FIVE residents of Androlikou, the famous “goats’ village” in Akamas, met at the beginning of January in the house of their new mukhtar to talk about the future of the place.
The participants of the meeting, three Turkish Cypriots and two Greek Cypriots, are all members of the new village council elected last December. They are: the village’s longest inhabitants Ezgur Hassan Moustafa, aged 38, his father Hassan Moustafa, aged 71, and his mother Hambou Moustafa, maiden name Pournoxouzi, aged 80; Ekrem Mustafa (no relation), in his mid-40s, who was born in the village and moved back there two years ago from the north; and 53-year-old Demetra Saoulidou (one of very few Greek Cypriots owning land in Androlikou), who together with her husband build a house there eight years ago.
“This place could be very beautiful,” said new mukhtar Ezgur. “Now it is so dirty and muddy you can’t see it. But I don’t think anywhere can be more beautiful than here. I was born here and I grew up here. My roots are here. I love this place very much. It is my home. It is very painful for me to see what happened to it.
“Before 1975, there were about 600 people living here. Then everybody left. Only five persons stayed – my parents, my brothers and sister and I. We lived alone for 30 years. Now it is time to change. Before, we didn’t have rights to vote. Now we can. Before, we couldn’t have a village council, because there were too few of us. Now we can. We want the goats out. We want to clean the village, plant trees, make a road. Then we will invite other people to come and live here. Various people of various nationalities. It has always been my dream to make this place better. If we are successful now, if we show the world we can live together, it will be a good example.”
“We [Hassan and I] are old,” said Ezgur’s mother Hambou. “I have a heart condition. I am sick. But my grandchildren are small. We need to make this village a better place for their sake.”
Hambou and her husband Hassan are Cypriot equivalents of Romeo and Juliet, prototypes for the main characters of Panicos Chrysanthou’s film Akamas.
BEFORE 1975, Androlikou, a Turkish Cypriot village located just above Polis, used to be one of the richest villages of the region. Its villagers had a lot of land, they worked in the fields, had goats and sheep, and also worked in mines near Polis. The village had a school attended by over 100 children. There were three teachers.
“Androlikou was the best Turkish Cypriot village in the area,” remembers one of the teachers, Osman Karaboulout, aged 66, who now lives in the north, in Myrtou. “It was the biggest and the richest. Its villagers used to buy land from Greeks, so it had a lot of land. Together they owned about 12,000 donums. It was very nice, but in 1974 all went upside down, and in 1975 we all went to the north.”
“Before 1974, there were 654 people in Androlikou – about 200 families,” confirms Yiannis Talliotis, a gynaecologist from Paphos who used to deliver children from Androlikou and at present rents a holiday home there. “It was very famous for halloumi and meat.”
Unfortunately, after its inhabitants left, the situation changed for the worse. Androlikou was looted. Then, the goats were brought into the village. Finally, three private quarries started operating within its boundaries, and polluted its environment.
The only people who stayed were Hambou, Hassan and their three small children.
“It was very hard” says Hambou. “We were completely alone. There was nobody to talk to. Relations with Greek Cypriots from neighbouring villages were various. Some people were nice, some bad.
“I fell in love with a Turk, married him, changed my faith. Many people didn’t like it.
“We didn’t have water. We didn’t have electricity. Life was very difficult. It was just work from dawn to night. We lived very poorly. But we didn’t want to leave. We never thought to go somewhere else. It was our place. Where would we go? Our home was here.”
The family survived because they had sheep and goats and kept on doing what they knew the best: producing and selling meat and halloumi. In order not to feel so lonely, they also invited Hambou’s cousin from Droushia, Panayi Pournoxouzi and his family to come and live with them in the village. Panayi was married to Hassan’s sister.
“It was like that – the village way of settling the conflict,” explains Karaboulout. “You took our sister so we take yours. But she wanted to go and the families were very close, so after this there was peace. No more quarrels.”
Panayi came but not alone. He also brought his goats with him. And because the village was empty and there was a lot of free space available, the animals have multiplied quickly. At present, he and his two sons have about 1,700 goats in Androlikou.
“My parents asked Panayi to come and live in the village because they felt alone,” says the new mukhtar. “They wanted somebody else here. But he came and started putting the goats into houses. It was like letting a parasite in. Yes, it is true that my parents had animals as well. So they are guilty too. However, the state is guilty as well because they didn’t stop people from doing it. They didn’t pay any attention.”
“When people left, the government restored all the houses,” confirms Hambou. “All was locked. Then my cousin came and started keeping animals there, but the government didn’t pay any attention to it. I don’t know why they didn’t do anything. Probably because it was a Turkish village and nobody cared. It wasn’t theirs. So these houses that 30 years ago were in good condition now are in ruins.”
The Department of Turkish Cypriot Property of the Ministry of the Interior, officially responsible for the Turkish Cypriot property in Androlikou, has a different explanation.
“We have tolerated the goats in the village for so many years because there were no people living there and anyway, the goats were also there before 1974,” says Maria Lambrou, who knows Androlikou’s case very well. “Many times we were thinking about taking legal measures, but we knew people there were poor and it was their main income so we didn’t do anything.”
But Ezgur is insistent the case could have been handled differently.
“We have been asking the government for last 15 years to remove the animals from the village, but we haven’t received any help,” he says. “If the government helped Panayi financially he would take the goats out tomorrow. Otherwise he won’t, because this is his livelihood.”
THE village was repaired by the government twice after 1975. But every time it was fixed it was also ruined again.
“Immediately after people left, the village was looted but the government fixed it for refugees,” says Michalis Chimarridis, who also occupies a holiday home there. “But the refugees didn’t want to go there because it was far away and had no electricity. So it was gradually looted again. People took windows, doors and stones. They took everything. Maybe they sold them or used them in their homes. Also, the goats ate the houses because the old houses have seeds in their mud bricks, so the goats would go inside and eat them.”
