Pserimos’ six-hour tourism boom

Iraklis Mamoudelos stands in front of the Aphrodite cafe-restaurant, with its blue polyester director’s chairs. He has a black tray under his left arm, ready to welcome customers. No one is swimming at the beach of Pserimos, a tiny island between Kalymnos and Kos in the eastern Aegean – now, at least – but the setting is ready. The locals have gathered at the beach, the island’s main attraction, and set up their wares, waiting for the tourists coming in groups from Kos between the hours of 11 a.m. and 5 p.m., when the island goes quiet again.

In those six hours, everyone on Pserimos is selling something: from souvenirs like ashtrays, cups and shot glasses, hand-knitted items, beach wraps and kaftans, to masks and snorkels, and ice-cream, beer and cold water. That’s the organized sellers, most of whom live in Kalymnos during the winter. The older locals have even less to peddle. Mr Nikolas’ display contains bundles of herbs and necklaces made of red string and seashells.

Sakedaris Xivouras is a 76-year-old retired sponge-diver. “Now I sell sponges and seashells,” he tells Kathimerini from behind his stand in the middle of the beach. He has a white notebook that he uses to write down the prices of his wares when customers ask. “I don’t speak English,” he says, almost apologetically.

As the tourists come in successive waves, there is one phrase that can be heard all over the island: “Yes please.” As the first of three boats on a three-island tour from Kos arrives, the silence is broken by blaring music and the guide’s tinny voice on the speakers saying: “This is Pserimos island, please stay here for one hour.” And so it begins.

“Yes please, everything good price, beer, souvenirs,” 73-year-old Pantelis Lymberis shouts out to the passing tourists. For six hours a day, six months of the year, he’s the tout of Pserimos. “Best of the best honey, here please, yes please, I make it our honey, try it,” he shouts in vain to the British, German and Italian tourists who have already filled the beach in their colorful bathing suits as the smell of sun lotion wafts through the air. He presents a straw with a drop of honey on the end. “Oi,” he says to a British man approaching; he’s looking for cigarettes, not honey. Lymberis pulls out a crate containing a few pouches of loose-leaf tobacco and a small selection of cigarettes in packets. Seeing that honey isn’t doing it, he changes his tune again: “Ice cream, clothes,” he starts shouting.

“Tourism has grown a lot, but it’s one-hour tourism and the foreigners don’t spend a lot of money; not like the Greeks,” says his 71-year-old wife Irini. “We speak five words of English all in all, and laugh at each other. The tourists don’t understand so I just smile at them like an idiot. ‘Hello, hello,’ we say. We probably say ‘hello’ in our sleep.” 

Giorgos Bairamis, 88, watches the beach from the yard of the taverna he ran with his wife until a few years ago. The wooden sign with its name, Kali Kardia (Good Heart), is faded and chipped. “We get a lot of people who spend very little on things like ice cream,” he says. Indeed, most of the customers are gathered around the ice-cream fridges, with a few also picking up a soft drink or two. Many more tourists are sitting at the beach’s three cafe/snack bars.

“You can’t serve them all. You can’t get the food you’d like out on time, so you end up selling low-quality burgers and hot dogs,” says Nikoas Tiliakos, the owner of the Anna cafe. “But they support the island. If they go too, we’d be finished.” 

Hard winters

Pserimos is the poster child of asymmetric tourism. It is the last stop in the Dodecanese, just 2 nautical miles from Turkey, and has fewer than 25 permanent residents in the winter. The population grows in the summer, not just with locals who live on Kalymnos and come here for holidays, but also with people who work there. “Most of them are Kalymnos natives. They leave in October and return in early May, raking in the money while we’re standing on the sidelines,” says Bairamis.

The people of Pserimos – with its ramshackle houses, practically nonexistent streets, gorgeously wild natural landscape and sparkling waters – consist mainly of shepherds, fishermen and pensioners, and they are no stranger to poverty. Many have children in Australia or lived in that country themselves.

Iraklis Mamoudelos spent 17 years there and his brother Tasos three. “Everything here is the result of working abroad. Iraklis had to work hard there for his dream of opening a small business on the island,” says Tasos.

They opened Aphrodite in 2015. “We miss how easy life is in Australia,” says Iraklis. “You feel safe and protected by the state,” adds his brother. 

“So many politicians have come and made promises for infrastructure and incentives so that young islanders don’t have to leave for Kalymnos or Australia. And they did nothing,” says Tasos.

At Manolas’ Taverna, Manolis Trikilis is serving bottles of cold beer. He immigrated to Australia in 2015 and found work at a resort in Darwin. He came back to Pserimos a few days ago after an absence of four years. The taverna, which replaced their grandfather’s little cafe in 1996 is run by his brother Giorgos. It is the only place on Pserimos that stays open during the hard winter months. “The problem on Pserimos is that the land belongs to the state, so the potential for development is limited,” Giorgos Trikilis tells Kathimerini.

In July and August, the island receives around 2,000 people a day from Kos. But Kos, says Trikilis, doesn’t always get the best class of tourist. “All they want to do is swim, drink beer and dance in the boat.”

When the one-hour tourists depart, the scene of the beach is like a scene of Greece in the 60s, with just a few locals and a handful of holidaymakers from the smattering of rooms to let on the beach after 5 p.m. The calm returns.

School initiative

“Summer is the death of me,” 33-year-old livestock farmer Sakellaris Mavros tells Kathimerini, talking about his flock of 700 sheep and goats that he sells for meat to restaurants and households, while also making myzithra cheese from their milk. “That’s how four generations of my family have survived,” he says.

He is joined by his 30-year-old wife Kyrapsili and their 3-year-old son Panormitis. The boy’s existence, along with that of one other child, is the reason for an initiative that the locals hope will change something for the good of the island: the restoration and reopening of Pserimos’ elementary school, which has been closed since 2009.

The project has been undertaken by the Delaware-based International Hellenic Association and is expected to be inaugurated in September. The cost of 200,000 euros is covered entirely by donations, says the US organization’s president, Evangelos Rigos. “We all love our country and are trying to do something for it. Our friends to the east have Pserimos in their cross hairs and claim that it’s under ‘Greek occupation.’ Our aim in the second phase is to help develop the island and to bring the people of Pserimos back. Without a school, there can be no people,” he stresses. 

If the school does not open, Kyrapsili and Panormitis will have to move to Kalymnos. Sakellaris has no intention of budging: “I’m not leaving even if the world turns upside down,” he says.

Taxiarchis Katsoures is the other child. His mother Nomiki studied as a beautician but has no work on the island, so she runs a small clothing store in the summer. His father Michalis is a builder. The winters, says Nomiki, can be brutal. “Work is patchy and we don’t have a daily ferry connection with Kalymnos or Kos.”

Healthcare is one of the locals’ biggest worries. Pserimos did not have a doctor until two years ago and now it has a gynecologist who has been required to conduct CPR without even the help of a nurse. Nevertheless, Nomiki loves life on the island, even in winter. She likes taking long walks with Taxiarchis, gathering snails and growing vegetables. She doesn’t want to leave her native land. 

“We’re trying to bring life back to the island,” says Michalis Arvythis, the presidents of the Pserimos Association, which plans to build a playground and basketball court on the school grounds once it opens.

“We want families with children to move here. We want to prevent the island becoming a deserted rock,” he says. “Who will protect it if more people don’t come?”