Villagers get together again in Pergamos

GREEK and Turkish Cypriots separated for decades gathered at a park just outside Pergamos in the Dhekelia SBA area yesterday afternoon for a bicommunal villagers= meeting.

Signs designating home villages were posted at trees around the park, where old acquaintances were able to enjoy a picnic together for the first time since 1974 — and in some cases since 1963.

At the meeting place for Komi Kebir village, Turkish Cypriots brought photographs so that elderly Greek Cypriots could again see the home village they had not seen in 26 years.

Although the event was aimed at the older generations who grew up alongside each other in mixed villages, all age groups were represented in the throng at the park.

Those who attended, numbering in their hundreds, were brought together mainly through the efforts of four teenage youth groups who joined forces several months ago, inspired by the success of a bi-communal event in March that brought together nearly 2,000 Greek and Turkish Cypriot teenagers.

In preparation for yesterday=s event, Greek Cypriot co-ordinator Nicos Anastassiou, an economics teacher at the American Academy in Larnaca, said that he and his fellow project volunteers were Astretched to the limit@ interviewing village elders, particularly community leaders, to identify former members of mixed towns and villages now living in the north.

Anastassiou and his counterpart in the north, Ulus Irkab, would then swap lists of people seeking distant friends on both sides of the Green Line to track down separated friends and encourage them to attend the event.

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