thirty metres below that point. But at least the scary promontories that were pushing further and further out toward the middle of the lake are covered. The new beaches that appeared as the waters fell have gone, and water birds are returning.

High on the natural bounty, and with cheeks tingling from the snow-bitten wind blowing from Troodos, I decided to see if the Dhiarizos, the biggest river in our part of the country, was flowing.

I had to go from Kouklia, so I turned off the main road and drove through the village, thrilled at the clarity of the morning light, the drifting blossoms, the way washing on the lines seemed to snap with glee. I passed the school, then paused on the top of the escarpment overlooking the valley.

I don't often stop, look around me, and appreciate what I have. Familiarity, as the old saying goes, breeds contempt. But this morning I looked out over the valley: the almonds and the figs the olives and the citrus – still irrigated here, as the water comes from an underground source, not the dam.

The cement road hugs the slope, passing a few turnings to orchards, a dilapidated hut or two. Then it crosses the river on a raised ford. My wheels didn't get wet – this channel is still not running, but when I reached the middle of the river bed, where cement conduits carry the road above the stones, I saw that there is some water. Most of it is still subterranean, but the fact that I can see it at all means that the river and the aquifer in the valley between here and the sea is filling.

When Phil, Best Beloved's father, was a boy, the river flowed on the surface all year round, with at least one pool deep enough for swimming – even during the summer. In wintertime the route between Nikokleia and Kouklia was impassable: the river filled its bed, uprooting trees as it rushed seaward after particularly heavy storms. But about fifteen years ago, when the second phase of the Southern Conveyer Project was begun, the river disappeared during the summer – diverted to the drier east – and in the winter and spring we get a downsized version. I don't think I've ever seen it really race.

As I turned for home, a few drops of rain splashed on the windshield. No field work today. That's fine. Let the rain come. I have three trays of lettuce to plant and lots of seeds that need starting. But I'm not about to pray for sunny weather so that I can roll my sleeves up and get started. There is plenty of sunny weather yet to come.