Greek crisis: economic misery forces workers from cities and a return to a barter economy

 

By Alex Spillius, Volos 6:29PM BST 03 May 2012

Sitting in the shade of a mulberry tree in a market square of Volos, Eleni Boubouli is selling dried wild herbs.

Eleni Boubouli selling organic products from farmers in Volos, central Greece Photo: Dimitris Legakis

Evripidis Siouras is making use of his TEM local currency with Angeliki Ioanniti, to buy organic products sold by small holding farmers in Volos, Central Greece Photo: Dimitris Legakis

She picks them herself from the Mount Olympus and other peaks of Thessaly.

The simple stall is her way of piecing together a living during Greece's ongoing crisis that includes teaching the odd English lesson, a bit of yoga and some financial support from her retired parents.

"You really need to think about survival now, really think," she says. "Our situation is so bad I don't know how to describe it." Like many Greeks, she feels that the economic maelstrom that has engulfed the country for the past two years will only get worse. A parliamentary election on Sunday, the first since the full onset of the crisis, inspires no confidence that the storm will be calmed.

Rather than wait for the despised political class to improve their lot, Greeks are taking their future into their own hands in ways that involve reversion to the past.

Bartering and exchange schemes that eliminate the euro are popping up across the country. Farmers are evading supermarkets and selling directly to customers at substantial discounts. And in a reverse of decades of urban migration, there is strong anecdotal evidence that people are leaving Athens in their droves to return to their provinces where they or their parents were raised, to live off the land, find menial work or live without the debts that city life entails.

Ms Boubouli does accept euros for her produce but also TEM, the Greek acronym for Local Alternative Unit, a coupon scheme that allows members of a network to exchange services and products. Volos, a city on the Aegean coast 200 miles north of Athens, is one of ten such set-ups, with another ten about to start soon.

She recently used 30 TEMs to pay for some legal advice from Elena Dimitriou, a lawyer, who in turn used the coupons for piano lessons, an electrician and food at a weekly market for TEM-friendly producers.

"The scheme gives me some protection from this crisis," says Mrs Dimitrou.

"With TEM I can purchase things that I just couldn't afford any more because business is so bad." Another member is Katya Larisaiou, 35, who joined last week and accepts the coupons at the Petit Fleur, a pretty, pastel-coloured café she owns in the town centre.

"Someone said to me that all this bartering is going back 150 years, and I know what he meant. But we have to go backwards to figure out where we should be going," she says, speaking fluent English learnt as a psychology student at the University of Essex.

Arriving back in a hamlet outside Volos a couple of years ago, after ten years in the cauldron of Athens, was, she says, a rediscovery of the virtues of village life.

"I think villages are the future for Greeks the way things are going for our country. You can maintain an acceptable standard of life and Greek nature is fantastic. We have to get back to simple things." Back in the capital, Theodoros Mitropoulos is planning to relocate soon to the village in the Peloponnesian peninsula where he was brought up.

His employment as a carpenter was ended two months ago. For the six months before that he was only paid sporadically.

In Greece's boom period before and after the 2004 Olympic Games, he was never out of work and enjoyed a spell travelling Europe outfitting shops.

"Before the issue was how much I liked the job, what I could get out of it," he says. "Now there is no work in Athens, simply none." The bare facts of the crisis brought on by the government’s bankcruptcy are staggering: unemployment is at 22 per cent, youth unemployment at 52 per cent; suicides and use of anti-depressants are soaring.

Families’ lives are being turned upside down; the normal middle-class expectations of work and wealth accumulation, and the ability to determine one’s well-being, have been shattered.

Once resettled in his childhood home, Mr Mitropoulos plans to deliver fish from Patras, a major port, door-to-door in surrounding towns.

"We have some land for animals and growing vegetables. I can use some and sell some. Village life is less expensive, people share things, a café owner doesn't always charge you if he knows you or you've done him a favour. People share." He will leave his wife, a private English teacher whose income has dropped by half, and daughter, a student, in the city. Once his 26-year-old son has finished military service later in the year, he is likely to join the exodus of young people overseas, to Germany or Britain.

Many middle-aged Greeks fear for their children's future more than theirs.

But amid the rage against the austerity demanded by the second £110 billion European rescue loan, there is awareness that the older generations must shoulder some of the blame.

"We all lived off the government directly or indirectly," says Mr Mitropoulos. Voters accepted state largesse without questioning the wisdom or affordability of what was being offered, he thinks, pointing out that his own sister retired at the age of 43 with a full pension – now reduced – of £1,500 per month after just 20 years' government service.

"We all expected the state to give and now that has gone because of the bail-out and we have nothing to replace it. That will take a long time."

Greek crisis: economic misery forces workers from cities and a return to a barter economy - Telegraph