Most of the locals watch Summer pass without participation. While people from all around the world enjoy the clear beaches and the Summer dream of a Greek island holiday, these locals work tirelessly as kitchen hands, cleaners and waiters, from dawn to the early hours, to collect and save their nuts to survive the coming Winter with little or no work. Behind the dream there is a machine made up of flesh and bone. Fathers, mothers and daughters combine their efforts at home and at work to keep their lives afloat with this only opportunity to secure their futures for another year. By the time of the Exoghi and Kioni Panighiri, most are already exhausted, but dance night into day regardless. They let down their hair and forget their feet are blistered and their backs ache, to enjoy the Festivals they have grown up with all their lives.. As the school year comes to an end for Summer, more Greeks, Ex-Pats and Italians arrive. Many have come year after year, many more were born here or have parents who were born here. They descend on Ithaca from Australia and the US, South Africa and Mainland Greece, to fill themselves up with their annual taste of Ithaki. Hot days and warm, sultry nights, afternoons at the beach, and evenings at a Taverna along the bay, fill the weeks. Days blur in the mist of the Summer heat to dissolve into each other without a thought given to the world outside, and so it continues into August.
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