In the 90s, the department started a new initiative of renting abandoned Turkish Cypriot properties to people who were prepared to repair them and keep them in liveable condition. The rent for such properties was very low, between £8 and £15, and the tenants were to repair them within two years. In Androlikou, about 25 houses were rented, mostly as holiday homes, to artists, architects and other professionals from all over the island. Ten years later, approximately 15 are repaired. The rest haven’t been touched.
“It’s true they should repair, but up to now we have been tolerant be
cause we knew that the situation in the village was unusual,” explains Lambrou.
However, Chimarridis paints a different picture.
“People were expecting that something would happen in Androlikou and the situation would improve,” he says. “But nothing happened. The goats’ situation was not solved. So they didn’t do anything either. Some even left. I am not surprised. When I got my house it was used as a stable for goats. I spent one month cleaning it. I planted trees around it. Three times. And three times they were eaten by goats.
“I myself don’t go there too often because I can’t keep my children in a place where there are dead goats around. They put them outside and leave them there until they have time to bury them. It’s a health hazard. There are no sanitary inspections.”
Just after they got their houses in the village in 1996, Chimarridis and other tenants created the Androlikou Association. Its purpose was twofold: first, its members wanted to restore the village the way it was. Secondly, they wanted to organise cultural events and in this way enliven it.
“The first year we had a concert, then we had Karaghiozis performances,” says Chimarridis. “We also held drawing and pottery workshops, and traditional music and architecture seminars. We were trying to bring people from other countries to participate in these events and learn more about Cyprus. But now we are fed up. We have lost hope.”
The Association also wanted to restore the coffee shop, plant trees in the cemetery, even open a village museum. Some of the projects are very similar to the ones drawn up by the new village council. But Chimarridis is not optimistic.
“I am not sure how it will work. I think it is possible that we understand things differently. What if for them cleaning the village is use a bulldozer while for us it is to renovate old houses, even the ones that are almost not there? It’s a big difference.
“Everybody says they want the animals out, but I don’t think that it is true. We have been hearing it for last 10 years. We have gone to the government so many times. We have had so many meetings. And meanwhile the houses are getting more and more destroyed. They want a lot of money to move goats. The government says it will help but nothing is happening. I have a feeling they have different plans for the place”
Lambrou, however, is adamant that this is not the case. She lists all the improvements the government has made in the village in the last six years (new road leading from Polis to Androlikou, bringing water and electricity, plans to change all the pipes), and insists that soon the situation will be even better.
“To start with, Panayi, his sons and all others in the village who have goats were given land within the boundaries of the village but outside it to build goat farms,” she says.
“They have now all submitted their plans for the farms and once they get building permits they will be given £15,000 each towards the cost. The government will also sign collateral for all loans taken by Turkish Cypriots. It is because they don’t have any properties. Greek Cypriots have a different situation because they own properties somewhere else so they can get loans without our help.
“If the goats are not moved from the village we will take legal action. And in case of the tenants who haven’t done anything with their houses the district officer has started sending letters to them urging them to take action. Otherwise, we will take the houses back.”
Thirty-three-year-old Dimas Pournoxouzi, one of Panayi’s sons, who owns 600 goats, agrees they should be removed from the village but says £15,000 assistance from the government is not enough.
“I am ready to take them away tomorrow, but to build a modern goat farm, according to the EU regulations, I need between £100,000 and £150,000, and the state gives me £15,000.
It is not enough and I don’t know where to get the rest of the money from. I don’t know what to do. This is my life. We should go but our financial situation is difficult. Once I get my building permit I will have to go and talk to the government about money again.”
The new village council is also after money. For years, the private quarries set up in Androlikou after 1975, have paid the government £8 for each 20 tons of stones taken out. Most of this money should have gone to village coffers, but since it didn’t have a council it didn’t happen. Androlikou wants to know where the money went.
“It had to go somewhere,” says Ezgur. “Maybe to the other villages. We want to learn where this money is because the village needs it.”
“The District Officer was taking the money from Androlikou and using it the way he wanted,” confirms Chimarridis. “Had they kept money for Androlikou it would have been half a million pounds by now.”
“The money from the quarries used to be deposited with the district officer,” answers Lambrou. “Now because there is the local council it will go to the bank account of the village.”
In spite of all these pending questions, all involved seem to hope the future of the village will be better than the past.
“I don’t know what will happen, but if they take animals out, we will help to fix the village,” says Chimarridis. “I can personally buy and plant 100 trees, the committee can do cultural things. I hope that one way or another the situation in the village will improve.”
“With the co-operation between the local council and the district office now in place, many public works will be done in this village,” assures Lambrou. “Everything depends on the local council. They have to decide what they want and submit plans and budget for the next year. The district office will examine it and the things will follow.”
Only Karaboulout is sceptical.
“I went back to Androlikou two years ago,” he says. “I didn’t want to go. I knew that everything was upside down. But my wife and family insisted, so we went. It is very long way to go to Nicosia, and then Paphos, Polis and Androlikou. When I got there I felt very bad and sad. It is a pity the houses are in such condition.
“I went to the house of the doctor [Talliotis]. His house used to be a mukhtar’s house. We sat and talked a little. He said: ‘one day we will try to make this village the way it used to be or maybe better and you will come back and we will sit together like that again’. Nice, but how is it going to happen?
“People don’t want to go back to Androlikou because there is nothing there.
We miss the place. We want to see it again but we don’t want to go back.
Maybe if some day there is peace in Cyprus, if they rebuild the houses some of us will go and see if they can stay. But I don’t believe it.”
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